The 60-day job race

Planet Money

NPR

Business, News

4.6 • 29.8K Ratings

🗓️ 16 June 2023

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

People come from all over the world to work in U.S. tech. And during the tech boom years, the industry relied heavily on foreign workers. This is how we built Silicon Valley – with great minds coming from everywhere to work in the U.S.

But when the industry started to shrink, all of these people who moved here for work are finding that linking their jobs to their residency is really complicated. That was the case for Aashka and Nilanjan. Aashka was a product engineer at Amazon, and Nilanjan worked in digital advertising for Google. They both lost their jobs in the layoffs each company announced earlier this year.

When Aashka and Nilanjan got the news, a clock started ticking. Because they are both H-1B recipients, they only have 60 days to find new jobs before they risk being sent home. And they can't get just any job – they need new employers in their field willing to sponsor their visa.

On today's show, we followed two tech workers as they tried to find jobs before their visas expired, and what they went through as H-1B recipients trying to stay in the country.

This episode was hosted by Alyssa Jeong Perry and Amanda Aronczyk, produced by Sam Yellowhorse Kesler, engineered by James Willetts, fact-checked by Sierra Juarez, and edited by Molly Messick and Jess Jiang.

Help support Planet Money and get bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Today's episode mentions Amazon, which supports and pays to distribute some of our content.
0:06.3	We also mentioned Google, IBM, and LinkedIn, all financial supporters of NPR.
0:11.0	Now, here's today's show.
0:13.9	This is Planet Money from NPR.
0:19.0	January of 2023 was a pretty rough month if you worked in tech.
0:23.3	Hey, Pell announced that they're going to lay off 2,000 people.
0:26.6	IBM was laying off nearly 4,000 people.
0:30.1	And news leaked that Amazon was getting ready to lay off 18,000 people.
0:35.2	At the time, Asuka was a product engineer at Amazon, working on things like their search
0:39.8	engine.
0:40.8	Do you remember the day what day it was like were you anticipating getting laid off or was
0:47.0	it a surprise to you?
0:48.8	So we were aware that the decision would be given on 18th of January, but like not in
0:55.4	my wireless dreams, I had imagined that I would be the one impacted.
1:00.4	But then yeah, this happened.
1:02.8	Asuka thought she was working on a really successful team.
1:06.4	There had been an all hands meeting a couple of months before these layoffs.
1:10.2	And she says management, single them out, told them in front of everyone, you guys are
1:14.6	doing great.
1:16.1	So when she got the news, she was really shocked.
1:18.9	Oh, yeah, it was pretty bad on that day.
1:21.8	Like I cried a lot because I had dedicated a lot of time of my life towards shining at
	...

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