When tech professional Ritika Sharma logged into her laptop one September morning in Bengaluru, she found her access to internal systems abruptly disabled. Minutes later, an email confirmed her worst fears — her role had been “made redundant,” effective immediately.
“No conversation, no warning,” she recalls. “It felt like I was disposable.” Sharma worked at a Bengaluru-based tech firm that regularly placed software professionals in client offices across North America.
Over 8,000 miles away in Seattle, United States, Sai K. (full name withheld on request) experienced something similar more than three months ago. “I was working in a multinational,” he says. “Just one fine morning, a cryptic email hits the official inbox, that [there is an] important meeting [in] an hour. And just like that, I was told that I am fired. Ironically, on [the] day I had an internal presentation.”
The job market in the U.S. has been volatile for many months, with big companies — long viewed as reliable employers — suddenly announcing mass layoffs. Intel, Accenture, Amazon, Ford, Microsoft, Target, and UPS are among the corporations that have announced job cuts in recent weeks.
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Not long ago, a Reddit post went viral after an Indian employee described how their U.S.-based company dismissed most of its India team over a three-minute video call. When the employee opened their email, the layoff message had already landed.
In a disturbing trend, sudden layoffs delivered by email or phone call have become increasingly common in the United States.
In January 2024, a TikToker went viral for recording her brief layoff call. Brittany Pietsch secretly recorded her termination from Cloudflare, drawing millions of views and even prompting Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince to respond on X.
In recent months, countless cases of abrupt layoffs — delivered over Zoom calls, emails, and even text messages — have surfaced across America. Now, a new survey suggests that this U.S.-style “fire-at-will” approach is taking root elsewhere too, particularly in India’s corporate corridors. Although this practice conflicts with local labor laws and cultural expectations, sudden layoffs are becoming more frequent than ever.
A survey by Blind, an anonymous professional community app, found that 72% of Indian professionals who experienced or witnessed layoffs were informed on the same day or just one day before.
Borrowing from America, breaking Indian laws
Under Indian labor law, most employees are entitled to at least one month’s notice — and up to three months in large enterprises — before termination. Yet Blind’s findings show that these protections are routinely sidestepped, particularly by multinational corporations (MNCs) operating in India’s tech and services sectors.
At U.S.-based companies such as Amazon, Target, and Freshworks, all of which have workforces in India, more than 90% of affected employees said they were laid off within two days. Only 18% received advance notice, despite clear statutory requirements.
Notably, reports emerged late last month that U.S. retailer Target is laying off roughly 150 employees from its Global Capability Center (GCC) in India. The move is part of the 1,800 corporate roles Target is cutting in its first major round of layoffs in a decade, as the company struggles with slowing sales and a weak macroeconomic environment. The India cuts account for 8% of the total layoffs but only 3% of Target’s workforce in the country, which stood at about 5,500 employees as of August.
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What enables this evasion is a loophole in India’s Industrial Disputes Act (IDA), which excludes most white-collar professionals, IT workers, and managerial staff from the definition of “workmen.” This exclusion leaves millions of knowledge workers outside the scope of legal protection — a gray zone that global corporations have learned to navigate with ease.
Cold calls, cut access, and corporate detachment
The survey found that 37% of layoffs were conducted over Zoom or Microsoft Teams, 23% were communicated through impersonal email notifications, and 13% of employees discovered their termination only after losing access to company systems — the digital equivalent of having their office keys taken away.
“It’s a cruel psychological game,” wrote an Amazon India employee on Blind. “You’re kept anxious, constantly guessing who’s next, so that some people will quit voluntarily — saving the company severance costs.”
Others have begun to reframe the crisis as a moment for reinvention. A Samsung employee commented, “All I can think of is becoming skilled enough to do something independently. That ability, however small, gives a sense of control.”
But for most, these abrupt dismissals have shaken their faith in the “global workplace” ideal that lured so many into India’s booming tech industry.
Global capitalism, local consequences
While the U.S. operates under a “fire-at-will” employment doctrine — allowing employers to terminate workers without cause — the practice remains largely incompatible with India’s socio-legal ecosystem. Yet the growing influence of American corporate models, especially in the wake of post-pandemic restructuring, has brought the same high-speed layoffs to Indian soil.
The use of “in lieu of notice” payments, where companies offer brief severance instead of prior warning, has become a convenient legal workaround. It enables overnight dismissals while maintaining a veneer of compliance. “We were told we’re part of a global workforce,” says Sharma. “But when things get tough, that global promise disappears — and you’re left to navigate the fallout alone.”
A cultural reckoning for India’s workforce
In a society where a single income often supports an entire family, sudden job loss carries a far heavier toll than in the West. Beyond financial strain, there is also social shame and psychological trauma — emotions rarely acknowledged in the boardrooms driving these mass terminations.
Labor economists warn that this drift toward American-style employment practices, without parallel labor reform or safety nets, could destabilize India’s middle class, the very demographic that fueled its digital revolution.