Indian woman on H-1B laid off by Meta within just 9 months: ‘I’m looking for opportunities’

A United States-based Indian woman is among the 600 Meta employees affected by the recent layoffs in the company’s AI division. The woman took to the social media platform X to seek other opportunities and was immediately flooded with messages from founders and CEOs of several smaller AI startups.

She clarified that she was working in the US on an H-1B visa, and would also require visa sponsorship from her new employer, if she did manage to land a job.

Meta layoffs

Meta will lay off 600 employees from its ‘bloated’ AI unit, the company confirmed to CNBC on Wednesday. The layoffs were announced in a memo from Meta’s chief AI officer, Alexandr Wang.

Employees in Meta’s AI infrastructure units, Fundamental Artificial Intelligence Research unit (FAIR) and other product-related positions will be impacted by this latest round of job cuts.

(Also read: Anger bubbles as Meta lays off 600 from its AI division: ‘The billionaire forgets…’)

“Looking for opportunities”

The Seattle-based Indian woman who was affected by the layoffs had been hired as a research scientist by Meta in February this year. She was laid off within nine months.

The former Meta employee took to X to announce her termination and seek other jobs.

“I was impacted by Meta layoffs today,” she wrote. “As a Research Scientist working on LLM posttraining (reward models, DPO/GRPO) & automated evaluation pipelines, I’ve focused on understanding why/where models fail & how to make them better.

“I’m looking for opportunities; please reach out!” the woman requested.

Working on H-1B

“I’m on H-1B visa & need visa sponsorship (and possibly an I-140 application),” the woman clarified.

An H-1B visa allows highly skilled workers to live and work in the United States for up to three years at a time, with a possible extension of another three years.

The woman further said that she was still visible internally at Meta as she had two months to find a new team. “I’d like to stay in the Greater Seattle area if possible,” she added.

Within minutes, her comments section was flooded.

Violet Herod, founder of Beauvette, wrote: “So sorry to hear that. I sent you an email to reach out.”

Microsoft employee Varsh Sridharan said, “Feel free to DM if you find relevant roles at Microsoft. We are hiring for applied scientists across orgs”.

Vincent Weisser, CEO of Prime Intellect, wrote: “Let’s chat! exactly what we scaling up at Prime Intellect”.