Meta fires Indian woman within 9 months of being hired, shares ordeal on social media

Meta announced Wednesday that it will cut thousands of employees as part of an ongoing series of layoffs at the tech giant — among them an Indian woman living in the United States. The woman took to the social media platform X to look for opportunities, and her comments section was soon flooded with messages from founders and CEOs of several small AI startups. What did she say about her visa status? The woman explained that she was working in the US on an H-1B visa – a visa that allows highly skilled workers to live and work in the US for up to three years at a time – and noted that her new employer would have to sponsor her visa, if she qualified. What was her role at Meta? The Seattle-based Indian woman was hired by Meta as a research scientist in February this year, but was laid off after nine months. “I was affected by Meta layoffs today,” she wrote. “As a research scientist working on LLM post-training (reward models, DPO/GRPO) and automated evaluation pipelines, I focused on understanding why and where models fail and how to make them better. “I look for opportunities; please reach out!” she requested. “I have an H-1B visa and need visa sponsorship (and possibly an I-140 petition),” she added. The woman added that she was still listed internally at Meta as she had two months to switch to a new team. “I would like to stay in the Greater Seattle area if possible,” she said. Within a short time, her post went viral and gathered numerous comments. Who has after issued her? Violet Herodes, founder of Beauvette, wrote: “So sorry to hear that. I sent you an email to come out.” Microsoft employee Varsh Sridharan said, “Feel free to DM if you get relevant roles at Microsoft. We hire applied scientists across organizations.” Prime Intellect CEO Vincent Weisser wrote: “Let’s chat! Exactly what we scale up at Prime Intellect.” How many jobs are being cut at Meta? Mark Zuckerberg’s AI Superintelligence Labs plans to lay off about 600 employees in an effort to be more competitive, Bloomberg reported, citing an internal memo. Employees of Meta’s AI unit were notified of their job cuts on October 22, according to the memo. Meta’s newly formed TBD Lab group, which many of the highest paid including recent hires, were notably unaffected. What did Meta’s AI chief say? Meta Platforms’ chief AI officer Alexandr Wang wrote in the memo that the move is aimed at increasing efficiency and reducing bureaucracy. “By reducing the size of our team, fewer conversations will be required to make a decision, and each person will be more accountable and have more scope and impact,” he wrote.