Since taking charge of Twitter, Elon Musk has fired thousands of employees globally, shut down various departments, and asked the remaining employees to be ready for hardcore work. However, Musk’s Twitter purge hasn’t stopped yet, as he fired more staff, particularly those on H-1B visas and parental leave. According to United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, A H-1B is a temporary visa that allows companies to hire foreign professionals to perform services in a specialty occupation.
Pre-Thanksgiving Purge: Employees on H-1B Visas and Parental Leave were Targeted
A former staff member of Twitter wrote on LinkedIn that Musk had fired Twitter employees on H-1B visas and parental leave before Thanksgiving. Yiwei Zhuang, a software engineer, working for the past three years at Twitter, said that his “employment is terminated immediately with no reason today by Elon’s Twitter 2.0 team before Thanksgiving.” He further added that many employees on parental leave were also fired.
Zhuang wrote, “I am on an H1B visa and have only 60 days to start a new job. I am looking for a Software/Machine Learning Engineer role immediately.” He further added, “I have 4 years working experience in backend and distributed services in live streaming services using Golang/AWS and Ads recommendation system/Machine learning infra using Java.”
Silicon Valley Veteran Offer Tips for Laid-off H-1B Visa Holders
Debarghya Das, the founding engineer at California-based work assistant Glean, shared a few tips for H-1B holders to remain in the US; he said:
- Interview immediately and widely
- Consider applying for O-1 for “extraordinary ability”
- Try to negotiate with your employer for less severance pay and more employment time
- Try to become dependent on your spouse to extend your timeline
- Change to a B1 visitor visa if your employer lets you and extends your timeline
Also read: Twitter Chaos: TLP’s Official Account Faces Unforeseen Suspension
