Indian woman wakes up at 3am to feed three-month-old daughter, receives Meta’s layoff mail

Hundreds of Indians are among the 11,000 people laid off by social media major Meta. An Indian origin communications manager is among the 11,000 who were laid off by Facebook-owner Meta.

However, her story will break your heart.

According to her Linkedln post, Anneka Patel was on a maternity leave. She woke up at 3am to feed her three-month-old daughter. However, she received a mail about the layoff at 5:35am.

Her linkedln post is now going viral with 9,575 likes and hundreds of comments. Have a look at her post here.

Patel wrote, “I woke up at 3am to pump for my three month old baby girl, Emilia. I checked my work email as I was anticipating the email from Mark Zuckerberg about the layoffs. Emilia woke up at 4am so I nursed her and at 4:30am I got a text from my manager that she had been laid off. I put Emilia back down to sleep at 4:45am and sat there wondering what to do next. I lay in bed, refreshing my emails, talking to other coworkers, all of us on the edge of our seats whether we would be impacted, or commiserating with those who had already been notified. One of my coworkers said the automated emails were being sent out from then until 7am so I was in two minds of whether to go back to sleep, or stay up. Then at 5:35am I got the email that I had been included in the layoffs. My heart sank.”

She also requested her readers to refer her if any role looks perfect for her.

“ With that being said, if in the New Year you see a #communications role that looks perfect for me, please refer me or send it my way. Meta lost so many talented individuals today and I am thinking about everyone who was impacted. If I can make introductions to anyone in my network, I would be more than happy to,” read her post.

On the other hand, Indian techies who had moved to Canada and London and joined Meta after quitting their stable jobs were also laid off. Many had just joined the company two-three days ago.

Neelima Agarwal, who joined Meta two days back, after quitting her stable job at Microsoft in Hyderabad, was laid off in just two days of her joining.

"Relocated to Canada from India just a week back and joined meta 2 days ago after going through such a long visa process. But the unfortunate sad day has come and I got laid off," she said.

Similarly, Vishwajeet Jha had joined Meta three days back after working for over three years at the Amazon office in Bengaluru

"I joined Meta three days back after waiting for the long visa process. Thanks to all the folks who made that transition smooth. Really sad that this happened, my heart goes out for everyone who is affected by the layoffs," Mr Jha posted.

Similarly, another Indian-American Raju Kadam, who was part of Meta's technical team, said he has been in the US for 16 years and never faced job loss. "I have an H1-B visa... my clock to leave the US has started today...I have been in the US for 16 years and seen 2008, 2015 (oil) and 2020 downturns, but never lost my job," he said, adding that his sons are US citizens and their lives will be impacted.