Layoff fears are pushing some visa holders out of Big Tech

Ayush Raj Jha (left), Vinit Juneja (center), and David Chong (right) said their visa status raised the stakes of their career decisions.

Ayush Raj Jha (left), Vinit Juneja (center), and David Chong (right) Some visa holders say Big Tech layoffs have made job security a bigger priority.

A layoff can threaten a visa holder's ability to remain and work in the US.

Big Tech's pay, career growth, and immigration support remain powerful draws.

When Vinit Juneja started as a software engineer at Amazon last year, he knew he might leave one day for a more attractive role.

But after watching colleagues lose their jobs during two rounds of layoffs that eliminated roughly 30,000 positions at Amazon, another factor took on new importance: job security.

"I realized that no one's safe," Juneja said.

Juneja, who moved to the US from India for graduate school in 2023, is in the US on an F-1 STEM OPT visa .

That means that if he lost his job and couldn't find a new one in time, he'd have to leave the country.

Less than a year into his job at Amazon, Juneja came across a technical product manager opening at semiconductor equipment manufacturer Applied Materials.

The role better matched his career goals, but Juneja also believed the company's position in the AI chip supply chain might make it a more stable long-term bet than Big Tech.

He accepted an offer in April.

Juneja is among the visa holders who say repeated layoffs have changed the calculus of working in Big Tech after years of job cuts.

Since 2022, Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta, and Apple have collectively announced layoffs affecting more than 100,000 workers.