Agonising Influence of AI: Insensitive mass firing of staffers sparks online outcry

Bengaluru: Harrowing tales of layoffs have started to emerge from different companies across sectors as AI-induced disruption has deprived lakhs of employees of their jobs overnight.

In a recent report, it was highlighted how a team of 80 Indian employees were fired in a brutal '5-minute' Google Meet call by an US firm.

In a social media post titled, "Laid off over a Google Meet," one of the affected employees wrote that 80-odd staffers were instructed to work remotely for the day due to 'operational reasons' but received the unexpected news late into their evening shift.

"I was a part of the customer support team until yesterday for a US bank. They asked us to work from home yesterday due to operational reasons," the employee wrote.

"I was doing a 6.30 pm, shift and at 9.30 pm they just invited us on a Google Meet and told us the entire Indian Customer service team has been fired! All 80 employees! All gone. 80 families affected just with a 5-minute call. I feel bad that we work for these corporates who can throw us out anytime and regret that I used to work hard at my job," the employee wrote.

This post had generated a wide variety of reactions from netizens with many elaborating discriminatory behaviour of foreign employers towards Indians at the time of layoffs. Ironically, this was not an isolated incident. This week, thousands of workers across the world got dreaded 6 AM mails from Oracle announcing their layoffs. Just after receiving the mail, all access to mail, files, and other system-related things were cut off abruptly. Many even complained that their access was cut off before receiving the mails.

Several social media posts on earlier occasions had gone viral mirroring CEOs firing entire staff over Teams call.

Lakhs of employees across the world have lost their jobs over the past year owing to artificial intelligence-induced developments. Companies like Meta, Apple, Oracle, Accenture, Google, Microsoft, Intel and several others have fired thousands of workers since 2025.

In India, around 15,000 employees were affected owing to the layoffs since the beginning of AI era.

Among Indian companies, some IT firms like TCS had done “optimisation of employees” in previous quarters.

Most industry experts are of the view that layoffs are not going to come down in the coming quarters as American firms undertake cost optimisation moves. Due to heavy presence in India though GCCs (Global Capability Centres), Indian employees are also likely to be adversely affected going forward.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Debasis Mohapatra

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