American X User Says Indian Ceos Lay Off Local Employees, Replace C-Suite With Own Countrymen, Netizens React

(MENAFN- Live Mint) Amid the heated debate around H-1B visas and US immigration policies, an American claimed on social media that Indian CEOs lay off local employees and replace C-suite with their own countrymen. The post drew widespread reactions on the social media platform.

This comes amid a spat with MAGA traditionalist Laura Loomer and Elon Musk on X, with multiple Republicans joining in the debate on the H-1B visa and the US immigration policy. In multiple tweets the Tesla CEO sought to distinguish between“highly skilled workers” and those he claims are taking advantage of the system.

United States President-elect Donald Trump has remained silent as his two camps - the hardliners and the technocrats - battle it out publicly on social media.

The X (formerly known as Twitter) user, identified only as 'Lucky' said that his wife's company appointed an Indian CEO and claimed that this executive changed things to the disadvantage of locals.“My wife worked for a company that was purchased by a private equity firm that immediately brought in an Indian CEO. He pushed out all the founders and replaced all the C-suite with Indians,” the post alleged.

"He used Covid as excuse to force every employee to take a "temporary" 10% pay cut and he froze all promotions. He laid off 15% of the workforce, almost exclusively the most experienced employees," the post added.

The user also claimed that the new CEO moved offices to India and reduced staff in the US. He also complained about the work culture and workload.“He shut down one of the satellite offices that did more manual stuff like data entry, and outsourced their work to India . My wife's workload doubled during this time period. The work/life balance and culture created by the founders was gone over night,” Lucky wrote.

He added,“Work product also suffered across the company. New leadership placed an emphasis on simply gaining new clients and not providing the same customer support for the existing client base. Client satisfaction drastically decreased as a result. Many clients complained that their account manager who they had a 20 year relationship with was replaced by someone with little experience. This story isn't rare or novel.”

“Many Americans have dealt with a similar scenario in the last decade or so. My wife eventually found a job at a company that was still family owned with no intention to sell to PE,” he said.

The post drew many reactions on the social media platform, with multiple users agreeing with Lucky, and some others believing that the situation would have been the same regardless of an Indian CEO or American CEO.

One user said,“I worked at a large grocery store chain and they would constantly try to get people to train their replacements whether they were about to lay you off or you were about to quit if you gave your two weeks they would have you training the next person that is supposed to replace you” (sic)

Another added,“Same thing happened at my company. Indian CEO came in and overnight basically all of the US and European middle management was nuked. The office in India got 5 times bigger. All the talent left was pulling their hair out trying to explain how everything works to the new teams. Who then proceeded to implement 'improvements' that pushed their work back to Europe and made everything easier for them. The European teams are still delivering everything but it's harder now.”

The second user however also acknowledged,“Having said that there are some brilliant individuals in our Indian teams, the same as the rest of the world. However I would say the main difference is corporate can exploit the Indian employees more than the rest of world. You will often see people online at 1am 2am working. Not necessarily any more talented than anyone in Europe but if they are told to work till midnight, they will.” (sic)

Others also pointed to“corporate greed” as the reason. One said,“Weird cos my company bought in no one new and did exactly the same thing. Our workload is still double and our pay is 15-30% less dependant on role. Nothing to do with Indians. It's to do with corporate greed.” (sic)

Another wrote:“Yeah but my CEO is white and he replaced a lot of the staff with more compliant idiots and gave almost every department a pay cut. So this is just ceo behaviour. The problem is corporate greed. This is like saying men have less jobs coz women joined the workforce” (sic)

There was also a varying perspective, with one user blaming outsourcing and not visas for loss of American jobs.“My brother is wrapping up a 40+ career as a CPA and more recently, a software engineer, specializing in accounting and finance programs and applications. For the past 15 years, he's been working for a US-based multi-national that has a large IT company among its holdings ... A few months ago, he was told the California office was closing; he would remain with the company, and was free to work from any location with a high speed internet connection. The message in all this: we are exporting tech jobs and have been for years. Wonder why your sons and daughters with IT or engineering degrees can't find work or pay commensurate with their education and experience? In many cases, the jobs they might have filled 10 or 15 years ago are now located in Mumbai , and the trend is accelerating,” the user said.

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