Goldman Sachs layoffs in India; shocking stories go viral on social media

Global financial services firm Goldman Sachs is in the midst of its largest rounds of layoffs since the 2008 financial crisis. Around 700-800 of its employees working in India are reported to have been fired so far, as the company looks to let go of 3,200 people across the globe.

Prior to the layoffs, the company had nearly 9,000 employees working out of the company’s Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Mumbai offices. This means, that nearly 9% of its Indian employees will be facing the brunt of the current restructuring.

Several of them have taken to social media platforms in the past week to share their plight and look for newer opportunities.

Gourav Sachdeva, an IIM Shillong graduate and a product manager at Goldman Sachs, took to Twitter recently to share that he was part of the recent layoffs and is looking to “kick-start” his career again.

“While it’s undoubtedly a difficult time, I am looking at it as a kick-start for the next phase of my professional journey! Of course, I am also grateful to my amazing family for taking this so peacefully and sportingly,” he posted.

Another person, Subham Sahu who is an IIT Kharagpur 2022 graduate, said that at the beginning of New Year, he was impacted by the layoffs at Goldman Sachs “just after my 23rd birthday”.

“Wow, this is truly a different way to start a year. It was my first job and my first experience in software development,” Sahu wrote on the professional networking platform, adding that he was “actively looking for a job opportunity in full stack/backend development and can join in February.”

Corporate Chat India took to Twitter to say that there is “scary stuff at Goldman Sachs India as employees are being asked to go to a conference room, told that they’re laid off and asked to leave immediately without being allowed to go back to their desk”.

“Started a while ago with a 10-person layoff. But now 100s are expected to be cut,” it posted.

Not just those in India, but Indian employees working with Goldman Sachs in the US have also been left in the lurch by the current developments.

Shilp Soni, a software engineer from India, who spent 1.7 years in the company in Texas, is among those who lost their jobs at the company.

She recently took to LinkedIn to share her situation and how she managed to land a job in the US despite coming from a rural family in India.

“I take pride in being the first person in my family to pursue a Masters in a foreign country. I come from a rural family so it has been one roller coaster of a journey, overcoming social and financial restrictions to come here,” Soni wrote.

Keeping up the fighting spirit after losing the job, Soni says, “knowing from where I started, being laid off hurts. But, I am still hopeful that this may not be the end of my journey here in the US. So, I have decided to keep fighting and make use of my limited time to find a new job”.