Indian engineer laid off by Tesla faces H-1B visa deadline: ‘Feels like a bad dream’

An engineer from Mumbai is among the Indian employees that Elon Musk's Tesla has recently laid off as the electric-vehicle maker is looking at reducing its global workforce by more than 10 per cent.

The man, who spent close to six years at the company in the United States, turned to LinkedIn to express his disappointment and heartbreak.

"It feels like a bad dream that I am no longer in Tesla as I have given so much of my time and sacrifice my sleep to this organisation from last more than five years," he wrote in a LinkedIn post.

The engineer, currently living in the US on an H-1B visa, faces a daunting deadline of just two months to find a new job in the country. Failure to do so will mean he will have to leave the US.

H-1B is a non-immigrant work visa that is popular among Indian engineers in the US.

Numerous Indian and Chinese employees affected by layoffs at Tesla are grappling with the tight 60-day visa deadline to secure new employment. LinkedIn is inundated with posts from displaced Tesla workers, both immigrants and US citizens, all actively seeking new job opportunities.

Tesla has also laid off staff from the software, service and engineering departments, tech publication Electrek reported on Monday, citing sources familiar with the matter.

Last month, the Elon Musk-led company announced its plans to lay off over 6,700 employees from its its facilities in Texas, California, Nevada and New York.

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Tesla finds itself amidst declining sales and heightened competition in the automotive industry, made worse by a fierce price war among manufacturers. The sluggish adoption of electric vehicles due to rising interest rates has added further strain to the company's challenges.

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