New Delhi: A recent survey by Blind, an anonymous professional network and mobile app, showed that layoff decisions made outside India can disproportionately affect Indians. An Oracle professional alleged that while the company hired from India for its cost advantage, they also conducted layoffs in India first because it was “cheaper and legally quieter”.
Blind spoke to 1,467 working professionals from India, of whom 44 per cent had India-based reporting lines up to a Vice President (VP) and claimed that the final decision on headcount cuts is made outside the country.
The survey comes amid a spate of layoffs by American technology company Oracle, which reduced its workforce by 21,000 employees in the last fiscal year. India is estimated to account for more than half of this number.
Among companies with VP or higher-level leadership in India, respondents most often said that hiring and firing decisions are made outside the country at PayPal (65 per cent), Salesforce (59 per cent), Visa (58 per cent), ServiceNow (50 per cent), Uber (48 per cent), and Oracle (46 per cent).
PayPal confirmed 220 layoffs in India in August, while Uber laid off 3,300 employees globally, of which 200-250 were reportedly from the country. Of Oracle’s 6,000 global layoffs in September, up to 3,000 employees were reportedly from India.
At the bottom of the list are Amazon (25 per cent), Qualcomm (25 per cent), and Adobe (33 per cent).
Half the tech companies lack senior Indian leadership
More than half of the companies included in the survey show that they entirely lack senior leadership in India.
A total of 53 per cent of respondents said that their reporting line ends at manager level, 40 per cent said it ends at the director level, and 13 per cent claimed that there is no reporting line whatsoever in the country. For companies without reporting lines in India, 75 per cent say that hiring and firing decisions are made outside the country.
Many workers claimed not to know who makes hiring and firing decisions. While 15 per cent said they don’t know who approves hiring, the number goes up to 18 per cent in the case of layoffs. The survey also shows that many employees find the people making hiring or firing decisions to remain physically distant and largely invisible.
This company-level analysis by Blind was carried out between 21 August and 16 September 2026.
(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)
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