Ex-TCS, Amazon employee reveals he got offers with 30% hike even after being laid off

Arideep Dutta (R) reveals how he found a new job after being laid off from Amazon (Screengrab from YouTube video posted by Riddhi Dutta)

A software development engineer has revealed how he found a new job with a salary hike after being laid off from Amazon earlier this year. Arideep Dutta was one of the 18,000 Amazon employees across the world who lost their jobs in January after the e-commerce giant announced a major workforce reduction to cut costs.

In a recent interview with podcaster Riddhi Dutta, Arideep said that he was mentally prepared about being laid off, but the news still came as a blow. He credited the time he spent strategizing and preparing for interviews for helping him land a good job.

After being laid off from Amazon, Arideep said he took a short break to attend a cousin’s wedding before coming back to Bengaluru to start his job hunt. “After coming back from my cousin’s wedding, the first two weeks I spent preparing a strategy” for job application, said the former Amazon employee.

Arideep, who spent a year at TCS before joining Amazon, said that he shared news of his layoff on LinkedIn and received some interview offers. He also applied to several companies, confessing that firms tried to ‘lowball’ him when they realised he had been laid off.

Despite this, Arideep was clear from the get-go that the company hiring him would have to either match the salary he received at Amazon or offer him a pay hike. He said he received multiple offers from startups as well as established names like Flipkart.

“Yes, I was laid off from Amazon, my dream company. After that the journey to get next offer was a roler coster ride for me. And at last I ended having multiple offers from various PBCs like Flipkart, Nutanix, etc. with a 30-40% hike even in this recession,” he wrote in a LinkedIn post shared yesterday.

Arideep closed the podcast with a few words about the current job market and some advice for freshers. “In the current scenario, there is no guarantee you won’t be laid off. If Google, Microsoft, Amazon can carry out layoffs, you can’t expect anything from any other company,” he opined.

“If you are joining a startup, do some research – who are the investors of the startup? What stage is the startup? What are the future goals of the company?” he advised. “By doing this research, you can get to know whether the company is safe to join or not.”