A 50-year-old technology professional, who lost his role at Microsoft in December last year, said he was now close to losing his home after a prolonged and unsuccessful job search.
Mody Khan, a Pakistani-origin immigrant based in Texas, revealed that his savings had almost been exhausted during the nine months since his redundancy. Khan, who had been employed as a cloud solution architect at Microsoft, told Business Insider that the situation had left him fearing financial collapse.
"I had savings, and I've depleted almost all of it," he said. "I'm in a very tight spot."
Khan explained that despite more than two decades of industry experience, including five years at Microsoft, he had been unable to secure a new role.
"It feels like recruiters are looking for Superman," he said. "I've been constantly applying, and I've had interviews, but I've been turned down everywhere."
Although he had attended several interviews that appeared to go well, none had led to offers. "I've had so many good interviews where I'm ready for them to say, 'Mody, let's rock 'n' roll' — and then they don't move forward," he told the outlet.
Khan also described the lack of feedback as particularly discouraging. "Recruiters contact me, take my resume, and they ghost me," he said.
He attributed part of his difficulty in finding employment to age-related perceptions in the industry. "Many recruiters assume I’m not current with the latest technologies," he said. He added that his lack of experience in the start-up sector may also have been a disadvantage.
Khan further said he believed that his ethnicity could be a factor in his job search. "Being Pakistani may play into the biases of some Indian recruiters or interviewers," he said, calling the situation "very, very dangerous."
Khan had relocated from Pakistan to the United States in 2007 and joined Microsoft in 2019.
The redundancy had forced him to sell his Microsoft stock holdings earlier this year, he said. At the time of speaking, he estimated that only $10,000 in savings remained, which would last himself and his wife for about two months.
After that, Khan explained, he would have to start withdrawing from investments and his 401(k) retirement plan. He also disclosed that he had already fallen behind on mortgage payments and risked foreclosure if he could not resume paying once his forbearance period ended.
Khan said: "I'm on the verge of losing everything."
The former engineer’s account comes as Microsoft and other large technology companies have carried out mass redundancies in the past year, with thousands of employees affected worldwide.
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