Four days before he was set to move to Europe for a job at Amazon, an IT professional from Kenya was informed the opportunity had fallen through because of business changes at the global e-commerce giant. Tom Mboya Opiyo penned down his experience in a LinkedIn post, sharing that he had sold his house and cars in preparation for a relocation that never panned out.
Amazon is in the process of laying off 18,000 employees from its offices worldwide. The cuts amount to 6% of the company’s workforce and come at a time when Amazon’s share price has fallen sharply.
Opiyo said he was informed four days before his planned relocation to Europe that he was among the 18,000 people impacted by Amazon’s mass layoffs.
Monday would have been his first day in office after travelling over the weekend, but instead, Opiyo and his family were left “devastated” by the turn of events.
“My family is truly devastated after planning for the move for 6 months,” he said in his LinkedIn post.
The Kenyan IT professional said that his children had left schools and that he had sold his house and cars in order to move to Europe. They would now have to start afresh while dealing with the blow. For others planning to relocate for a job, Opiyo shared two pieces of advice.
The first, he said, was for the employee to go ahead and have his or her family follow later. “Basically, don’t put all your eggs in one basket - something we learnt long time ago,” he wrote.
Opiyo also advised job-seekers to not resign from their current role until they get their visa. “Don’t resign until you get the visa - the process has taken us over 5 months,” he said, noting the long time it took to get family document verification, police clearance, new passports, EU work authorization approvals and notarisation of documents in order.
He ended his post by asking his readers to keep him in their prayers.
Amazon is among the several large companies that have announced job cuts in the last few months. Twitter and Meta have also carried out, or are in the process of carrying out, workforce reductions.
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