Texas, USA— Mody Khan, a 50-year-old Pakistani-American cloud solution architect, is in a bad financial situation nine months after losing his six-figure job at Microsoft. Khan told Business Insider that his savings are almost gone and he is overdue on his mortgage payments, which could lead to his house being foreclosed on.
Khan moved to the U.S. from Pakistan in 2007 and started working for Microsoft in 2019. He called his job search “harrowing.” He has been unable to find a new job even though he has worked at Microsoft for five years and has a long career in the software industry. He said that even though he has had interviews, they haven’t led to job offers, and recruiters often “ghost” him without giving him concrete reasons for why he wasn’t hired.
Khan thinks that a number of things are affecting his chances of getting a job. He thinks that his age is a big problem since he thinks recruiters would think he isn’t up-to-date on the newest technologies. He also thinks that not having worked at a startup before is a bad thing. He also said he was worried about his race, saying that he thinks certain Indian recruiters or interviewers may be biased against him, which he called “a very, very dangerous situation.”
The ex-Microsoft worker had only $10,000 saved up, which he thinks will last him and his wife around two months. He had sold his Microsoft shares after being laid off to pay his bills, and he might have to use his 401(k) to make ends meet. Microsoft and other big IT corporations have laid off thousands of people in the past year, including Khan.