Gu Yichen had 60 days to find a new job or leave the US after Google laid him off. He returned to China. The story shows the risk for visa-dependent tech workers.
Gu Yichen was on an H-1B visa when Google laid him off. He had 60 days to find a new job, transfer his sponsorship, and start working. On day 58, he booked a flight back to Beijing.
Gu, 31, moved to Mountain View in early 2022 after his H-1B was approved. The offer came through a friend who worked at Google. He spent his first months building machine learning infrastructure, enjoying the campus and the smart colleagues. The work was challenging, exactly what he wanted.
Then came the January 2023 layoffs. Google cut 12,000 jobs. Gu got the email on a Wednesday. His manager called him into a 15-minute meeting and told him his position was eliminated. He had 60 days to find a new employer willing to sponsor his visa transfer, in a role similar enough to pass USCIS review.
He started applying the same day. He sent resumes to every tech company he could think of: Meta, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, startups, consulting firms. Most never responded. The ones that did asked about his visa status early. Once they heard he had less than 60 days, interest cooled.
“The clock was always in my head,” Gu said. “Every morning I woke up and counted the days. Day 45. Day 30. Day 15.”
He interviewed at six companies. Three said they could not process a transfer fast enough. Two said they were not hiring H-1B candidates. One made an offer, then rescinded it because the legal team said the role was not similar enough to his Google job.
On day 58, he gave up. He sold his furniture on Facebook Marketplace, shipped two suitcases of clothes, and flew home. His parents had been so proud of the Google job. Now he was coming back with nothing.
Back in China, Gu found work at a startup building large language models. The pay is lower, the culture is more intense. He no longer worries about visa deadlines.
“The visa ties you to your employer in a way that feels secure until it is not,” Gu said. “Sixty days sounds like a lot of time until you are living through it.”
Some of his former colleagues found new jobs within the 60-day window. Others moved to Canada or Europe. Most went back to their home countries, just like him.
The dream job was real. The visa was not.
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