Andhra: Pregnant techie dies by suicide after losing her job over WFH issues, claims report

A 22-year-old techie allegedly died by suicide after the software company she worked for terminated her for not working from the office. The woman, who was eight months pregnant, was asked to work from the office but due to her condition, she had requested to work from home. On denying to work from the office, her company ended her contract, a TOI report stated. 

The police said that the woman, who has been identified as Nakkala Shravani, was from the Nellore district, and worked for a Chennai-based software company.  

The police said that Shravani was working from home due to Covid-19 protocols. But her company recently recalled the rule of working from home and asked all the workers to come to the office regularly. Shravani reportedly requested a work-from-home arrangement but was denied.   

The police said Shravani was upset that she lost her job and went missing two days ago. On Tuesday night, the local police of her village fished out her body from the nearby pond in a decomposed state. Her family told the police there was no foul play.

The tech industry is going through a rough phase at present. Many big Tech companies including Meta, Amazon, and Twitter have laid off hundreds and thousands of employees in the last couple of months. 

According to data by global outplacement and career transitioning firm global outplacement & career transitioning firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the massive layoffs this year alone have surpassed the levels from the Great Recession the world went through in 2008-2009, which started with Lehman Brothers collapse. As per the report, in 2008, tech companies laid off about 65,000 employees. In 2009, a similar number of workers lost their livelihoods.

Data from layoffs.fyi, a crowdsourced database that tracks tech layoffs, highlighted that 1,495 tech companies have sacked 246,267 employees since the onset of Covid-19. The year 2022 has been the worst year for the tech sector across the world and early 2023 can even be grimmer.
The report said that over 17,000 techies have been laid off in India too.