Bluevine, a US-based digital banking platform for small businesses, allegedly fired its entire Indian customer support team of around 80 employees during a five-minute Google Meet call, according to a former employee's Reddit post that was subsequently reported by multiple outlets.
The incident surfaced after a former team member described the sequence of events on social media, according to local media reports. The shift began at 6:30pm IST (9am EDT). Staff had been instructed earlier that day to work from home, with management citing 'operational reasons' for the change.
Three hours into the shift, at approximately 9:30pm (12pm EDT), senior management summoned the full team to a video call. The meeting lasted roughly five minutes. When the call ended, the employee said the entire 80-person team was informed that their employment was being terminated.
'I was a part of the customer support team until yesterday for a US Bank,' one person wrote on Reddit, identifying Bluevine as the employer. The account spread quickly online, drawing sharp criticism of the manner in which the terminations were handled.
'All 80 employees! All gone. 80 families affected just with a 5-minute call,' the same poster wrote in a follow-up comment. The employee also said team members had been pushing themselves harder because of concerns about job security.
Former Employee Disputes Performance Explanation
The company allegedly cited insufficient output and broader performance issues as the grounds for eliminating the team. The affected employee disputed that explanation directly, raising a pointed question: if performance was the issue, why were all 80 members of the Indian team let go simultaneously, with no individual assessments or warnings?
The worker also alleged that the US-based counterpart team had experienced higher staff attrition and its own performance challenges, yet faced no comparable action. That claim could not be independently verified.
Bluevine had not issued any public statement in response to the allegations as of the time of reporting.
Not An Isolated Case
The incident comes amid a broader wave of technology job cuts. According to Layoffs.fyi data, 128,536 technology employees across 299 companies had lost their jobs globally by 10 September 2026.
Oracle had, by that point, completed its third round of workforce reductions in 2026 alone, notifying affected staff by email on their final day of employment. Following the March layoff, during which employees were informed about their terminations via email at 6am, Oracle chose to adopt the same method in September.
The 6am layoff playbook has drawn severe backlash on social media platforms, with employees sharing their experience on LinkedIn and Reddit. There's a sub-Reddit group dedicated to Oracle employees, which details individual accounts of how the layoffs were carried out.
The episode also recalls Better.com's widely criticised mass firing in December 2021, when hundreds of employees were informed of their dismissals during a Zoom call. Vishal Garg, the chief executive of the company, was criticised for the 'cold' and 'harsh' mass firing in the run-up to Christmas.
