For those still on Data Center, what does your current plan look like? Are you planning around the March 2028 last-renewal date or the March 2029 end of life?
Would love anyone's real-world view on the plans, the risks, especially the obstacles.
I'm writing this as someone who was part of the Hy-Vee India engineering team. Since there has been very little public discussion about what happened, I wanted to share our experience.
On the night of June 23, around 150 employees from the India engineering team received an unexpected invitation to an ad hoc Microsoft Teams meeting scheduled for 9:00 PM.
There had been no warning, no indication that our jobs were at risk, and no communication suggesting that the India operation was about to shut down. Many of us had spent the day working as usual, planning future releases, fixing bugs, and attending regular meetings.
When the meeting began, our VP of India read a short prepared statement informing us that Hy-Vee was ceasing its India engineering operations with immediate effect. CTO was also present on the call. The meeting lasted only a couple of minutes, there was no discussion, and employees were not given an opportunity to ask questions.
Within minutes of the call ending, our access to Microsoft Teams, GitHub, email, VPN, and every other company system was revoked.
Our company laptops were also remotely wiped before many of us had a chance to retrieve personal documents, photos, certificates, and other files stored on them. There was no window provided to back up personal data.
Over nearly two years, I worked as a Full Stack Developer alongside an incredibly talented team. Like many of my colleagues, I worked late nights, met tight deadlines, and genuinely believed we were helping build something for the long term.
Many of us were looking forward to our annual appraisal and bonus after spending years contributing to the company. Instead, we found ourselves unemployed overnight.
The financial support offered was limited to approximately 50 days of pay. There was no additional severance package despite the immediate shutdown affecting around 150 employees. Interns who were also impacted had even fewer protections.
What made the experience even more difficult was what happened afterward.
Within a short time, Hy-Vee India's LinkedIn page and posts related to the India engineering team were removed. It genuinely felt as though the entire India engineering organization had disappeared overnight. After spending years building products for the company, it was painful to see our team's public presence vanish so quickly.
This post is not about attacking individuals. It is about documenting what many of us experienced that night.
To my former teammates: it was an honor working with you. I have no doubt every one of you will land somewhere great.
And to anyone reading this, remember that behind every headline about "restructuring" or "cost optimization" are real people whose lives can change in a matter of minutes.
We existed. We built products. We gave our best to the company. We simply hoped for a more respectful goodbye than a two-minute Teams call.