Two former Texas Best Buy employees told The Dallas Express that the company’s 2024 layoffs upended their families and left them facing long job searches, while raising new concerns about outsourcing American jobs overseas.
Their accounts come as Best Buy moves its India technology center to Tata Consultancy Services, or TCS, under an agreement the companies announced October 1, 2026.
Both former employees spoke exclusively with The Dallas Express and were granted anonymity.
The first, identified in this article as Rachel, said she joined Best Buy in 2016 and later became a manager before working as a Care Specialist 3. She said the company eliminated her position in 2024.
The second source said he worked as a Best Buy supervisor in 2024 before he was laid off that same year. Rachel confirmed the two had previously worked together at the company.
The 2024 Call
A Best Buy manager called Rachel on her day off in 2024 without warning, she said.
“As of now, your role is being eliminated,” she recalled the manager saying.
“I kind of spaced out at that point,” she said. “Everything went silent.”
The company gave Rachel until that Friday to find another Best Buy position before ending her employment, she said. She immediately began warning coworkers. One employee received his layoff call while sitting in a hospital with his dying mother, Rachel said.
A Best Buy notification email listed April 5, 2024, as Rachel’s last day and described severance and opportunities to apply for another company role. Rachel provided the email to The Dallas Express.
The Care Specialist 2 workforce fell from 710 in December 2022 to 548 on April 2, 2024, according to figures Rachel provided to The Dallas Express. The figures came from internal headcounts, she said. The Care Specialist 3 workforce fell from 188 to 98 over that period, according to the same figures.
The Care Specialist 1 workforce stood at 584 employees in December 2022, according to the figures Rachel supplied.
She understood that only about 5% of her Care Specialist 3 group ultimately remained after the layoffs, Rachel explained.
Restructuring charges totaled $169 million, primarily for employee termination benefits, according to Best Buy’s February 29, 2024, earnings release. The changes aimed to align field staffing with shopping habits, redirect corporate resources and adjust staffing to the revenue outlook, the release said.
Restructuring charges for the quarter ending August 2, 2025, totaled $114 million, Best Buy reported. That included employee termination benefits and about $40 million in asset impairments.
Overseas Training – The India Operation
Wipro, an India-headquartered technology services company, performed technology and support work connected to Best Buy and Geek Squad operations, Rachel said. Best Buy’s business-process outsourcing operations extended across several countries, she said.
“The BPOs were across seven countries,” she said. “They were heavily offshore. It was Philippines, India, Mexico and Panama.”
He personally trained overseas workers whom he later believed would take work from U.S. employees, the second former supervisor said.
“I was over there and trained them up to unknowingly eventually take our jobs,” he told The Dallas Express.
Best Buy was weighing an expansion of its Bengaluru technology center in 2025, a company executive said. The proposed increase would take the workforce from about 350 employees to approximately 500, Reuters reported on August 8, 2025.
Best Buy’s India entity and its employees will transition to TCS under a multiyear agreement, according to the October 1 announcement. The companies also plan to build artificial intelligence capabilities.
“Our India team has played an important role in advancing Best Buy’s priorities,” Ahrey Smith, Best Buy’s vice president of technology strategy and transformation, said in the joint announcement.
Best Buy sought a partner that understood the India team’s value and offered technology capabilities and opportunities for employees, Smith said.
The announcement concerns an existing India operation. It does not establish that TCS, Wipro or specific overseas workers replaced the two former employees’ positions.
Hiring And Workplace Culture
Concerns about Best Buy’s direction began years before her layoff, Rachel explained to The Dallas Express. A supervisor instructed her to leave a store position vacant until a woman applied, she alleged.
“We have to keep a position open until a woman applies,” Rachel recalled the supervisor saying.
“I would just think to myself, I’m gonna hire the best person for the job, regardless,” she said.
An increasing emphasis on diversity and LGBTQ-related initiatives also concerned her, Rachel said. Those included discrimination training, pronouns on name tags and Pride-themed apparel, she said.
“Best Buy started really turning woke,” Rachel told The Dallas Express.
Workers Called The Cuts The ‘Orange Wedding’
Some employees called the 2024 layoffs the “Orange Wedding,” the second former supervisor said. The nickname paired Geek Squad’s orange branding with the “Red Wedding” massacre in Game of Thrones.
“A lot of the internal folks called it the Orange Wedding,” he said.
Some employees who stayed with the company continued in similar positions but moved into other areas, including home theater and appliances, he said.
For workers who lost their positions, finding comparable employment proved more difficult, the former employees said.
“Everyone had to apply for unemployment, and everyone was scrambling,” Rachel said.
Rachel attended cosmetology school while trying to build a new career, she said. Starting wages of roughly $15 an hour left her struggling to support her children despite long workdays, she said.
“I was working 10 hours a day,” Rachel said. “There’s just—we’re losing money.”
She continued applying for jobs in her previous field, she said.
“I’ve put in applications over the last two years, and I cannot get a call back.”
Finding work proved difficult despite his qualifications, the second former supervisor said. He had two bachelor’s degrees, 17 years of professional experience and 12 years of management experience, according to his account.
“I’ve put out nearly 1,000 applications in the first year without even a callback,” he said.
“I didn’t get a single email back, not a callback, not one,” he said.
Prolonged unemployment and instability had taken a mental toll since 2024, he said.
H-1B Concerns Reach North Texas
Competition from H-1B workers in her former field also concerned her, Rachel explained.
“The field of work that we were doing is exactly what the Indians are being hired to do, so we’re having to compete with them,” she told The Dallas Express.
In an update dated Wednesday, the immigration-data website MyVisaJobs listed 125 labor condition applications for Best Buy in its available fiscal 2026 data. Its database also listed 89 H-1B petitions, including 88 approvals and one denial.
Filings and approvals can cover extensions, amendments and changes of employer. The totals do not establish how many new foreign workers Best Buy hired, whether its H-1B workforce grew or whether American workers were replaced.
The H-1B program covers specialty employment in the United States. It is separate from work performed overseas, and a labor condition application is one step in the process rather than a visa approval.
The Dallas Express organized a June 18, 2026, forum in Frisco examining H-1B visa growth and concerns about workforce displacement, as previously reported.
The Dallas Express contacted Best Buy about the employees’ accounts, hiring and diversity practices, outsourcing, H-1B employment and India operations. Best Buy had not commented at the time of publication.
