Amazon dream job in Europe collapses for Kenyan man with four days to go

A man who was due to relocate to Europe to take up a new position at Amazon has seen the move fall through after the company downsized making his position redundant.

Tom Mboya Opiyo, an ICT specialist according to his LinkedIn profile, says on the platform that he was notified of the developments four days before his reporting day.

The company said that it was reviewing operations which have since affected about 18,000 jobs.

Here is his narration about the incident:

"Well, last week I shared about my impending exciting move abroad. It was a relocation role to Europe with a leading global company.

"Sadly, it has fallen through due to business changes as part of the organization's 'annual operating review' that impacted the role and many others. The organization is shedding about 18,000 jobs globally and the information is available online.

"We were to travel this weekend so I start work on Monday, 16th Jan and the call came 4 days to that date.

"My family is truly devastated after planning for the move for 6 months but I trust that God has a plan for us. They will go for counselling and I hope this helps.

"I wish to thank you all for your support and also the gentleman who was to be my prospective boss and the team. NB: I won't tag them for privacy reasons.

"This is also to help those who are taking global appointments to know about the risks so as to make certain mitigations like;

1. Going ahead and family coming later, etc. Basically, don't put all your eggs in one basket - something we learnt a long time ago.

2. Don't resign until you get the visa - the process has taken us over 5 months - family document verification, police clearance, new passports, EU work authorization approvals in Europe, notarization and attestation of documents, etc. With bureaucracy in both countries, it's a big problem and time-consuming.

"In our case, the kids had left their schools, sold cars and households and even moved out of the house. so now we have to start afresh.

"For me, I didn't expect to be in this kind of situation at this stage in my career but that's what life is about. Some have to experience certain situations so as to be an example to others.

"Keep us in prayer. God is good all the time."