Oracle’s recent layoffs show how decisions made outside India can disproportionately affect the country’s workforce. Oracle reduced its workforce by about 21,000 employees in its last fiscal year, with India estimated to account for more than half of the decline. In a survey of 1,467 India-based professionals by Blind, the anonymous community app for professionals, 44% of respondents whose reporting line reaches a VP or higher in India say the final decision on headcount cuts is made outside the country.

Among companies with VP-level or higher leadership in India, workers most often say hiring and firing decisions are made outside the country at PayPal (65%), Salesforce (59%), Visa (58%), ServiceNow (50%), Uber (48%) and Oracle (46%). The share is lowest at Amazon (25%), Qualcomm (25%) and Adobe (33%). Many multinationals run their India teams on a matrix, often with a dotted line to a local site leader and a solid line to a global function owner.

Several companies at the top of the list have cut jobs in India this year, in decisions made at the global level. PayPal confirmed 220 layoffs in India in August. Visa reportedly laid off hundreds of employees in India. Uber’s global cut of about 3,300 roles reportedly hit 200-250 employees in India. Oracle’s latest round of layoffs in September has reportedly hit up to 3,000 employees in India out of more than 6,000 globally. On Blind, an Oracle professional said India was hired for its cost advantage and later cut first because it was “cheaper and legally quieter.“

A senior leader in India does have a say on hiring, but not much on layoffs. Among workers whose reporting line reaches VP or higher in India, 39% say new roles are approved abroad, down from 46% across all respondents. For cuts, the share barely moves: 44%, compared with 46% overall.

The pattern extends beyond companies with senior leadership in India. Across all respondents, 46% say the final call on headcount cuts is made outside India, by a global function owner or by finance or HQ, compared with 36% who say it is made within India. For new roles, 46% say approval sits abroad, compared with 39% in India.

For more than half of India’s tech workforce, there is no senior leader in the country to begin with. 53% say their India reporting line ends at manager or director level (40%) or that their team has no India reporting line at all (13%). For teams with no India reporting line, around 75% say hiring and firing decisions are made outside the country.

Many workers don’t know who makes the call at all. 15% say they don’t know who approves a new role on their team, rising to 18% when it comes to cuts. The findings suggest that for many employees, the people making hiring and layoff decisions remain both physically distant and largely invisible.