India, July 9 -- For many tech professionals, winning the H-1B visa lottery and landing a job at Google represent two of the biggest career milestones. But for Gu Yichen, a Chinese software engineer, both achievements turned out to be far less secure than he had imagined.

In an as-told-to essay published by Business Insider, the 31-year-old, who now lives in California, reflected on how an abrupt layoff at Google reshaped his views on career stability, visas and the tech industry. Today, he is back at Amazon, where he continues to work on an H-1B visa.

Gu's path to the US began long before his career in tech. He shared that he spent his sophomore year of high school as an exchange student in Washington state. Then, instead of taking Chi...