Shruti Dhumak, a cloud customer engineer at Google’s Boston office, shares her challenging journey of returning to work after maternity leave while navigating the company’s entry into the artificial intelligence industry and widespread tech layoffs. Dhumak, who gave birth in February 2023, utilized Google’s generous eight months of combined leave (six months maternity, one month prepartum, and one month PTO) but faced significant anxiety about being replaced and falling behind professionally.
The Perfect Storm of Challenges: Just two weeks before her delivery, Google announced 12,000 layoffs, creating additional stress for Dhumak, who works on an H-1B visa. A layoff would have meant finding new employment within weeks or relocating to India with a newborn. As a customer engineer managing cloud client relationships, she worried that temporary replacements would build stronger connections with her accounts, potentially costing her business partnerships.
When she returned to work, Dhumak found herself struggling with efficiency, experiencing moments where she “broke down and lost [her] train of thought during a call.” The challenge intensified as Google was entering the AI industry, making her feel “behind by many years” after just months away. Business partners began preferring senior colleagues for certain responsibilities.
Strategic Recovery: Despite these obstacles, Dhumak implemented four key strategies that transformed her performance. She split her leave into three phases (January-May, September, and November-December) aligned with family support visits, allowing periodic workplace visibility. She actively highlighted her achievements, spent evenings and weekends earning certifications to upskill in AI technologies, and maintained open communication with her female manager who understood her challenges and helped maintain visibility with upper management.
The turnaround was remarkable: in 2024, Dhumak received performance awards, a complete reversal from her difficult 2023. Her story highlights the intersection of motherhood, immigration status, tech industry volatility, and the rapid AI transformation reshaping roles at major tech companies. She now shares her journey with other working mothers, emphasizing that even high performers struggle and that taking things “one day at a time” while staying laser-focused on deliverables can lead to success.
Key Quotes
Being away for months made me feel like I was behind by many years.
Shruti Dhumak described her feelings upon returning to Google as the company entered the AI industry. This quote captures the intense pressure tech workers face to stay current with rapidly evolving AI technologies, and how even brief absences can feel career-threatening in fast-moving sectors.
Two weeks before my delivery, Google announced a 12,000-person layoff. As someone on an H-1B visa, a layoff would mean I’d have to find another job in a matter of weeks or risk having to move back to India with a newborn.
Dhumak explained the compounded stress she faced as a pregnant worker on a visa during tech industry layoffs. This highlights the precarious position of immigrant tech workers who lack the safety net available to citizens during periods of industry volatility.
In 2024, I got awards for my performance. It’s just the opposite of how the prior year went.
Dhumak shared her remarkable turnaround after implementing strategic approaches to her return to work. This demonstrates that with proper support systems and personal strategies, working mothers can not only recover from difficult transitions but excel in competitive tech environments.
Nobody is going to talk about me until I do — that’s something I’ve struggled with in my previous companies.
Dhumak emphasized the importance of self-advocacy in tech workplaces. This insight reflects broader challenges women face in male-dominated industries where visibility and self-promotion are often necessary for career advancement, especially after parental leave.
Our Take
Dhumak’s experience reveals a troubling reality: even at companies with progressive parental leave policies like Google, the intersection of motherhood and rapid technological change creates nearly insurmountable barriers. The fact that she needed to spend evenings and weekends obtaining AI certifications while caring for an infant to simply maintain her position speaks to systemic failures in supporting working parents during industry transitions. Her story is particularly relevant as AI reshapes every tech role—those who step away risk obsolescence not through lack of ability, but through timing. The success of her recovery depended heavily on having a supportive female manager, raising questions about outcomes for mothers without such advocacy. As AI continues transforming the tech landscape at breakneck speed, companies must develop better mechanisms for keeping employees on leave connected to critical upskilling opportunities, or risk losing talented workers—particularly mothers—to an artificial competency gap.
Why This Matters
This story illuminates critical challenges facing working mothers in the AI industry during a period of unprecedented technological transformation and workforce instability. As tech giants like Google rapidly pivot to AI-first strategies, employees face immense pressure to upskill and remain relevant, creating particular hardships for those taking parental leave. The timing of Dhumak’s experience—returning to work as Google entered the AI race while simultaneously conducting mass layoffs—represents a broader trend affecting thousands of tech workers, especially women and visa holders who face additional vulnerabilities.
The narrative underscores systemic issues in tech: the fear of obsolescence during leave, the “always-on” culture that pressures new mothers to work evenings and weekends to prove their worth, and the precarious position of H-1B visa holders who risk deportation during layoffs. As AI reshapes job requirements across the industry, companies must address how parental leave policies interact with rapid technological change. Dhumak’s success through strategic leave-splitting, aggressive upskilling, and supportive management offers a roadmap, but also raises questions about whether such extraordinary efforts should be necessary for working mothers to maintain their careers in tech.
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Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/return-to-work-after-maternity-leave-google-ai-engineer-tech-2025-1