Beyond Layoff

I came across this question on an online forum. Here is a candid response to this question from Anon .  Going anonymous for obvious reasons. I have worked in the Indian IT industry in India from 1986. In India, as most Indians know, the concept of “hiring & firing” did not exist - at least not in those times till as late the turn of the century. You were fired only if you were found dishonest, cheating, criminal, involved in physical violence - in or out of office, etc. I started out as any fresher and rose steadily. In 2014, I faced the bomb. My employer lost a few contracts and our group faced problems. One day, my manager, who came down from US, called me and said that I (me) was not getting new business. He said that he was not firing me but “I need to pull up my socks”. I felt pretty weird. I was not dealing with the clients’ business end. As a delivery manager sitting in India, I had no access to the CEO organization that generates new business. The...

Earlier this summer, Forum For IT Employees ( FITE ) was getting a lot of media attention. This was during the peak of 'Indian IT Layoff' debates of 2017. Now comes news that a state government in India is recognizing the "Karnataka State IT/ITeS Employees Union (KITU)" Over the past decade, India’s information technology (IT) industry has seen multiple attempts to mobilise the workforce to form an active trade union. The efforts have finally yielded results, with Karnataka recognising the Karnataka State IT/ITeS Employees Union (KITU) as a workers’ body to protect their interests. The development comes at a time when the IT sector is facing its worst disruption in a decade. However, top executives have questioned the significance of a trade union in the sector. In 2005, UNITES, a global trade union for IT workers affiliated to IBM, opened its Bengaluru office and looked to mobilise technology employees. However, the effort did not take off because soon after ...

Information technology firm Cognizant said around 400 of its senior executives have accepted its voluntary separation package which will help the multi-national corporation save around $60 million dollars annually, PTI reported on Sunday. The company had offered some of its senior staff up to nine months of salary. Wikimedia Commons The international company had pitched the package, which offers up to nine months of salary, to some of its senior executives based in the United States and India in May. The firm has not specified how many of the employees were based in India, which accounts for a sizable number of its 2.56 lakh workforce. “Of the $39 million (approximately Rs 248 crore) of realignment charges, $35 million was for the roughly 400 associates who accepted our voluntary separation package,” Cognizant Chief Financial Officer Karen McLoughlin said at a recent investor call. The CFO said the step will help increase profits. The firm’s staff strength was reduced by aro...

The first is the news of   "A Senior Infosys Employee Writes to Management" Subject: Seeking your immediate intervention and kind attention to protect innocent employees against speculated layoffs, forced resignations, termination’s and force fitting into bottom performance grades. Recently there have been a lot of disruptive news around speculated layoffs, forced resignations and terminations at Infosys. Many employees are being force fitted into bottom performance assessment grades as “Can do better/Needs Improvement” without any valid data points. This is done just to create grounds for their forced resignations/layoffs, terminations in the name of bottom performance. These are the employees who have spent years of their lives towards serving large corporates like Infosys and its big clients. They helped towards growth and revenue building of the organization. Even the founder of Infosys respected N.R. Narayana Murthy is standing by the employees and condemned all...

This was an interesting question from an online forum. Another similar question that came up. Is it true that Cognizant is planning a mass layoff in the upcoming months? Rumours has it there are plans to layoff as many as 20,000 people from the company. As a result there has been a delay in the appraisal cycle as well. Seniors or any people well informed kindly shed some light into it. To respond, let us start by looking at the basics: The business model in the western /developed countries are much more ‘business friendly’ and many states in the US have "right to hire" or “employment at will” laws. What this means is simple: Employers can terminate employees “without cause,” just like employees can leave a job without giving a lengthy notice period. However, employees who are part of such involuntary termination can file for ‘unemployment benefits’ till they find another job. Software service companies in India operate in the same global environments...

Response to this query from an online forum follows: No . Startups are not going to start layoffs for “the same reasons” as software services companies. This is the short answer. Now let us look at the differences with your two-part question. Let us start with the first with a recap of response to an earlier question “Up to 600,000 IT engineers are likely to be laid off in the next 3 years. Why is this happening?” There are a number of business reasons why IT services firms like CTS, TCS, Infosys, Wipro and others are handing out pink-slips to poor-performers (what the Indian media calls layoffs). Many articles are focused on Trump administration’s policies and restrictions on visa and immigration. Some are parroting claims by leaders of software services companies that productivity gains and automation of tools and processes needs a lesser number of people. Some analysts are also claiming the need to reskill on emerging technologies including big-data, AI, bots-and-robots ...

Forum For IT Employees ( FITE ) continues to get a lot of media attention An IT Workers’ Union: Outlandish Or A Sign Of The Times? Bloomberg wonders, adding "India’s software services industry faces a twin challenge: U.S. President Donald Trump’s protectionist policies and automation. And as companies lay off staff, a group of employees is now trying to form an IT workers’ union. There’s been a growing sense of insecurity among the IT professionals over the last few years, said Elavarasan Raja, a 27-year-old IT worker from Pune. That’s led the group to try and form a union to better protect employees’ welfare, said Raja who is part of the group. Called the Forum For IT Employees, the group now has around 3,000 members and chapters in nine cities, including its headquarters in Chennai, and in prominent IT hubs like Bengaluru and Pune, according to Raja. The group, in a recent press release, alleged that Cognizant Technology Solutions was illegally terminating thousands of emp...

The Indian media has already begun speculating on the impact of layoffs in IT sector on other parts of the economy. Take for example the Real Estate sector, which was already struggling post demonitization of Indian money. Some industry watchers are closely looking at the impact of layoffs and slowdown in IT sector on the housing market, especially in major cities like Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, Chennai and elsewhere. Against a backdrop of such news and layoffs comes news that TCS plans to add 3.75 L sq feet office space in Bengaluru Job losses in tech sectors may reduce home sales in IT hubs (Economic Times) MUMBAI | BENGALURU: Recent news regarding job losses in the key information technology sector that has driven job creation over last two decades is threatening to unnerve residential real estate in IT hubs across the country.  The unfolding scenario may push homebuyers in major property markets in cities including Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, Chennai and Gurgaon into a...

People are wondering about the state of Indian IT. A number of media articles are claiming "Up to 600,000 IT engineers are likely to be laid off in the next 3 years. (link)" Why is this happening? First things first, this is not the time to panic over headlines, especially when there are a lot of rumors that are circulating. Journalists – even those with little understanding of the business of IT - are having a field day churning out articles with sensational headlines. Many articles are focused on Trump administration’s policies and restrictions on visa and immigration. Some are parroting claims by leaders of software services companies that productivity gains and automation of tools and processes needs a lesser number of people. Some analysts are also claiming the need to reskill on emerging technologies including big-data, AI, bots-and-robots etc Some of this may be true, but doesn’t explain the churn of tens of thousands of jobs. There are a couple of black-swan ...

I happen to be a product of Indian IT. Having lived and worked in a dozen countries across across three continents, I have seen layoffs and its impact up-close. The question is very apt and timely given the news accounts of ‘thousands’ of layoffs by Indian IT Firms. (My2cents on that topic “ What is the reason behind the layoffs in IT firms in India? Is it related to the H-1B visa, or some other reason?”)  Although the Indian media is fixated on the term ‘layoff,’ some of it is voluntary headcount reduction etc. In the short-term, layoff is hard. Loosing a job is hard for obvious reasons. However, I have also seen many successful guys and ladies use the opportunity for self-reflection. If you are (relatively) young and happen to be laid off, you should begin by reflecting on your career thus far - you may realize that jumping back to yet another coding, software engineering or project management role is not really your cup of tea. Listen to your inner self Reboot and re...

This was a question that came to me from an online forum. Expanding on it, the person asked: Is it related to the H-1B visa, or some other reason? What impact will this have? My response follows Years ago, I worked for Infosys and at that time, we had an "assigned curve" based appraisal system. I think it was called ‘CRR’ (Comparative Relative Ranking) where about 5% a pool of employees would get an A+ Next 5% would get an A Another 50% would get a B (or B+) Another 20% would get a B- Remaining 20% would get a C (or Performance Improvement Plan – PIP) The company had about 30-40,000 employees. At any time, few hundred employees would be under the PIP.  Many who got a ‘C’ during a cycle, strived to work hard and improve and some folks banded into PIP for two cycles in a row were asked to ‘seek other opportunities.’ No drama. No news. Of course, the Indian IT sector was booming and many employees graded -rightly or wrongly – into the bottom rungs would ...