• This forum contains old posts that have been closed. New threads and replies may not be made here. Please navigate to the relevant forum to create a new thread or post a reply.
  • Welcome to Tamil Brahmins forums.

    You are currently viewing our boards as a guest which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. By joining our Free Brahmin Community you will have access to post topics, communicate privately with other members (PM), respond to polls, upload content and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free so please, join our community today!

    If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact contact us.

Layoffs and shrinking job market: Is this the end of India’s engineering dream?

Status
Not open for further replies.

prasad1

Active member
A month ago, Himanshu Sharma was asked by his company, Cognizant, to resign. His services were not required any longer, he was told. It came as a surprise to Sharma, who was hired less than a year ago. “I hadn't expected to lose my job as I was still a fresh hire for them. I was given two options by the company: to either resign and serve the usual notice period or leave within a week and take home a severance package,” he says. Within a few days, after he refused, things turned worse. Sharma claims he was threatened by an HR executive, who asked his colleague to “snatch my identity card and kick me out”.

Sharma is one of the several thousands of Indians who go to engineering colleges to realise their dream of a good life. The 29-year-old software engineer and a father of one has more than six years of experience. After graduating from a college affiliated to Uttar Pradesh Technical University, he climbed up the ladder from a little-known Information Technology (IT) service firm in Delhi to IBM and then to a well-paying job at Cognizant, an American multinational corporation in Bengaluru. The company provides digital, technology, consulting, and operations services.


‘It’s mayhem in India’s IT sector’, screams a newspaper's headline as major IT companies reportedly are on the look out to slash hundreds of jobs. Mint reported last week that the top seven IT firms in India including Infosys, Wipro and Cognizant will lay off at least 56,000 employees this year. The numbers were collated after extensive interviews with 22 former and current employees of the seven companies. Many employees have already been axed or have been asked to resign — Tech Mahindra and Wipro reportedly firing 1,000 and 600 employees respectively.




[video=facebook_share;10154966034728580]https://www.facebook.com/hindustantimes/videos/10154966034728580/[/video]

The bubble bursts

IT companies put on the defensive termed the layoffs ‘routine performance-based reviews’, attributing it to both, a marginal increase in poor performers and a more rigorous skill review. Sharma was classified as one of the poor performers in the lowest of categories in bucket IV. Cognizant has reportedly placed 15,000 employees in the same bucket.


However, Sharma contests that more than performance or implications of changing US policies, the cut down is a tactic to increase profits. Forum of IT/ITes Employees, which filed a petition to the Labour Commissioner in Hyderabad and Chennai on behalf of the sacked employees, has a similar opinion, claiming that the entire process is illegal.


The job market isn’t likely to recover soon. Head Hunters India, a talent search firm, warns of job cuts in the IT sector to the range of 200,000 annually, for the next three years. Global advisory firm McKinsey & Company’s report declared that about half of the workforce in IT will be rendered ‘irrelevant’ in the next three to four years. This is blamed on the under-preparedness of the industry to adapt to newer technologies.


http://www.hindustantimes.com/education/layoffs-and-shrinking-job-market-is-this-the-end-of-india-s-engineering-dream/story-uWtw0E8PtslNzsfiXszMpL.html

 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.

Latest ads

Back
Top