Wipro Lay off: Wipro Fires 1000 employees

Wipro, the top Indian IT Giant, has decided to go for a massive Wipro lay off. As per the news that has come out, it seems that Wipro has fired around one thousand people citing non-performance. That constitutes around 4 to 5 % of the entire Wipro Workforce which have been put under the scanner for performance reviews. Is this the time for the Indian IT industry for consolidation?

While some would be given counselling to improve their performance, others would be asked to leave.

As per the news sources, Wipro’s corporate vice-president (human resources) Pratik Kumar confirmed the move. Asked how many employees had been asked to move on, he said the company did not disclose that number, but it was "significantly lower than 2,000". "I can’t comment on a particular number," Kumar said, when asked to comment.

Seems like every company has got a reason in the name of "Regular Exercise" or "Based on Annual Performance Review". The fact remains the same that all these things are being done primarily for cost cutting. With severe dependency on US markets, which are seeing a big problem, the Indian IT secotr has been worst hit. "It’s a regular annual exercise. As the appraisal cycle gets over, a multi-layer review happens. Following that, people who have fallen in the lower quadrants of performance are put on watch. Some are asked to pull up and others are asked to move on," he said.

The review includes all the 60,000 global IT services employees from the senior leadership team down to the person with one-year experience.

Recently, TCS created a big uproar by deducting the salary of employees or going for a salary cut. In India, it was TCS which went for a TCS layoff following TCS salary cuts. Then it was IBM which axed 700 jobs across all over India.

In February, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), the country’s largest IT services firm, had given pink slips to 500 non-performers. IBM, too, had asked about 700 employees in India to leave, citing non-performance. In July, Patni Computer Systems had shown the door to 400 employees. While IT companies said the move was not linked to the slowdown in the US, a key market for IT services, there was a consensus that it was time for belt-tightening.

Chrysler's Layoff of Hundreds of IT Workers Brings U.S. Closer to Recession

The Detroit Free Press printed a follow-up story today about Chrysler's Wednesday announcement to outsource "hundreds" of IT jobs to Tata and Computer Sciences Corporation. (See my previous post.) Reporter Tim Higgins did not supply us with any substantially new information, aside from verification that it's mostly a cost-cutting move to save the company. (Interesting aside. In Michigan, they hire H-1B foreign workers to try to cut costs in order to save the company. In the rest of the country they hire H-1B's because of a perceived worker shortage. Hmmh.)As usual, the comments are the best part of the article. At this time, there appears to be more comments from IT professionals than in yesterday's story.What they are not telling us is exactly how Tata and Computer Sciences Corporation will be integrated into the new IT operations. One commenter said she used to work for CSC, and the pay and benefits were great! All I can say is that paying for great salaries and benefits does not fit into Chrysler's business plan. Chryslerberus CEO Bob Nardelli has never met a management trend that he didn't like, so don't look for any innovative ideas. If "Minimum Bob" (Autoextremist's Peter De Lorenzo's nickname for him) has read all of his CEO magazines, and I'm sure he has, he will allow Tata to bring in a swarm of L-1 visa employees from India, allow current Chrysler employees and contractors to train their L-1 replacements, allow a token number of Chrysler workers to get hired into Computer Sciences Corporation to mentor the inevitable H-1B's (who are subject to the more or less 65,000 annual U.S. visa cap), then shift as much of the work as possible back to India. A skeleton contingent of American workers will probably remain in the U.S. so some executive can point to the "jobs created" by this deal.The Detroit News, on the other hand, has not deemed the Chrysler/Tata outsourcing deal worthy for prominent front page mention on their homepage. (After much searching, I found it below the fold as a little headline under "Autos Insider". News reporter Eric Morath didn't add too much to the story, except he made it a little more clear that much of the work will be moved off-site, and, finally, (which, perhaps is a major story in itself) an admission in print that not only blue collar jobs but white collar jobs are leaving the state. Add a few more platitudes about the efficiency of outsourcing, and you've got yourself a dandy story.Notice instead that the Detroit News gave the most prominent space to yet another story about younger blue collar workers not being able to follow in their Dad's footsteps. I guess they couldn't put a headline like "All High Tech Jobs for Educated Workers are Leaving the State" right next to it.

Layoffs loom in IT majors, techies panic

Bangalore: The IT industry has some job worries. More than 500 IBM and TCS employees across the country have been retrenched. This has techies in the IT industry uncertain about their future.

Worried IT guys writing, speaking their mind on blogs. This is what dominates the cyberspace these days. Well, at least in the techies' domain.

The worry stems from the recent retrenchment of many like them from the TCS and IBM.

Though many like Akhil (name changed) who works in IT firm, don't feel alarmed yet, the truth is – the younger crop IS apprehensive.

And with the gossip mills running riot, many in the industry feel their future may not be as secure as they once thought it to be.

Akhil says, "The panic hasn't as such set in. Among the fresher there might be a certain amount of wariness."

However, industry leaders dismiss the retrenchment of more than 500 IBM and TCS employees across the country as routine - a part of quality control.

You underperform and you get sacked. They say it has little to do with the rising rupee or the slowdown in the US economy.

Customer XPs CEO, Rivi Varghese says, “As an industry grows higher up the chain, it is but natural that a small percentage of the people will not be able to keep pace with that. So it is a question of expectations not being met."

Let's not panic yet - that seems to be the message being sent out by young techies to their friends and colleagues in the industry but having said that the IBM, TCS exodus has made the situation deeply disturbing.