56,000 Layoffs and Counting: India's IT Bloodbath This Year May Just Be the Start (qz.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Quartz: For Indian techies, 2017 was the stuff of nightmares. One of the top employment generators until a few years ago, India's $160 billion IT industry laid off more than 56,000 employees this year. Some analysts believe this spree was worse than the one during the 2008 financial crisis. Meanwhile, hiring plummeted, with entry-level openings having more than halved in 2017, according to experts. Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Infosys, two of India's largest IT companies and once leaders in job creation, reduced their headcounts for the first time ever. Even mid-sized players like Tech Mahindra retrenched several employees.

Compared to the normal rate of forced attrition (i.e. asking non-performers to leave) of around 1% in earlier years, 2017 saw Indian IT companies letting go of between 2% and 6% of their employees, said Alka Dhingra, general manager of IT staffing at TeamLease Services. Infosys cut 9,000 jobs in January. "Instead of 10 people, what if we have three people to work on (a project). If we don't have the software, then some others will take the advantage (away from us)," Vishal Sikka, the former CEO of the Bengaluru-based company, said in February. Meanwhile, around 6,000 Indian employees at Cognizant reportedly lost their jobs to automation.

Comments

Thank God...

[Anonymous Coward]

Those worthless savages make my blood boil as I attempt to get any issue resolved or any answer from Microsoft. Azure and Store = nightmares. Stay as far away as you can. Seriously. It's a mental hospital of extremely rude, unhelpful, hostile, and very incompetent Indians. It's downright scary.

Re:Thank God...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's downright scary.
  Damn straight if your department has to have their HELP department on speed dial, or any dial.

Re:Thank God...

[Opportunist]

Don't rejoice too early, most likely the outsourcers just found some place where you can get cheaper (and even less competent) code monkeys.

Non-performers...1%

[HornWumpus]

WTF? 1% of Indian techs are incompetent?

Is this the new king of broken metrics? What is 'competent'?

Re:Non-performers...1%

[Scarred Intellect]

I think my company hired those 1%....so don't worry, they're still gainfully employed!

Re:Non-performers...1%

[mykepredko]

I had the same reaction - but I rationalize a 1% attrition rate when the Indian tech bubble was in full swing and companies were desperate for people and needed somebody that could do basic, necessary, tasks (like setting up computers for individuals that could code).

Now that the market is saturated, companies will start taking a sharper look at their hiring practices and employees on staff.

Re:Non-performers...1%

[jeremyp]

No that's not what it said. It actually said one percent are so incompetent that they had to be fired.

Re:Non-performers...1%

[torkus]

Well, to be fair, I have to wonder how many of those 56,000 people already displaced american jobs. You know, besides ALL of them.

So hopefully everyone can pardon me while IDGAF that a bunch of people who got jobs from people laid off to 'reduce costs' are now being cost reductions themselves. Good riddance.

Re:Non-performers...1%

[HornWumpus]

Nobody bats 990 in hiring. Especially not when the market is super hot. That calls for a higher kick rate, not lower.

Anybody claiming 'we have only 1% incompetents.' is actually saying 'We never question management, revisit decisions or do anything like failure analysis. (Our Brahmen's shit doesn't stink.)'

The deeper cause has to be clients slowly getting smart and changes to US visa laws.

Who the fuck still hires Tata? I would, if I hated my employer, was six months from retirement and wanted to wreck the joint. Would the SEC consider knowing they had hired Tata insider information?

Re:Non-performers...1%

[Junta]

companies will start taking a sharper look at their hiring practices and employees on staff.

Hilarious. But seriously, their industry is made to look really bad by the get rich quick outsourcing. The good news is that being in that position allows them to make out like bandits by charging for work to be done and then hiring unqualified to fulfill the arrangement. The bad news is everyone starts assuming that's what the entire India IT tech industry is, and that's very unfortunate and is a big obstacle to ambitions of truly stepping onto the world stage as a first class industry rather than just the cheaper choice.

It's similar to China's situation with manufacturing. They got in the door by, among other things, compromising on quality for the sake of cost. Now as they are doing a lot to improve the situation, they have a lot of skepticism to overcome from previous experience. Similarly South Korea was a source of crappy knock-off product though the mid 90s, but they have successfully moved beyond that.

Re:Non-performers...1%

[Anonymous Coward]

> What is 'competent'?

Billable.

Re:Non-performers...1%

[Greyfox]

I've run across two or three people in three decades in the industry who I thought were so bad at what they did that I'd consider them representing themselves as programmers should constitute fraud. They ended up working six months to a year at their companies and left just as it was being determined that they'd produced no working code while they were employed there. Admittedly there were management issues that allowed them to string their respective companies along as long as they had, but a lot of that went on in the US IT industry in the '90's. It sounds like India's going through the same adjustment that we did when things tightened up a bit. A lot of the worst people left the industry around that time, as companies dialed in on how to interview for and manage software engineering projects.

Re:Non-performers...1%

[Hognoxious]

With a 5 digit ID you should be able to remember when Japan was like that too.

Re:Non-performers...1%

[HornWumpus]

You've been lucky. I see that many in every round of interviews.

Being in Sacramento, we see a lot of former/current state IT employees. We get a particularly bad population of applicants.

Re:Non-performers...1%

[gtall]

I have a 5 digit ID and I can certainly remember Japan being synonymous with poor quality. They were also known for low end of any markets. Then they got smart, hired efficiency and quality experts and having a fairly uniform population, were able to pull out of their rut. That was the second phase. Now they are into their third phase where some of their industries are tired of the constant improvement and are looking to cut corners and their managers make off with the loot before the shit hits the fan. Maybe they'll pull out of it before hitting a wall.

Re:Non-performers...1%

[JustOK]

Both Hong Kong and Taiwan were "big" producers for awhile too.

Re:Non-performers...1%

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're saying rampant corruption has hindered the development India? Wow, that's unexpected!

Re: Non-performers...1%

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, that would be a brutal way to exit the workforce. Tanking every shop that would hire you as a consultant and then riding the landslide to independent wealth.

Re: Non-performers...1%

[Anonymous Coward]

Be fair, state workers have low standards to meet while employed at the capital. Look at who gets elected!

Re: Non-performers...1%

[HornWumpus]

The more I think about it, the more I like the idea.

Re:Non-performers...1%

[gbjbaanb]

Hell, our pointy-haired boss outsourced to India, and a few were so bad we had to send them home. That wasn't even as software developers as you could just sit them in the corner and let them chat on skype all day long - better than letting them do anything. No, these got sent home because they were abusive towards anyone they considered beneath therm in status, their attitude towards the female admin staff was so horrible even old pointy realised they had to go.

mind you the ones we sent work to in India were pretty bad, triple the time taken to do anything simple and when it came back, it often had extra features someone had decided they wanted to learn just slapped on. The best was a dialog we wanted, it returned with a slider that set the opacitiy of the dialog, and this was for a very serious enterprise product.

Re:Non-performers...1%

[war4peace]

An opacity slider??? On a dialogue window???
(goes off, mumbling "I gotta implement that! I gotta...")

Re:Non-performers...1%

[Junta]

I was told about Japan being in that situation, but I think that was a tad before my time. I barely got to see South Korea go through it.

They both serve as symbols of how poor reputation can be forgiven in relatively short timespan.

Re:Non-performers...1%

[Anonymous Coward]

Companies bring that on themselves. They want to hire senior programmers/engineers, slap on a three month notice period for changing jobs (everyone else including themselves looks for a candidate to start working within a month), hire somebody because they are an expert in X, with a bit of Y and Z. Then all the X work is done, and suddenly they've got someone who really wants to do X but is stuck doing Y and Z. As a contractor, that person would be free to change jobs at a suitable time, but as a permanent employee they are essentially trapped.

Re:Non-performers...1%

[HornWumpus]

I don't know that S Korea is quality now. More 'average'...Better than French or English cars...Talk about faint praise.

Both turned around relatively quickly, on their schedules China should be closing in on 'quality'.

But it's changed over the decades. Japan built companies that still turn profits. Korea IS two big companies. China is a huge job shop that largely turns 1% gross profits.

Re:Non-performers...1%

[HornWumpus]

Should be 1 line of code.

80 hours to do the needful.

Re: Non-performers...1%

[Anonymous Coward]

Count me in!

Nothing to lose and all that.

Re:Non-performers...1%

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a 5 digit ID and I can certainly remember Japan being synonymous with poor quality. They were also known for low end of any markets. Then they got smart, hired efficiency and quality experts and having a fairly uniform population, were able to pull out of their rut. That was the second phase. Now they are into their third phase where some of their industries are tired of the constant improvement and are looking to cut corners and their managers make off with the loot before the shit hits the fan. Maybe they'll pull out of it before hitting a wall.

Jesus I must be getting old... People brag about having 5 digit IDs on Slashdot now?

Re: Non-performers...1%

[HornWumpus]

Your gonna have to have something. Just to buy the 'out of the money' put options. The more unstable the company the more those are going to cost.

Re:Non-performers...1%

[Applehu Akbar]

I've run across two or three people in three decades in the industry who I thought were so bad at what they did that I'd consider them representing themselves as programmers should constitute fraud.

Found the Microsoft developers who were put in charge of making the Skype interface harder and harder to deal with!

Re:Non-performers...1%

[Anonymous Coward]

Any ID below 5 digits were CmdrTaco's sock puppets.

Re:Non-performers...1%

[Anonymous Coward]

In the US we don't manufacture poor quality products, we occasionally have defective products from the manufacturing process. We are the best and it is never our fault

Re:Non-performers...1%

[swb]

Would the SEC consider knowing they had hired Tata insider information?

Has anyone ever done a statistical analysis of Tata's customers to find out if "hiring Tata" is actually some kind of predictor of a company having problems (lost revenue, profit margin, drop in stock price, etc)?

Re:Non-performers...1%

[msk]

Citation needed.

Re:Non-performers...1%

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I know that Samsung's products are ultra-low quality. They plan for a % of failures, and if something fails good luck on your warranty. I have a 6 month old chromebook that has been in for a repair (and now an exchange) for 2+ months now. These people have absolutely no desire, or need to improve quality. The exploding Samsung phones was not a coincidence... only surprise is that this didn't happen earlier.

Re:Non-performers...1%

[Anonymous Coward]

mind you the ones we sent work to in India were pretty bad, triple the time taken to do anything simple and when it came back, it often had extra features someone had decided they wanted to learn just slapped on. The best was a dialog we wanted, it returned with a slider that set the opacitiy of the dialog, and this was for a very serious enterprise product.

Really? My experience is at best, they'll do the absolute bare minimum of what you specifically told them to do. I'd be surprised if they did something like that if you didn't ask for it. And I'd be completely shocked if it actually worked.

Re:Non-performers...1%

[Anonymous Coward]

Then they got smart, hired efficiency and quality experts

Some of us remember Dr. Deming.

Re:Non-performers...1%

[Anonymous Coward]

Care to share any scientific study done to prove that Indian techs are incompetent?
Do you have the stats to back up your claims?
Or is this just a case of the usual xenophobia and racism?

Re: Non-performers...1%

[Anonymous Coward]

It is heavily windows-centered. Seriously, in third world there is almost no FOSS. Of course these dot net folks are incompetent and can be replaced by a makefile.

Re:Non-performers...1%

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a 5 digit ID and I can certainly remember Japan being synonymous with poor quality.

Indeed. They made a joke about that in the Back to the Future movies, playing upon how different generations viewed Japan, where 1950s Doc Brown commented something to the effect of "No wonder this circuit failed, it says made in Japan." to which 1980s Marty, who's fond of the Sony Walkman and other Japanese electronics, replies "What are you talking about Doc? All the best stuff is made in Japan."

Re: Non-performers...1%

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, planning for a certain % of failures is just good business, regardless of your success rate.

Even NASA blew up a couple spacecraft.

Re:Non-performers...1%

[Cederic]

Maybe they measure competence as "People actually paid us for this person's time".

It's frustratingly difficult to get specific people taken off an account.

Re:Non-performers...1%

[Cederic]

You'd have to be a lot more nuanced than that. I've used Tata Consultancy Service, albeit only due to management demands.

Management made those demands for three bloody good business reasons: TCS were the cheapest bidder, and they delivered on time, and they delivered to budget.

That's management mana.

Of course, what they delivered was exactly what was asked for, nothing more, whether it made sense or not. What they delivered was horrific quality, so you had horrible support overheads. What they delivered was fragile as fuck, so you had an expensive project whenever anything needed changing.

So to measure a company's success based on using Tata's services would also require an understanding of how those services were used. Were quality metrics in the requirements spec, were in-house code reviews (and rework) included in the contract, was the work delivering something with an intended six month lifespan (e.g. while a competent team put something robust together), etc.

You know what you're getting with Tata, it's how you use that knowledge that makes the difference.

Re:Non-performers...1%

[Cederic]

Check my posting history on the subject. No claims about Indian programmers based on their race, lots of comment on their collective abilities based on experiences working with them.

I've worked with very competent Indians from India. I've worked with very competent Indians from Leicester. There's a massively higher likelihood of competence in the ones from Leicester.

That's not racism, and it's not xenophobia. I liked a lot of the Indian Indians I've worked with, and some have been very capable - one was simultaneously a senior consultant at one of the big companies, a property magnate and an airline pilot. He'll be retired at 40.

But when you outsource to India, there are serious issues with the work that gets done, and thus with the people that do it. Stop throwing around accusations of racism and xenophobia and do the fucking academic research yourself.

Re:Non-performers...1%

[Jon Peterson]

Not sure /. id length is a great measure of age, but I remember Hong Kong and Taiwan as the 'low quality' manufacturing base - cheap injection moulded toys, that kind of thing. Japan were seen as high quality precision manufacturers in the early 80s - to the point where British companies would adopt Japanese sounding brand names for their electronic products (Saisho springs to mind). Pentax, Fuji, and Sony, Toshiba were seen as quality brands.

China has performed the remarkable feat of retaining it's low cost low quality manufacturing base at the same time as building a very competitive high quality manufacturing sector.

Re:Non-performers...1%

[Anonymous Coward]

Well 99% of the code is copied from stackoverflow or expertSEXchange so sometimes it works.

"Can u plz send me the codes"

Re:Non-performers...1%

[AmiMoJo]

It was different with Japan though. China builds down to a price that the West wants. They can do really high end too, it's just that most people want cheap.

With Japan they wanted quality from the start, and during the war demonstrated it with things like some very competitive aircraft. But after the war everything was in short supply, Japan has few natural resources and a lot of talent had been lost. Even so, by the 60s they were offering the best technology in the world. High speed rail, cameras, audio. Of course a lot of it didn't reach the West, and what did was often the cheaper stuff. It's a lot like anime - people think it's all violence and boobs, but that's just because that's what was being imported and was thought likely to sell.

Re: Non-performers...1%

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, I work for the state on the other side of the country, and I can tell you the lowest of standards are those set for contractors, Indians in particular. They don't have to pass code review before deployment, they aren't prohibited from developing in production, and any problem we can throw money at has money thrown at it instead of being solved (badly structured logs fill up the hard drives? rent more hard drives at $1/GB/month in perpetuity!). Small wonder that I can feel my own performance slipping - there's no incentive to succeed or punishment for failing. And before you mutter "union," I'm not eligible to join the union because they classified IT as management to exclude us from labor laws and non-representation came along for the ride.

Re:Non-performers...1%

[Anonymous Coward]

I have yet to run into the 99% that are competent then. Particularly consultants.

Re:Non-performers...1%

[david_thornley]

China has performed the remarkable feat of retaining it's low cost low quality manufacturing base at the same time as building a very competitive high quality manufacturing sector.

China is really really big, and is advancing as fast as it can. This means that advancement is necessarily very uneven, and if a tenth of the population is up for high quality manufacturing that's as many people as most countries. As advancement evens out, the low cost manufacturing will continue to go to cheaper areas like much of Africa.

Re:Non-performers...1%

[Hognoxious]

Not sure /. id length is a great measure of age

It establishes a lower limit, unless you think it's possible to create one before you're born.

Re:Non-performers...1%

[Hognoxious]

It was different with Japan though.

It always is, according to you.

Re: Non-performers...1%

[HornWumpus]

Get an honest job, before that one completely rots your work ethic.

Re: Non-performers...1%

[Anonymous Coward]

The US makes things ???

Re:Non-performers...1%

[jpaine619]

Care to share any scientific study done to prove that Indian techs are incompetent? Do you have the stats to back up your claims? Or is this just a case of the usual xenophobia and racism?

There is ALWAYS at least one cunt who has to make it about race. That cunt, this time, is YOU.

Re:Non-performers...1%

[swb]

Of course you'd have to come up with a more refined thesis, but I was mainly thinking in terms of statistical averages -- do businesses that hire Tata generally outperform or underperform the market? What qualities do each group have?

Re: Non-performers...1%

[Anonymous Coward]

Private sector's stuffed with Indians too, though. There really isn't anywhere else for me to go. I tried to strike out on my own, in both software and retail, and it's a non-starter if your product isn't free or your skin isn't brown. Coming up on 40, where I'd be unemployable even if I claimed to be transitioning, so all I can do is stay here and hope they don't steal my pension I guess.

Re:Non-performers...1%

[Hognoxious]

If you're going to use outfits like that you need people in-house who can write really good specs. Trouble is people like that are quite rare.

If Tata built a house it'd have doors where you asked for them but they wouldn't open because "contract was not saying this thing".

Welcome to the party, pal

[Anonymous Coward]

as spoken by Detective McLane.

Not to sound unnecessarily harsh, but there are plenty of other movie choices online.

Finally

[RedK]

Bout time this problem was fixed.

Understaffing

[Anonymous Coward]

The flip side of the coin is understaffing and no night or weekend down time for state side employees. Been there done that. Nothingâ(TM)s ideal folks.

/Shrug

[Anonymous Coward]

From the article, "Digitisation and automation brought about disruption in traditional roles"... so when cheaper labor comes along to try and cut my throat I'm supposed to go along with it, but when automation comes along and replaces those people who try to cut my throat I'm supposed to feel sorry for them? HAHAHA, NOPE!

Re:/Shrug

[DontBeAMoran]

(insert Nelson Muntz pointing and laughing here)

Tech Mahindra retrenched several employees.

[darthsilun]

Well, there you go. If they laid off several, it must be bad.

Funny use of "retrenched" IMO.

Re:Tech Mahindra retrenched several employees.

[Tablizer]

So they were buried with all the ET cartridges?

Re: Tech Mahindra retrenched several employees.

[kenh]

"Several"? That's news, that there is four employees were let go?

Re:Tech Mahindra retrenched several employees.

[darthsilun]

So they were buried with all the ET cartridges?

Reburied

Bath? Poor choice of words.

[Anonymous Coward]

n/t

Who writes this shit?

[Anonymous Coward]

"retrenched several employees"

Re:Who writes this shit?

[Anonymous Coward]

An outsourced Indian of course.

Re: Thank Trump instead

[Anonymous Coward]

For bringing the jobs back here

1% under performing? Really?

[Tangential]

Based on my experience with I.T. offshoring in India, I laughed out loud when I read that 1% represents the under performing employees. Perhaps its a nuance of the language and underperforming has no relationship to to good service or solving problems there.

Re:1% under performing? Really?

[magzteel]

Based on my experience with I.T. offshoring in India, I laughed out loud when I read that 1% represents the under performing employees. Perhaps its a nuance of the language and underperforming has no relationship to to good service or solving problems there.

Goldman Sachs cuts the bottom 5-10% every year, along with lots of others.
56,000 layoffs in the entire country seems like noise

Re:1% under performing? Really?

[Hognoxious]

56,000 layoffs in the entire country seems like noise

That rather depends on what the trend was before, doesn't it?

Re:1% under performing? Really?

[magzteel]

56,000 layoffs in the entire country seems like noise

That rather depends on what the trend was before, doesn't it?

No. Just the absolute numbers will do.
According to https://www.statista.com/stati... the direct IT employment is 3.86 million
56,000/3.86mm == 0.14%

Re:1% under performing? Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Even in a "good" organisation, there are more than 1% under-performing.
My experience of outsourced IT is that 5-10% is decent - they get cycled in when the project starts to flounder. The rest are just bodies to fulfil the contract.

Re:1% under performing? Really?

[Hognoxious]

Really? What if it went up 500,000 in one year, 600,000 in the next, 850,000 the year after that - and then this year it didn't go up at all, let alone by a million?

Re:1% under performing? Really?

[magzteel]

Really? What if it went up 500,000 in one year, 600,000 in the next, 850,000 the year after that - and then this year it didn't go up at all, let alone by a million?

My point was that they were making a big deal about the size of the layoff. I'm saying in absolute terms it's not a huge number. The IT job market there is still very robust.

They heard 56k was being retired...

[torkus]

But they didn't realize we meant the modems and went ahead with the business plan anyway. Don't worry, next year they will have a new proposal since this one didn't perform completely to expectations.

Re:They heard 56k was being retired...

[Anonymous Coward]

Glad you like making fun of people kicked out of work.

Re:They heard 56k was being retired...

[DontBeAMoran]

Maybe he's making fun of the people being kicked out of work because they're the ones who were responsible for him being kicked out of work.

Re:They heard 56k was being retired...

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to real life.

Re:They heard 56k was being retired...

[bn-7bc]

So he is laughing at the management thar outsorced/ofshored the work he previously did, not the people in india that now gets fiered , again because of someone else putting in a lower bid, alltgho the management probably got boneses both times. Place the blame where it rightfully belongs, not at the poor sod at the botum of the food chain

Re: They heard 56k was being retired...

[Anonymous Coward]

I laugh at them for being opportunistic, riding it out as long as they could and then getting jacked and complaining about it.

Tata, Cognizant and others undercut everyone elseâ(TM)s prices until CEOs couldnâ(TM)t look at their shareholders and say âoeI just turned down the chance to save 70% on the personnel cost of our IT and have someone to sue if they donâ(TM)t perform in the future. So they laid off workers worldwide collapsing economies everywhere.

Then people all over India rushed to IT jobs like dogs to peanut butter because they didnâ(TM)t want to lose out on the opportunity to completely fuck their national economy by strengthening the caste system that made so many people suffer for so long. So a middle class was established by the poor became poorer by comparison.

Now, with wages rising in India for the middle class, the H1B holders going home and driving up inflation, etc... India has become too expensive for western businesses to ignore serious legal and cultural differences with India. Companies like Cisco feel fucked for letting caste mentality effect their engineering. Higher level managers walk carefully around and nearly how to lower level employees for fear of what the guy with 47 lines and a dot on his head could do to his family back home.

Isnâ(TM)t it time India either joins the western world or abandons it? I mean seriously... India makes all their money by being a cheap labor country. Itâ(TM)s like a human meet factory? Besides a few rare cases like the Indian Space program (I am impressed as hell by that) where is Indiaâ(TM)s leadership in technology?

Over a billion people in India and where is the investment by the government in the creation of Indian technology? Where is the India Google or Facebook or Microsoft? With millions of programmers and managers and investors, where are the world leading technologies?

Yeh... I laugh at Indians losing their jobs because all you ever were was cheap labor. You never respected yourself or your own people to do anything more than eat the scraps off other peopleâ(TM)s tables. It was an absolute shameful lack of self worth, self respect and dignity on a scale of 1/7th of the entire worldâ(TM)s population.

Where are your high speed trains?

Where are your Indian made jet liners?

Where is the Indian made clean energy?

You people do this for everyone else as cheap labor and you donâ(TM)t even have enough pride to trust your own people enough to build a real national economy as something great which you could be...

The only reason I can think of for this is that Indian people are so busy shitting on each other that you canâ(TM)t treat each other with enough respect to do anything. And then you get pissed when your nose gets slapped by your master for eating too many scraps off the table.

Tell you what. After 15 âoeglory yearsâ of outsourcing, if all you are is a dog and are happy eating scraps from your masters in other countries who hired you to be a dog and have no interest in ever treating you as a dog... then... youâ(TM)re a dog and donâ(TM)t deserve any more respect than any other beggar at the table. Fall on your face and Iâ(TM)ll put it on YouTube and make money off people laughing at you.

Stand up like a person with some dignity and say âoeWe are more than dogs. We are leadersâ and then make something of your country and treat your people with respect. The I will look at you as a human with dignity. Dignity is not something you can draw on your forehead. It is something much greater than that. When you learn this, you will stop being a dog to be laughed at.

Re: They heard 56k was being retired...

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn, good post. Truth==spoken.

Re: They heard 56k was being retired...

[AlejandroTejadaC]

I do not believe that India's caste system is the main reason of their national underdevelopment. Remember Japan's own caste system: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-... The answer lies in their manufacturing sector that still today, falls short of meeting international quality standards: https://www.mckinsey.com/busin... Notice how politely Pete Lau (OnePlus CEO) mention this in an interview: "One of the toughest challenges with India smartphone manufacturing is maintaining the same level of quality as China since the manufacturing environment in the country is not the same" https://tech.economictimes.ind...

Have they tried outsourcing to the US?

[Anonymous Coward]

No it is not a jab at these punters.

Automation will hit developing and 2nd world

[rsilvergun]

economies hard. All three articles mention it as the cause. We're at the point where subsistence wages are more than a machine. I think India's government sees this coming and is trying to bring tax dollars in to mitigate it, but I'm guessing it'll be too little, too late. Like America and Japan they've got a culture of overwork. But what do you do when the world doesn't need ditch diggers anymore? If you leave them to rot their join armies and start wars and genocides.

Re:Automation will hit developing and 2nd world

[Anonymous Coward]

My guess is that this will be taken care of in the future with a couple of carefully crafted viral outbreaks to eliminate the "surplus population". It will be rationalized as for the environment.

Re:Automation will hit developing and 2nd world

[DNS-and-BIND]

The Second World ceased to exist in 1991. You might want to update your vocabulary.

Re:Automation will hit developing and 2nd world

[Anonymous Coward]

you have fewer babies

Re:Automation will hit developing and 2nd world

[Seven Spirals]

Well, I can tell you there will be a lot of Americans like me who've seen their friends axed over and over by offshoring layoffs who won't give two shits if India and China swap nukes or give each other Ebola etc... When I see that part of the world burning, I'm personally going to take up the violin.

Re:Automation will hit developing and 2nd world

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like the airport security industry will be hard hit too

Saturated market

[Dan East]

They saturated the tech market for companies looking for cheap IT labor and willing to accept all the various compromises that come along with the cheap cost. Considering that globally the tech sector is fine, this is most likely the result of India producing more workers than needed.

THIS better NOT be fake news

[Anonymous Coward]

But where's the Like button on this thing; wasn't it next to that Thumbs up emoji? I must be stuck in some weird space-time-login continuum, and 56K layoffs should be enough for anybody

Re:THIS better NOT be fake news

[Seven Spirals]

Nah 56K is a "modest start". Keep in mind they've been letting in 65k - 120k every year since 2001 depending on how you count. By my count we've still got at least 1.5 million to go. Once Obama got in, he made a rule that they could also automatically let their spouses work, too. So, you see the same pattern emerge. Guys would come over at around 22-25, work for 2-5 years and build up some cash while living in a two bedroom apartment with three to five other Indians. Go back at 28-31 and get married, then bring their wives over to be PHP coders (and I'm not even kidding a bit). Basically, if you go read what Teddy Roosevelt wrote about immigration? Yeah. It's that situation.

Re:THIS better NOT be fake news

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh yah I've seen this many many times in my company. Young indian, works for a couple years. Gets "assigned" a wife, goes to India. Gets married and comes back with her to get a citizenship. They continue working for a couple years then move to another company that pays more. It's the India dream.

Paramount Leader Trump's wise policies ...

[Hal_Porter]

... are starting to pay off! IT jobs are coming back to the US of A!

Re:Paramount Leader Trump's wise policies ...

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL, NO these jobs are going to cheaper countries, India and to a lesser degree China too have rapidly rising income level, so now many of these positions are moving to even cheaper countries.

Bloodbath?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did they kill any of these 56,000 workers? Bloodbath implies enough blood to fill a bath. So unless they're killing those workers or the workers are committing suicide because they're being laid off, you're using that word wrong.

Side effects of “America First”

[magzteel]

Donald Trump’s arrival at the White House earlier this year hasn’t helped.

Since Trump took office, the fate of the H-1B, a six-year temporary work visa that Indian IT companies heavily depend on, has been hanging fire.

In March 2017, the US government stalled the premium processing of this visa category.

The criteria for computer programmers to apply for the H-1B visa became tougher. In April, Trump signed the “Buy American, Hire American” executive order, promising to bring jobs back to the country, putting migrant workers in jeopardy. In November, the judicial committee of the US House of Representatives gave its nod to the Protect and Grow American Jobs Act (titled HR 170) which classifies any company that has more 15% of its workforce working on-site as “visa-dependent.” With this, the pressure is mounting on Indian outsourcing giants which sometimes have over 50% of their manpower working on-site.

Even the current workers have cause for concern—to clamp down on visa fraud, the United States Customs and Immigration Services (USCIS) plans to double the number of visits to workplaces. “Indian IT companies, thus far champions of IT-based outsourcing, have been forced to go back to the drawing board in order to reposition themselves higher up in the value chain,” Anshul Prakash, a partner at Mumbai-based legal services firm Khaitan & Co, told Quartz.

Re:Side effects of “America First”

[HornWumpus]

Indian IT, move up the 'value chain'?

They will get laughed out of the room. PHBs are stupid, but not THAT stupid. I'm pretty sure that in 90% of cases, the PHB knew Indian IT was a terrible idea, but wanted their bonus check.

Big companies often lose the connection between results/rewards. PHBs game it, shit happens, but they've moved on. Don't read that as 'PHBs don't know', they 'know but don't care'.

Nobody is looking for 'high priced incompetent Indian IT'. They will get no bonus for signing the contract.

Re:Side effects of “America First”

[Anonymous Coward]

“Buy American, Hire American” executive order

Wasn't that supposed to always be the case? The H1B visa was specifically for instances where they couldn't find any Americans who were capable of doing the work, so they had to look offshore.

Re:Side effects of “America First”

[HornWumpus]

Changing the H1B allocation process from lottery to 'highest paid' cuts the Indian body shops off at the knees.

It's still 'gameable', but not on the cheap.

Re:Side effects of “America First”

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like its working as intended then. Not shedding a tear for the terrible InfoSys or Cognizant techs I've worked with over the years.

Make H-1B harder to get and fix the L1 loophole. Return it back to what it was... a system to bring in talent when there is no local talent instead of the current indentured servitude wage suppression crap it is.

Re:Side effects of “America First”

[Anonymous Coward]

I have seen high priced Indian IT signed off and made into policy. The PHB who signed the deal mysteriously had international plane tickets for him and his family to exclusive golf resorts in Europe, while normally his income warranted him doing, at best, Disney World on an annual basis. Of course, this could be considered a "conflict of interest", but in reality, if I complained about this to anyone, it is already known, and I'd wind up fired anyway.

Re:Side effects of “America First”

[callahan2211]

I'm a dreamer. I dream of a American that cares about Americans.

LOL

[bobstreo]

1%? Whatever metrics they're using are misleading at best. In the "Real World" about 70% of them would be back on the street. Unless they value their employees by the results of their google searches to solve problems.

More likely 1% of them were making way too much money compared to everyone else, and their employers didn't care about quality.

Another huge Trump win.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's 56,000 more jobs added to the US economy.

Re: Another huge Trump win.

[Nidi62]

The Philippines and Vietnam are in the US now? Those jobs aren't going to the US, they are just going somewhere even cheaper than India

Re: Another huge Trump win.

[Major Blud]

The Philippines and Vietnam are in the US now? Those jobs aren't going to the US, they are just going somewhere even cheaper than India

I'd consider that unlikely, English isn't as common in those two places as it is in India.

Re: Another huge Trump win.

[Seven Spirals]

No. They. Are. Not. The whole reason that specifically Indian firms are the most egregious outsourcers is because they have over 100 dialects and the British decided they'd rather not have to fuck with all that, and forced them to learn English universally. Indian English is an official English dialect and they speak it quite frequently in India, too. If someone from Tamil Urdu met someone from, say Calcutta, it's likely the only language they have in common is English. So, if you had chosen places where there is six years of English as a second language were taught (ESL) then I might take your statement seriously. That's not the case in Vietnam. Now, in the Philippines the problem is less about spoken language and more about the fact that they have 1/12th of India's population and per-capita have fewer IT workers than India. So, it's not just a simple race to the bottom like making shirts. There is a lot more to it, and making it a lot more difficult actually does dissuade IT managers and suit-weasels looking to sell us out from wanting to screw with the offshoring process.

Re: Another huge Trump win.

[erp_consultant]

Actually in the Philippines it is. At the place I work we have people in Manila and work with consultants from Tata. The folks from the Philippines are far, far easier to communicate with than those mumblers from India. After asking one of them to repeat themselves for the third time I usually just give up and move on.

Complaining to upper managements does no good. I'm pretty sure that Tata is greasing all of them.

Re: Another huge Trump win.

[Applehu Akbar]

The Philippines and Vietnam are in the US now?

Clearly you haven't visited Texas lately.

Re: Another huge Trump win.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha! Nope. The Filipinos generally speak something approximating American English. Much easier to communicate, and much better at improvising because their culture is less deferential and regimented. Being a former US territory has clear advantages over India, and it goes beyond just the language issue. That said, there are still issues with improvisation and their infrastructure interferes somewhat with reliability. Not sure about Vietnam, but the Philippines would be a far better choice than India for anything you actually, you know, want to understand.

Re: Another huge Trump win.

[Anonymous Coward]

I lived in the Philippines for about two years in some very rural areas (I'm talking rice fields as far as the eye could see). Even in the rural areas on Luzon where I lived, the people were taught American English in schools and many were quite good at it. Most of them could become very conversant if given the chance to speak with Americans for a few months. From what I could tell, they learned the grammar and vocabulary pretty well in school and just needed a chance to practice. They watch some American shows and a lot of their locally produced TV is in English (though a lot isn't). Even if they spoke poor English, their accents, intonation, etc was pretty understandable. Many of the people I met who were alive during WWII spoke excellent English because of their close association fighting with or being around the US military. Many businesses choose to conduct business in English (especially B2B).

Keep in mind, I'm talking extremely rural areas. Manila and other big cities are much, much better at English. (I'll limit my statements to the main island of Luzon. I'm not as sure about the southern parts of the country).

I Hope They're Forced to Train Their Replacements

[Anonymous Coward]

"Karma" as they call it.

Re: Thank Trump instead

[gtall]

Oh, I was unaware the Orange One brought any tech jobs back. The U.S. will still be the high cost producer of many things and U.S. business will still either leave or move more heavily into automation and AI. The tax reduction will probably get matched in any countries harboring American business so don't count on any moves back because of that. The recent announcements of income hikes for U.S. workers were all from a handful of companies looking to butter up the Orange One because he can understand that. And those hikes are easily retrenched by those companies not giving increases in the following years. The Orange One is being scammed, I doubt he understands that...but he should given his history.

Re: Thank Trump instead

[kenh]

Has Bangladesh been moved to China when I wasn't looking?

6,000 were replaced by automation?

[kenh]

Meanwhile, around 6,000 Indian employees at Cognizant reportedly lost their jobs to automation.

So are there coding projects staffed by automation?

Did someone figure out how to make a voice-response system that replied in canned incomprehensible tech-speak?

Re:6,000 were replaced by automation?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are a lot of low level coding tasks that ate redundant and good quality controls and scripts can overcome. Think of how new systems can enhance and automate aspects of unit testing. There are also different features in some programming g packages that streamline and even automate some processes. Might not be perfect but think about how much extra time a wysiwyg editor saves in programming time.

Re:6,000 were replaced by automation?

[fleabag]

My experience is that on the operations space, they are being slaughtered by modern DevOps practices.

A decade ago I was in despair working on live systems with a bunch of offshore people manually hammering in random updates. I literally had a team standing behind the Indian guys telling them to follow the script on updates. We tried to persuade the client to automate it, but they rather liked the idea of hordes of £10 a day people cocking it up.

These days, DevOps is easy - the tools are all there (we used to have to write our own...), and you can have a small team of high-value people managing all environments, perfectly. So replace 100 offshore, with 5 skilled onshore, and get materially better results.

DevOps does not fit the approach of "grab some untrained people and get them on the job" - these are sharp tools, and the inexperienced will slice their hands off.

Re:6,000 were replaced by automation?

[Cederic]

My experience is that on the operations space, they are being slaughtered by modern DevOps practices.

Not even modern DevOps. It's always been cheaper in India to throw people at a problem than automate it, so they've never bothered.

Now that people are costing more, they have a myriad of optimisation opportunities. At a guess the biggest outsourcers could chop headcount by 30% in a year just by hitting the low hanging fruit.

Hmm. I should write to them and offer my services.

Stateside Infoscion checking in

[Anonymous Coward]

I took a job with Infosys.
Imagine a world where steeply-discounted Microsoft products took an unbreakable foothold. Imagine delivering Agile DevOps solutions for Fortune 100 using Powerpoint slide decks and Excel spreadsheets exchanged over email in Outlook.
Now take the entirety of this "toolchain" and put it in browser-based Citrix session for access.
Congrats! You're as good as on-boarded!

I am a stick in their spokes.

hail trump!

[Anonymous Coward]

US jobs need to BE US First!

Best thing I've read on the internet today

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope a fair deal of them are the ones who replaced pharma, manufacturing, telecom, and blue chip it workers (like disney). I revel in the slightest hope that "bupesh" got his after taking someone else's job in America. To the gentleman that has only met 3 inferior Indian it workers in his decades of work, you are the anomaly. I have met dozens in my 20 years that should be thrown in prison for referring to themselves as IT professionals

"IT" is not...

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone calling from India saying "This is Windows calling, your computer has virus".

Re: Thank Trump instead

[93 Escort Wagon]

Oh, I was unaware the Orange One brought any tech jobs back.

He apparently also caused the current economic boom in the US... pre-emptively, in fact. Even before he announced his candidacy for president, the aura of his magnificence was already causing the economy to grow.

So what this actually says...

[Bartles]

...is that quality matters. Duh.

Unintended consequence =

[Anonymous Coward]

More hackers.

Re:Unintended consequence =

[Major Blud]

It was Indians that got let go, not eastern Europeans.

Re:Unintended consequence =

[Seven Spirals]

Maybe he meant more Java and PHP "hackers". If so, I can live with that.

Re: Thank Trump instead

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be looking to get appointed to a future cabinet position with kind of flattery.

Re: Thank Trump instead

[Anonymous Coward]

The Orange One *IS* the scam. If you haven't figured that out by now then you might as well give up.

Re:hail trump! ^H^H^H^H^H^^H^H^H^H^FUCK TRUMP!

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude's an asshole.

That stupid Putin cock sucking orange haired cum stain has his head buried so far up his ass that he couldn't find it again using both hands and a flashlight.

And that goes for the rest of his money grubbing asshole wife and family.

Motherfuckers can rot in hell for all I care.

Re: Thank Trump instead

[Hognoxious]

I doubt it. They've probably just found somewhere cheaper. North Korea? Sudan?

Winning so much I'm tired of it? Not yet.

[Seven Spirals]

Dear Trump. I'm not tired of winning yet. Please send another million or so Indians packing. Then we can talk.

Re:Winning so much I'm tired of it? Not yet.

[Anonymous Coward]

Winning is fun!

Re:Winning so much I'm tired of it? Not yet.

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFA, these are people who already live in India, you racist fucking moron.

Re:Winning so much I'm tired of it? Not yet.

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump actually let in record numbers, these are job loses in India which is also losing some work to cheaper countries. but as another put it, you are a racist fuck, shame he doesn't deport scum like you.

Re: Thank Trump instead

[magzteel]

Oh, I was unaware the Orange One brought any tech jobs back.

You should read the article

Re: Thank Trump instead

[gbjbaanb]

The Orange one might have brought tech jobs back to the USA and they might be very expensive, but I know the tech companies can afford these people (ie us) as they make so much money they don't know what to do with it besides stuff it into some island bank account.

Salaries seems to be a reasonable destination for the spare cash, and the tech workers will then spend it. that's far better for the economy than a race to the bottom for the peasantry while our new aristocrats get so rich they couldn't spend it all even if they really really tried (and frankly, looking at Theranos and Uber's continued funding, they're really trying)

Re: How come + Thank God...

[Anonymous Coward]

How come, when it happens to American IT jobs,
it's not described as a bloodbath in any headline?

Just askin' for a friend....

CAP === 'enlivens'

OffShoreReversal

[sdinfoserv]

American companies have finally realized
1 -their customers detest trying to have a conversation with someone who doesn't speak English - and that Indian is NOT English.
2- Costs of Indian developers isn't that cheap once you factor administrative, project management and commutation problems within a group on the other side of the planet - again, with people don't understand the cultural nuances of American English speech
. On the positive, companie can't find enough workers in the US paying great salaries. Ride while you can!

Re:OffShoreReversal

[Anonymous Coward]

Cost of India-based developers isn't cheap at all when companies realize that the good Indian developers have already left India for the US or elsewhere. Those remaining are all too often very poor. You may not be spend much money on them, but you lose in opportunity costs as development times stretch out again and again, bugs multiply, and quality drops like a stone.

Re:OffShoreReversal

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not Indian developers that are the problem - they're pretty good when you find them. The problem is that a contract that requires 10 developers competent in X, you'll get 9 fill-in people, and potentially 1 good actual developer. The good developer will be cycled out in 6-12 months.
Indian outsourcing fails because the company providing the people are driven by the same goals as any company - profit. Good Indian developers are more expensive that randoms off the street.

RTFA

[rsilvergun]

the job loses were completely due to automation. Trump had nothing to do with it. He let in a record number of H1-Bs this year and is poised to do it next year. If you were expecting a man who relies as heavily on work visas to make money as he does to champion your the cause of American IT, well, I'm not sure you're going to be disappointed because you're paying so little attention that you can manufacture your own reality as you seem to have already done in your post.

Sorry to sound so harsh, but folks need to wake up. Trump is not your friend. He is not, never has been and never will be the friend of the working class. He was always a scam artist and a rich man's son.

Re: RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea I think they are giving the man way too much credit.

Re:RTFA

[magzteel]

the job loses were completely due to automation. Trump had nothing to do with it.

I guess you didn't RTFA. What I posted is an excerpt from TFA.

Re: Thank Trump instead

[Anonymous Coward]

At the rate King Donald is getting through them he might not have a choice - they'll have to introduce some kind of draft.

Not if the corps tacitly collude

[rsilvergun]

to keep prices low. But they would never do that, would they? Why, it'd undermine the sanctity of the process...

Re:Not if the corps tacitly collude

[HornWumpus]

They would only succeed in not getting any H1Bs.

There are actual competent specialists with work to do in that line. They were just getting screwed by legal specialists gaming the old system. Tata and Infosys would request insane numbers of visas, flood the lottery application process. Not like they have a shortage of warm bodies.

Re:Not if the corps tacitly collude

[david_thornley]

Infosys is currently hiring US people. They're opening an office in Indianapolis. The pay's not bad for entry-level in Indianapolis.

Re:Not if the corps tacitly collude

[HornWumpus]

A minute of Googling would tell you: 'Don't even apply...hellhole'

Re:Not if the corps tacitly collude

[david_thornley]

That's not the report I've heard, but it's incomplete. I'll know more in a few days.

Yeah, but that's not what'll happen

[rsilvergun]

China doesn't have the graineries to feed it's people, and they're not gonna get them from India. Wars are fought to steal valuable land. If China goes to war with anybody it'll be the US. More likey they'll just buy us out. Haven't you heard? The aristocracy is global now. They don't fight among themselves on the national stage. Not over anything important. That's for pleebs like you and me. Now get back to arguing over gun control, abortion and whether White Culture is a thing or if Black Lives matter or whatnot and forget about all those pesky economics...

Re:Yeah, but that's not what'll happen

[Anonymous Coward]

The aristocracy is global now. They don't fight among themselves on the national stage. Not over anything important.

That may be true in the short run, but not in the long run. Eventually there will arise powerful persons who are motivated less by money and more by the sheer will to power. Why pursue mere money when instead you can pursue the subjugation of mankind? The pending climate disaster will only serve to heighten the urgency of the coming resource wars and make the scenario increasingly probable. In fact, the overlords might not even be human at all, as Elon Musk and others have warned, but AIs which have escaped human control. The precise timeline is unknowable, but I doubt that we will make it to the year 3000 before something like that occurs.

Re:Yeah, but that's not what'll happen

[Cederic]

China doesn't have the graineries to feed it's people, and they're not gonna get them from India.

Have you seen the Chinese investment in Africa lately? As always the Chinese are several steps ahead of you.

Re:Yeah, but that's not what'll happen

[Anonymous Coward]

Africa, Australia... ... anyone that will accept their money.

Re: Thank Trump instead

[luis_a_espinal]

For bringing the jobs back here

Those jobs (mostly IT) have been automated here, you ignorant rube. But whatevs. Enjoy your winning.

Re: How come + Thank God...

[Applehu Akbar]

And 56,000? In India, that's a village.

Re: Thank Trump instead

[luis_a_espinal]

The Orange one might have brought tech jobs back to the USA and they might be very expensive, but I know the tech companies can afford these people (ie us) as they make so much money they don't know what to do with it besides stuff it into some island bank account.

You talk just like the type of person who has no idea what the fuck he's talking about. The bulk of jobs being bled in India are the type of IT jobs that led themselves to automation (or when a company is downsizing and reducing opex). No new jobs, you dumb rube.

Salaries seems to be a reasonable destination for the spare cash, and the tech workers will then spend it.

LOL. This is wishful, ignorant thinking. That money goes back to shareholders. Rarely that gets re-invested into operations.

that's far better for the economy than a race to the bottom for the peasantry while our new aristocrats get so rich they couldn't spend it all even if they really really tried (and frankly, looking at Theranos and Uber's continued funding, they're really trying)

Wait, you think that this bleed out in India is somehow going to stop what you just described? I have a bridge to sell you (or a red hat, whatever tickles your fancy.)

Technology Review had similar article in A.I. issu

[Anonymous Coward]

TR's point was that the early automation programs were already cutting into IT employment, which is at more basic level in India. That article mentional a net loss of 70K jobs this year.

Karma

[Anonymous Coward]

Karma points ?

Re: How come + Thank God...

[Anonymous Coward]

because Americans do a good job at those IT jobs. They didn't want to lost their jobs to subpar Indian nationals.

Follow the wages

[AHuxley]

More is lost to lower cost nations. Indonesia, Vietnam, China, The Philippines are all ready to offer much lower overall costs to anyone wanting to set up in their nations. Move your entire company over and start saving. Well educated people are ready to work for less.
Indian owned companies are moving to the lower wages on offer for profit and better support in other parts of the world.
Why stay in India just for the educated workers? A very small front company can be set up in the USA, UK to handle legal work and interface with the government, US/UK mil, private sector. A few locals with the needed security clearance to bid for US/UK contracts.
The actual work can be done at a much lower cost in other nations.
Profit for the company owner in India and more work on offer with much lower total wage costs.
India is getting too expensive for the kind of work that was once attracting outsourcing on cost.
Other well educated low cost nations will change their entire tax and legal system to bring in new jobs. The USA and UK will follow the lower costs on offer.
Thats the problem with only been able to offer low costs. Sooner or later some other educated nation can get that cost for down too.

Re:Follow the wages

[Anonymous Coward]

You are ranting equating India with educated workers. Only their work ethics is more atrocious than their Engrish.

Re:Follow the wages

[Cederic]

Hmm. All of the Indians outsourcers I've worked with have been educated, they've been able to speak and write English to a parseable level, and they at least match the work ethic of the natives in my own country (i.e. the British).

There's variability in work ethic, but that's true everywhere.

Maybe you just failed to motivate them?

Re:Follow the wages

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for what has been turned into an American shell company bought by Indians last year. We were bought for our SE Asian presence and are now moving full steam ahead on increasing our footprint in PH, Malaysia, and Vietnam.

I won't give a critique on the long list of things they've screwed up however I will say this...the Indians who bought us are the most racist and unethical group of people I've ever seen. The way they talk down to our people in the Philippines is absolutely disgusting, disgraceful and inhumane. They treat people they feel are below them like dogs. Napoleon Complex is pervasive throughout the Indian management staff and they always have some Indian "they know" for every job who almost exclusively turns out to be an incompetent liar. Every question is answered with yes no matter how impossible yes is, they lie repeatedly, and they consistently blame or undermine others. They will smile at you while plunging a knife right into your chest. The management staff has shown that they have no interest in actually being compliant with US regulations and tax laws.

Re:Follow the wages

[Anonymous Coward]

Well shit... if that was true for you.. it MUST have been true for everyone else.

HE JUST FAILED TO MOTIVATE THEM TO SPEAK PROPER ENGLISH LOL...

Re: Thank Trump instead

[Anonymous Coward]

But I thought the Obama recovery started in 2011?

It's unbelievable both his economic policies and ISIS policies were so effective once he was out of office.

um, hang on....

[roc97007]

> "Instead of 10 people, what if we have three people to work on (a project). If we don't have the software, then some others will take the advantage (away from us)," Vishal Sikka, the former CEO of the Bengaluru-based company, said in February.

I'm sorry, I can't parse that. Could someone explain what Mr. Sikka was trying to convey?

Re:um, hang on....

[Anonymous Coward]

This easy. Just build software before someone else does. Obviously done much faster with 3 people than 10 people.

raw numbers seem large

[roc97007]

...but total percentage is small. Difficult to tell at this point whether this is a trend or only a correction.

I'd like to think that it's part of a trend in US companies towards outsourcing where it makes sense, not going offshore simply to cut costs. But that would assume that CIOs suddenly looked around and realized that they weren't getting the huge savings the salescreatures told them about. And had the guts to admit it.

Re: Thank Trump instead

[Anonymous Coward]

>He apparently also caused the current economic boom in the US... pre-emptively,

It's amazing how your so-called "Obama boom" didn't kick in AT ALL until Trump got elected lol

Am I the only one

[Anonymous Coward]

That reacted by thinking that 56K is not a large number of layoffs? For one or two companies, yes. But not for the entire IT industry in India. It just means that companies are tightening their belts a little.

Re: Thank Trump instead

[Anonymous Coward]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re: Thank Trump instead

[Anonymous Coward]

Glad you understand it all. Maybe you should run for President in 2020 and show him how it's really done...

Re: Thank Trump instead

[gravewax]

trump has nothing to do with it and these jobs aren't going to the US, India has had a rising income making them less viable, same is happening with China, now it is places like Bangladesh that are getting all the jobs and manufacturing.

Re: Thank Trump instead

[gravewax]

China are also losing a lot of manufacturing to Bangladesh.

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[account_deleted]

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[account_deleted]

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Looks like someone in India learned Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, you can automate a lot when not using Microsoft desktop products.

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[account_deleted]

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Indian Typing (IT) crisis

[Anonymous Coward]

Technology catches up with us all...

India jumps from Phase I, straight to Phase III

[Anonymous Coward]

India always wants to do one better than the rest of the world

Compare to Japan, India jumps from Phase I "low quality", straight to Phase III "cutting corners" without having to improve anything

Re: Thank Trump instead

[Anonymous Coward]

Well it technically kicked in 2-3 years prior. Just that the Republicans felt that the govt numbers were wrong till Obama left office. They felt it was wrong but were powerless to fix it with a majority for 6 years... They did nothing and all of a sudden it was right because Donald said so.

I bet you think Donald caught Bin-laden too?

Re: Thank Trump instead

[Anonymous Coward]

The current economic cycle has been trending up for almost a decade.

The only thing that's changed is now the Republicans are owning it.

Last time they tried to own a big economic boom, the economy crashed. I guess we'll see what happens this time.

Re: Thank Trump instead

[Anonymous Coward]

Jobs aren't a zero sum game. Just because India is losing them doesn't mean America is gaining them.

If I can provide self help info on my website that prevents 10,000 calls, for example, the job to answer those calls disappear completely. Alternatively, if my infrastructure improves to the point that people don't need assistance and that prevents 10,000 calls, those jobs are gone too.

Here's a good example: with two factor authentication, you go from requiring a call to IT to reset a password to users being able to do it themselves. That reduced overhead becomes profit, not more jobs.

Re: Thank Trump instead

[Anonymous Coward]

Fake Progressive running dogs sure do hate American jobs.

Re: Thank Trump instead

[Anonymous Coward]

The current economic cycle has been treading water for almost a decade, while Obama continued to enact globalist policies and trade deals that killed US jobs.
To be fair, his five predecessors were no better in that regard.

Trump wants none of that, which is why we voted him in. It's amazing what can happen when you have a government that is not actively trying to sabotage its people and pander to foreigners. Your blind hatred of Trump and your falling for media lies is blocking your objectivity.

As to foreigners: illegal immigration is WAY down (good for jobs), H1-B visas are harder to get (great for jobs), ISIS was out of control with no end in sight and now they're obliterated, the Saudis have purged corrupt terror sponsors on an unthinkable level, and of course we've told the UN that we're not going to be dictated to. These things are why Trump is going to get re-elected, and you're still not going to know why.

Management sucks the money

[Anonymous Coward]

In a company like Infosys, the top managers and board suck out almost all profits as bonus and benefits. This leaves very little for shareholders and employees.
Did you know the earlier CEO of Infosys has over 750 apartments in USA ? Bought with money earned from billing programmers.
While the average programmer cannot afford a single apartment in india.
I have never seen the board take a pay reduction.
Yet they deny toilet paper in toilets for the mass employees.

Re:Management sucks the money

[Cederic]

While the average programmer cannot afford a single apartment in india.

I know several Indians that have developed property portfolios there just from their earnings from major consultancies, so I went researching for evidence against this statement.

Turns out there's around a 30 times salary multiple between programmers and apartment prices in Mumbai, so you're right, that's way beyond affordability.

Interesting. Although Mumbai was a dodgy as hell choice, it's not exactly indicative of average Indian house prices.

Re: Thank Trump instead

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a phrase for folks like you: useful idiots.

If you believe anything that twit tells you, I've got a bridge to sell you.

But you'll learn. Again. It wasn't so long ago that George W. was the wunderkind, and we spent the past 9 years watching the Republicans desperately trying to distance themselves from him.

Oh, and because you childish idiots see the world as 2 factions, don't misunderstand me. I'm not a Democrat, I'm not a liberal. I've got my own issues with those buffoons. However; we're not talking about them right now, we're talking about Mr. "60 going on 16".

You almost had a chance for a short time, but nobody wants to be responsible and make hard choices. You want to be told fairy tales that big strong Mr. Government can step in and magically change market fundamentals.

offshore

[ohgary]

The move back to the US is multiple items, First is poor quality help in India, either skill set or language. Skill set is questionable and understanding them is getting more and more difficult. For complex technical issues you need to be able to communicate. Many of those with the skills and language skills have moved to the US and are working onshore. Security implications of using non employees to support equipment. As employee security is tightened for onshore you need to do the same for offshore. Kinda of hard to get a FBI check on someone from offshore. Prices of offshore are going up and not as cost effective as they once where. Hassle of hiring and managing offshore. We have interviewed people via phone and hired them and the person who shows up isn't the person we interviewed. We now force onsite or video interviews. There are a number of "interview" company's that do nothing but interview for a job. Either take the interview or set with you and feed answers. We have googled an answer to a question and then ask the question and listened as the person being interviewed reads the answer word for words back to us. Trumps push to move jobs back to the US is also helping.

Re: Thank Trump instead

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you referencing the color of his skin? Would you do the same with his predecessor?

Re: Thank Trump instead

[Trondheim]

There's a phrase for folks like you: useful idiots.

...says the Obamadroid AC.

Re: Thank Trump instead

[Creepy]

This happens a lot in politics - like "Reagan" ending the Iran hostage deal, which Carter had all but bottled up when Reagan took office.

The reality is it started years ago. I've even been recruited by TCS over the past couple of years (haven't taken anything - offers weren't good enough), predating Trump taking office by over a year.

Re: Thank Trump instead

[Creepy]

He made it harder to get H1-B visas, but the insourcing trend actually started around the time of the 2008 market crash recovery (2010-2011).

Karma is a bitch LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

As I said to the Indians displacing us at Citizens Bank. "Karma is a Bitch!" LOL
When Citizens had an in sourced team there were less of us American System Engineers because we wrote scripts and Automated tasks. We did not document our Automated Minions because we were damn good programmers and we thought less documentation meant job security. Citizens was hell bent on eliminating internal talent not because it cost more than outsourcing, but because they can stretch the truth to their shareholders when it came down to salary expenses. When you outsource your IT staff you can write off payroll over 7 years. Anyway many American IT professionals got cut from Citizens Bank.. 350 of us from Mainframe, Middleware, Wintel, Storage, Networking... we were all cut. Most of us wrote our own automation tools. The tools ran even though we were no longer employed there, but we knew in time when the tools needed to be be updated. We knew the IT Staff from Infosys and IBM global would fail. And it is failing.

Do you think I feel sorry for the Indians. Hell no !
               

Re: Thank Trump instead

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for proving me right.

About time

[Anonymous Coward]

I work in IT and have been dealing with on sites and off shore more and more every year... it would be nice to see that trend reverse. Quality just isnâ(TM)t a word that be used with off shore.

Re: Thank Trump instead

[lsatenstein]

Oh, I was unaware the Orange One brought any tech jobs back. The U.S. will still be the high cost producer of many things and U.S. business will still either leave or move more heavily into automation and AI. The tax reduction will probably get matched in any countries harboring American business so don't count on any moves back because of that. The recent announcements of income hikes for U.S. workers were all from a handful of companies looking to butter up the Orange One because he can understand that. And those hikes are easily retrenched by those companies not giving increases in the following years. The Orange One is being scammed, I doubt he understands that...but he should given his history.

The Orange one knows he is being scammed, but it will allow him to get re-elected.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re: Thank Trump instead

[magzteel]

He made it harder to get H1-B visas, but the insourcing trend actually started around the time of the 2008 market crash recovery (2010-2011).

That could be but that's not what this article is about

Good

[Anonymous Coward]

56,000 down, 1 million to go

no sympathy from me

[Anonymous Coward]

It's about time India got a taste of it's own medicine. infosys, Wipro, and the other Indian outsourcing firms took thousands of American jobs.

1998

[DarthVain]

ARMAGEDDON (1998):
Lev Andropov: Components? American components, Russian components, ALL MADE IN TAIWAN!

I certainly remember when that was the joke. Hard to believe that was 20 years ago now!

I don't go far enough back to remember a Japan that was considered low quality. However I do recall how South Korea, mostly in terms of auto manufacturing, was considered junk, but have since turned that around. So much so, that getting a used KIA is so cheap because they depreciate so quickly because of the still lingering perception of low quality...