Slashdot Mirror


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.

27 of 211 comments (clear)

  1. Non-performers...1% by HornWumpus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    WTF? 1% of Indian techs are incompetent?

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

    --
    John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    1. Re:Non-performers...1% by Scarred+Intellect · · Score: 4, Funny

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

    2. Re:Non-performers...1% by HornWumpus · · Score: 3, Funny

      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?

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    3. Re:Non-performers...1% by Junta · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
    4. Re:Non-performers...1% by Greyfox · · Score: 2

      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.

      --

      I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

    5. Re:Non-performers...1% by Hognoxious · · Score: 2

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

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    6. Re:Non-performers...1% by gtall · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

    7. Re:Non-performers...1% by gbjbaanb · · Score: 2

      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.

    8. Re:Non-performers...1% by HornWumpus · · Score: 2

      Should be 1 line of code.

      80 hours to do the needful.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    9. Re:Non-performers...1% by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      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."

  2. Re: Thank Trump instead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    For bringing the jobs back here

  3. 1% under performing? Really? by Tangential · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    --
    Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
    1. Re:1% under performing? Really? by magzteel · · Score: 2

      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

    2. Re:1% under performing? Really? by magzteel · · Score: 2

      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%

  4. They heard 56k was being retired... by torkus · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.

    --
    You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
  5. Automation will hit developing and 2nd world by rsilvergun · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
  6. Paramount Leader Trump's wise policies ... by Hal_Porter · · Score: 2

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

    --
    echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
  7. Side effects of “America First” by magzteel · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Side effects of “America First” by HornWumpus · · Score: 2

      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.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    2. Re:Side effects of “America First” by HornWumpus · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  8. Re: Thank Trump instead by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

    --
    #DeleteChrome
  9. Re: Thank Trump instead by magzteel · · Score: 2

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

    You should read the article

  10. Re: Thank Trump instead by gbjbaanb · · Score: 2

    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)

  11. OffShoreReversal by sdinfoserv · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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!

  12. RTFA by rsilvergun · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
  13. Yeah, but that's not what'll happen by rsilvergun · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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...

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
  14. Re: Thank Trump instead by luis_a_espinal · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.)