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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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