The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Back to square one for newcomers

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Thursday, Feb 07, 2008
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Back to square one for newcomers

Deepa Kurup

Most were shown the door after a tough evaluation test

Most newcomers are back in the job hunting stage
BPO companies adopt ‘lean policy’

BANGALORE: The sacking of employees in IT majors IBM and TCS appears to be causing anxiety amongst techies in other companies as well.

Techie blogs and websites have been inundated with posts and random surveys which warn of “hire and fire policies” and speculation over the next batch of retrenchments.

“Over the last few weeks, I have lost several colleagues and the general impression is that the number of employees who were shown the door is anywhere between 1,000 to 1,500,” said Kamlesh Kumar, an employee of IBM, Bangalore.

Sources in IBM confirmed that towards the end of 2007, several entry-level personnel were given an aptitude test which comprised questions on C++. Employees were given two to five days notice and the test was difficult and lengthy.

Last week, most of them were called for a meeting with managers and HR personnel and asked to resign, and the entire process was kept hush-hush, sources said.

Several graduates with less than a year’s experience are left in the lurch, considering it is extremely difficult to find a job in the “experienced category”. Candidates are likely to be rejected by most companies for want of experience and inconsistent track record.

“The company has targeted freshers. Most of us had more than one job offer, and we chose the high-end companies, now we are forced to go back to the job-hunt stage,” says Shyam S., an IT professional, who has returned to his home town since he lost his job. Among several other companies, TCS has reportedly shown the door to 500 employees across different levels.

However, unlike other companies which are reported to have singled out freshers, TCS claims that it gives a two-year buffer period with continuous evaluations and performance improvement plans, giving employees the time and space to improve.

Although the company maintains that it is a routine “quality control” exercise, employees are worried about a 20 per cent cut in their variable pay. TCS maintains that it is no cause for concern.

“We have not met our Economic Value Added targets in our third quarter which is why the variable pay has been adjusted for three months,” said Pradipta Bagchi, TCS spokesperson. Refuting media reports of job cuts arising from business losses, he asserted that the percentage of revenue earned from U.S projects has dropped below 50 per cent, implying that they have diversified to other markets.

With rumours afloat that this move had been brought on by the recession in the U.S., IBM had confirmed the move. However, the company had refused to validate the numbers and said its retrenchment exercise was routine.

A company spokesperson told The Hindu that it was part of their initiative to “certify skill levels as a validation to clients and to increase standards”.

Given the uncertainty in the market, employees are panicking over every new management move. While the market is likely to affect the IT sector, BPO employees claim that companies have been practising a “lean policy” which means that while some team members were kept on the bench, the team was deliberately overworked to test how many employees were needed in each team.

“This could be part of some routine survey. However, besides being extremely stressful, we are afraid it means an impending downsizing spree,” says Rekha, a BPO employee.

Asserting that it was not a manifestation of market slowdown, the IBM spokesperson said: “The revenue in the last quarter was the strongest in almost a decade with revenue of $ 28.9 billion, India being one of the key markets.”

IBM announced on Tuesday that it had opened another global delivery centre in Noida and would open another by mid-2008, and would hire over 3,000 people.

(All names referred in the story have been changed)

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