When IT loses sheen, dark days await techies

BANGALORE, INDIA: October 29, 1929, is written in the world history in black letters. It was on that 'Black Tuesday' that the stock market crashed, officially setting off the Great Depression. More than 25 per cent of the workforce lost jobs in the months to come and the bleak scenario prevailed for over a decade, till the World War II.

And now every day is a 'Black Tuesday' with things getting darker every moment. The techies who led a hi-flying life till yesterday are in a state of uncertainty, as they don't know what would happen tomorrow.

Any moment anybody can become unemployed… As the financial tsunami has hit the Indian shores as a result of the economic disaster in the West, many Indian companies have started giving pink slip to their employees citing the reason of poor performance to poor dressing.

Non-performing asset!

It was quite recently that IT major Satyam had laid off nearly 100 employees from its offices in Hyderabad. In Chennai too the company had terminated over 30 employees, saying that they may have 'fudged' bills after being relocated to Chennai from Hyderabad.

They reportedly got hardly two hours' notice "to resign or face termination", sources said. Most of them were shown the door for "behavioral issues'', "poor performance'' and in some cases, "poor dressing'' at work! When economy slumps employer finds problems with the behavior of the employees and even their dressing patterns!

During the good times these companies never bothered as to what the employees wore or how they behaved.

In Wipro nearly 1,000 employees have been given the marching order, while around 300 employees are under the scanner for non-performance.

In February, Tata Consultancy Services had asked nearly 500 'non-performers' to leave while IBM had asked about 700 Indian employees to leave, again on ground of non-performance.

Quite recently, another software company, Virtusa, laid off nearly 300 employees in Asia, most of them from India. But the sacking in the name of 'nonperformance' is actually a belt tightening exercise, though the companies would say this is part of the appraisal ritual.

Pressing the panic button

The panic in the industry was very clear when ASSOCHAM had warned in a recent report that Indian firms are likely to lay off 25 to 30 per cent of the work force very soon and IT-enabled services (ITeS/BPO) was also included in the list that faced a potential threat of job loss.

Though the government had criticized the organization for making such 'irresponsible' statement, the present state of affairs shows that ASSOCHAM was right.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had even asked the industry not to resort to retrenchment and the industrial leaders had assured him that such a step would not be taken.

But what happened in reality, everybody knows. Even the Reserve Bank of India's amended monetary policies did not help save the India Inc, where many employees are facing the blues in the form of pink slip and forced resignation.

According to a recent report, L&T Infotech is planning to reduce its workforce by 5 per cent, which means 10000 people would soon be jobless there. Last week only IBS Software of Thiruvananthapuram Technopark had sacked around 30 employees, who were branded 'non-performers'. Yes, the present development is a global phenomenon.

From IT to real estate to finance to hospitality, the workforce is facing the heat of the financial meltdown all over the world. According to market analysis firm briefing.com, in October, job cuts were huge in almost all fields in the US.

More than 2,40,000 people lost their job in October only. Over the first 10 months of 2008, 1.2 million jobs have been lost, but tellingly, over half of those losses have occurred in just the past three months, briefing.com said.

Evaluating the scene in America, President elect Barack Obama had said prior to the election: "Washington needs fundamental change because it has failed the American people". But now we will have to wait and see whether Obama will be able to save the world from the economic disaster.

Who will wage the war?

In the backdrop of the global economic meltdown, fresh graduates might find it difficult to get rewarding jobs for the next two years, according to Kris Gopalakrishnan, CEO of Infosys. "Fresh graduates will be affected in the next two years. They may not find the sector very attractive," he had stated the other day. And the recent trend among the software engineers justifies what he had told.

According to a report from Hyderabad, the IT mania is more or less over in India. While many of them have left the job to get into the field of their choice, the fear of being unemployed is also forcing them to switch over to other fields.

The heat can be felt in many premier institutions as well. Campus recruitment is fast becoming a thing of the past. A recent report said that 15 students of IIT-Kharagpur got regret letters from three top US IT firms.

These students were initially offered a huge package during the campus recruitment but this changed all of a sudden and the offers were withdrawn. Ironically the Great Depression of the twentieth century ended with America joining the World War II in 1941.

And the present Depression began from the same country only. Now it's time to wage another war - a war without bloodshed - to revive economy and make the high-flying ones to come back to the down-to-earth realities.

Do you think the present scenario will provoke the techies to come into terms with the social realities and come down from the ivory towers of of high-class lifestyle?