
Indian IT, “You're Fired” - mohan_
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/indian-youre-fired-our-chairman-sorry-way-we-you-mohan-k-
======
mabbo
I've never understood the ways that modern companies handle layoffs- call
people into a meeting room one by one, tell them they're being let go, then
escort them out of the building. It's not just that it's cold, but it builds a
huge cloud of oppression for everyone else.

I just watched this happen to a friend, and the guy who was sitting next to
him is now saying "I could be next, better start talking to recruiters". Do
the companies think we're all going to cut contact with the friend and valued
coworker? Of course not, we're going to be buying them a beer in a couple
hours.

I don't know what a better way would be, but I'd sure like to see some
innovation in that space. Something less cold, something more human.

~~~
skocznymroczny
I think it's mostly an American thing. In Poland (and probably other European
countries), under a normal work contract, you are told in advance about being
laid off, at least two weeks I think. It gives you enough time to look for
another job, and it gives you time to pass your work to your coworkers. No one
really does retaliation here, it's all done in a mostly peaceful atmosphere,
the laid off employee is trying to finish what he started and pass on the work
to the person that will replace him.

~~~
thedarkproject
In Switzerland it's usually 2-3 months notice, for both sides. Depends on
what's written in your contract. But escorting people out after firing them
seems very harsh and overdramatic to me. Never heard of such things in Europe.

~~~
hyeonwho2
Rationally, the company is trying to avoid employees stealing IP, corrupting
files, and sabotaging work. But the social signal it sends is "we don't trust
our employees, respect them as people, or value their original contributions
to our business. They are just replaceable cogs in our machine."

~~~
syshum
>>>They are just replaceable cogs in our machine.

Which matches how most corporations see their employees

They are Human Resources, to be consumed like any other resource

------
code4tee
The Indian IT situation has reached somewhat of a breaking point, hence the
current situation unfolding.

The real low level stuff is now being increasingly automated thus eliminating
the need for cheap labor to do such tasks. At the same time the Indian firms
never quite managed to broadly move up the value chain into more innovative
and cutting edge areas, which is still very much the realm of local offices of
their western customers. As a result there's an increasing oversupply of cheap
but not all that good IT labor now flooding the market.

Fair or not there's also an increasingly negitive stigma in the west over
Indian IT shops. Between growing domestic protectionism and the stereotypical
"Indian help desk experience" that became the poster child for bad management
decisions, I'm seeing a lot of firms bring even some of the lower level work
back onshore--abeit to lower cost regions in their country (think Nebraska
call centers now).

~~~
exelius
I have observed a different phenomenon: in the last 10 years, "startup
culture" has swept over India. There is very little innovative or cutting edge
being done in the US either outside of the universities (where many of the
researchers are Indian) and a few big companies (Google, Facebook, et al --
who all have large engineering offices in India as well). Honestly, I find it
easier to hire for skills like AWS, node.js, Kubernetes, React, Scala and
TensorFlow in India than it is in the US.

You're right about call center work, but that's a different skill set
entirely.

The biggest problem with the offshore model for development is that it
requires a certain level of scale to be profitable. Large projects go great,
as do small one-offs at established, large clients; but dealing with small
customers/projects creates enough overhead to wipe out be benefits of offshore
labor (or at least makes them less of an advantage).

You have to have fat margins on your projects to cover the training costs for
your people -- if you don't give them training, they won't have time to learn
anything new (and the time off of projects costs you far more than any
training course would).

~~~
kumarvvr
Though it is easier to hire people with skills in XYZ tech, it's important to
note that Indian IT companies have bred a culture of knowledge purely on
paper.

A civil engineer/Electrical Engineer/ Electronics Engineer / Industrial
Engineer / etc, just out of college, joins a services company as a "developer"
with a pay around 5000 USD a year, works for a few years on, say SQL, goes to
the local "IT training institute" run by Mr. ABC with "X+ years of onsite
experience", pays them Z amount of rupees, "learns" "T" tech for 3 or 6
months, gets a certificate, applies for a job in another IT company
desperately looking for people with knowledge in "T", joins, struggles through
and then rinses and repeats.

I have seen it personally.

Of course, not all of them are like that, but I am sure more than 50% are
milled from the same process. That is why you get so many engineers able to do
some specific things in some specific technology, but are scarcely able to
innovate or think out of the box.

There is a whole slew of IT training institutes and hundreds of trainers,
staff, photocopy shops, cafeterias, etc, which thrive on training an ever
churning flow of "IT" engineers.

Add to that, an "IT" engineer expects to be a "Technical Lead" in a matter of
5-6 years, a "Team Lead" in a matter of 8 years and a "Project Manager" in
about 12 years of experience. My numbers for the years maybe a bit off though.

Contrast this to developers in Europe or elsewhere, you have technically
strong developers with decades of experience honing their skills in a myriad
of tech and gathering a repertoire of programming techniques, tools,
practices, etc.

~~~
kamaal
>>Add to that, an "IT" engineer expects to be a "Technical Lead" in a matter
of 5-6 years, a "Team Lead" in a matter of 8 years and a "Project Manager" in
about 12 years of experience. My numbers for the years maybe a bit off though.

More than anything else, this is the most important reason. Indians for some
reason have fancied middle management bureaucratic roles above real work
almost forever. This is not just in IT, but the very economic ecosystem of
India has this problem. We are talking about a country where even house wives
do a distance education MBA course because 'Just in case... I would be a
manager someday' kind of attitude.

Not one person wants to do any real work. And over long times its impossible
to sustain growth without productivity.

So there will be a inevitable decline in the overall ecosystem at some point
in time. But my guess is those who wish to do work will always have good
projects to chase after.

The IT ecosystem on the longer run will resemble every other engineering
services industry in India. Architecture, Mechanical, Civil, Electrical etc.
Niche areas where good talent will be required and there will always be a
supply. Noise, garbage and me too attitude people will largely be gone.

~~~
ryandrake
> Indians for some reason have fancied middle management bureaucratic roles
> above real work almost forever.

One could argue they have the right idea. At most companies (tech or non-
tech), the career advancement path for a software developer pretty much ends
at "Senior Software Engineer". Some places offer a "Staff Software Engineer"
or "Principal Software Engineer" but your career growth is pretty much over
once you get there, unless you want to jump into management, where the sky is
the limit.

~~~
kumarvvr
You could move into roles like software architecture or software design, etc.

------
jussij
From the page:

 _At the meeting, Mr. Sikka also described how the company “released 11,000
jobs due to automation.” Many small shareholders appealed to the board to
consider the “human cost” of layoffs in the software sector._

That quote made me chuckle, since I have witnessed first hand the IT industry
in the West face massive job cuts through Out Sourcing and that has been going
on for decades now.

Now I don't blame Out Sourcing per say, as governments let that happen, but it
is a bit funny when the Out Sourcing gets Out Sourced.

~~~
aNoob7000
I agree with your comment. The author seems taken back by the callousness of
the cuts, but this is nothing new in the United States or even in other
western countries.

I think Indian IT firms have gotten a free ride for many years using labor
arbitrage. Now that there's a whiff of protectionism in the air from the
United States and cloud computing is surging things aren't so easy anymore.

~~~
HenryTheHorse
> I think Indian IT firms have gotten a free ride for many years using labor
> arbitrage.

Got it. So Apple building the phone in China or Cisco building routers in
China is _not_ labor arbitrage.

~~~
bogomipz
No, they are all labor arbitrage. Manufacturing labor arbitrage is just a
little more sticky since China has the production facilities.

------
nailer
As someone who worked for a team at IBM where we were forced to train our
replacements in India, it seems odd that anyone in outsourcing would be
surprised when those roles are further reduced by automation with little
regard for the wellbeing of employees.

~~~
fellellor
I don't know if this is your intention, but it is petty to blame someone, who
is seeking legal employment, of conspiring to take away your jobs.

The decision to use labor arbitrage was taken by managements in developed
economies. The workers didn't position themselves in a way that created the
arbitrage.

It's silly, to say the least, when your reaction is "what did you expect would
happen, when you decided to steal american/british/whatever jobs".

This is just the way the world is right now. The Indian IT labor market is
only just catching up to the global reality.

~~~
tempForaReply13
Are you sure you're replying to the right comment?

Or was the thread poster's comment edited?

Your comment seems to add a little context that isn't there.

~~~
fellellor
Many young people who get into IT here don't come in their first day thinking
of the big picture, ie this is an outsourced position. For them it's just a
job. So it's not odd for them to think their job has been further reduced.
Though it may be the logical thing to think for someone who has all the
context.

Also, English not being my native language, I had trouble understanding the
tone of OP's comment.

------
TheAdamAndChe
Many comments here are laughing about the irony of the outsourced labor
becoming irrelevant, but it should kind of be worrying. Organizations are
lowering the number of jobs to the point that only the most skilled and
experienced workers get jobs. If there are no lower level positions for people
to take on, how will the masses work their way up and improve? How can our
local and global economies improve for everyone when fewer and fewer people
can get good jobs?

This goes for every country, not just India or America. If an economy improves
on paper yet the majority of people see a decline in quality of life, what
kind of destabilizing effects will that have on the area?

~~~
shagie
I don't see that. What I do see is a recognition that only in specific cases
with well defined product boundaries does outsourcing development work
reasonably.

On the other hand we see many companies recognizing that telecommuting and
remote work, especially with things that have no end date (keep the servers
running, fix the bugs, add these new features) have hidden costs. Those costs
are often exasperated by time zone differences.

In areas where I have worked for the past decade, outsourcing is not looked
fondly on because of the recognition that it means a loss of institutional
knowledge and unending support costs.

There are many entry level positions open, just you need to be able to be in
the chair.

~~~
TheAdamAndChe
> There are many entry level positions open, just you need to be able to be in
> the chair.

This statement proves my point exactly. Either you need to be skilled enough
to have the leverage to work remotely, or you need to be lucky enough to live
in one of the few cities that happen to be growing economically at the moment.
When economic growth and opportunity for the unskilled is concentrated to such
a small portion of the planet and country, the rest of us suffer for it. It's
a continued assault on the middle class of most of the world, and has profound
destabilizing effects on those areas affected by these trends.

~~~
shagie
My previous job was in the north woods of the Midwest where there are fewer
than 75k people living and the next nearest city of more than 25k is an hour
drive away. There are several companies there, all hiring at all levels.

There are opportunities for entry level work everywhere. However, the demand
for living in urban areas with culture events changes the equation to one
where employers have the ability to pick and choose- and will do so for more
skilled workers.

There is no luck involved in moving to a city where there are only two
Starbucks's.

The asset that the entry level employee has is his or her ass in a chair.
There is a lot of value in that and companies will invest in it. They don't
want a contractor who will disappear in 6 months or a nameless person behind
the account manager who changes every few months.

One just has to say "not everyone will live where they have their hearts set
on."

You want to live in NYC? SF? Many people do and it will be harder to compete
for limited spots.

That city in the north woods? A quick scan shows 20 open positions in the
three biggest tech employers, half of which are entry level. Positions are
paying around 150% median household income there.

~~~
TheAdamAndChe
You're speaking like someone who happens to live in or around one of the tech
hubs of the Midwest. I also live in the Midwest, have several certifications,
am 75% through an IT Bachelor's degree, and I have been unable to find tech-
related work in the third largest city in my state. Just because your area
happens to have work doesn't mean the rest of rural America does.

There's a reason political extremists were nearly our candidates in both
parties. There is a widespread sense of economic instability due to large
trends that are gutting the middle class and concentrating jobs.

~~~
shagie
How about Eau Claire? Duluth? La Crosse? Iowa city? Marshal? Wausau?

If there is an influx of people to an area (Madison, Milwaukee, Minneapolis,
Rochester), entry level will be harder to find. This extends to a reasonable
commute distance away.

If you have your heart set on the larger midwestern cities, you will need to
look harder for the jobs (possibility to less traditional tech employers) and
places where there are not "fabulous" roles to fill (instead of entry level
code ninja with free coffee, entry SDET in a boring government office).

My first tech job after graduating with a 4 year CS degree was customer
support - answering phones. Then I did QA for awhile. Then a startup as a
sysadmin / webmaster where the paycheck bounced. Two years after I got my
first tech job, I got an entry level programming job at a tech company doing
internal automation.

------
donquichotte
"Indian software services companies are under tremendous pressure to continue
to show growth in a slowing global market that is also experiencing increased
protectionism in the west."

Maybe the managers in the west who made the decision to lay off entire IT
departments and replace them by Indian companies started realizing that with
the cost of the impedance mismatch in language and culture between a company
and its IT deparment, off-shoring is more expensive than running a domestic IT
department.

~~~
zmakr
Its not the managers who made the decision. Its the shareholders, ultimately
its capitalism that made this decision.

~~~
DrScump
Shareholders, individually _or_ collectively, don't make such decisions... but
they later collectively judge those who _did_. (Fairly or unfairly)

------
nonamechicken
I personally don't have any issue in Indian companies firing people at will.
But they don't give employees the same freedom.

All these IT companies have a 2-3 months notice period. This makes it
difficult to look for another job. If they want to fire at will, I should be
able to walk out at will as well. But if I do that, I will not get my
resignation letter and service certificate (I am not worried about the final
paycheck left overs). And I need these papers if I have to get another job.

~~~
hyeonwho2
Sorry, but if you were already offered the next job, does the next employer
really care about a severance certificate? Why is a severance certificate
important in India?

~~~
gautamdivgi
I'm not sure it really is - but it could be. I think it depends on the
hidebound bureaucracy of the company you're applying to. It's been a while
since I've worked in India (close to 20 years now). So things have most likely
changed massively. When I was there I've known of folks who just quit and
folks who gave a decent notice. Those that stayed the notice period got a
severance certificate. Those that just quit didn't get one. I don't believe it
impacted careers much. That time the notice period was 1 month, not ideal like
the US 15-day notice but not too bad either (1 month was the pay period). When
I left I negotiated the notice period down to 3 weeks. 2 to 3 months notice is
oppressive.

------
edraferi
> Saying “You're Fired!” in a nicer tone is not likely “preserve the dignity
> of the individual.” The guy on the receiving end is still going to get the
> same message: he’s out of a job and has bills to pay.

I disagree. Sometimes layoffs are unavoidable, but you can fire someone with
dignity. I think both tone and substance matter here.

For tone, management should be civil, polite and respectful. Acknowledge the
employee's contributions to date, explain the larger context for the layoffs,
express regret that they are leaving the team, and wish them well. Just
because you're forced to deliver bad news doesn't mean you have to be brusque
and vindictive. You give the departing employee dignity by treating them like
team member you will miss rather than a minor, expensive annoyance.

Even kind words are cheap. Management should take substantive steps to ease
the employee's transition out of the company. Earlier notice (weeks vs hours),
severance pay, job search assistance, referrals, etc. all show the employee
that the current employer does care about their personal well-being even as
they depart the company.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Would you want management to do that if it's not sincere? What if your
contribution has been poor or damaging.

I think we agree broadly FWIW.

------
OliverJones
In Indian polity, withholding relieving letters is brutal. It makes it very
hard for the laid-off person to get another job: one must present a relieving
letter to be hired elsewhere.

Courts aren't a useful remedy for a worker with a family to feed: too slow and
expensive.

~~~
danmaz74
Can you expand about these "relieving letters"? I didn't hear about those
before...

~~~
ilamparithi
You are supposed to get an experience certificate (that confirms how long you
worked in that company) and a formal relieving letter (that confirms that you
left under normal circumstances and your performance was satisfactory) from
your previous employer. In addition to that you are also supposed to get
payslips for the last three months.

Without supplying these it is very hard to get a job. Most companies also
contact previous employers (through a third party) to confirm these details.

~~~
danmaz74
Thx for the info

------
batushka
Let's just name it straight: all this brainwashing about values and being part
of company is a con game by HR's. These con artists are not your friends,
never.

------
planetjones
I don't agree with a lot of what Western companies have done regarding sending
IT work to India en masse. However, there is a real human cost now of the lay
offs. I believe many Indians have taken out bank loans to buy property and
there is no safety net in place for employees who are sacked with no notice.
So they are at risk of losing their home and the health benefits (for the
whole family I believe) is tied to the employer. Overall a very sad situation
where those outsourcing the work by the bucketload only looked at cost
'savings' at a point in time - never the social impact of their decisions.

~~~
peternicky
Unfortunately most businesses operate to enhance shareholder value, not the
broader social good. It's a sad day when people loose jobs, especially in a a
callus manner described by the post, however, it is silly when these workers
are surprised by this. It is simply a progression of their local economy.

~~~
TheAdamAndChe
This behavior is exactly why protectionism is on the rise in America. The
economy has "improved" massively, yet few are reaping the benefits and most
Americans are seeing a decline in quality of life. Protectionism would lower
the labor pool available to companies, meaning workers would have more
leverage and better pay, but at the expense of corporate profits.

Lots of economists say that protectionism is a net negative to our country,
but I think they may have failed to consider the effects of capital
concentration causing only a few cities and states in the country to actually
benefit from globalization.

------
jk2323
What is the story about? I am not signing up for linkedin.com to read it.
(They never honor "Do not email" requests.)

~~~
rak00n
I don't have a LinkedIn account and I could read it.

------
senthilnayagam
2015-16 Was a subcontractor for a US startup which acquired another startup.
We had to document the old code base and reduce the cost of operations.

Worked for over 7 months. Then the founder decided it was not worth it. He
fired all the remaining tech staff(acquired startup) and people who managed
us.

When followed up for pending invoices, we got a email with threatening tone,
that they are investigating all the contracts signed up and payments for
fraud.

So not getting paid also happens in many cases.

In another case in 2008 a Bay Area startup got bankrupt and systems engineers
brought the racks and expensive chairs from office, and they were doing yard
sale

------
golemotron
The pathology behind the hypocrisy is the obsession with values we see in
corporations today.

Let's be clear: work is something we do to provide for ourselves. It is a
contract. That contract should not encompass a prescribed belief system, and
that is exactly what 'values' are. In the past 30 years we've turned many work
environments into quasi-religions where it is expected that employees adhere
to particular sets of values or at least signal that they do. Doing your job
well should be enough.

~~~
hyeonwho2
Organizations of people are defined by shared values and shared goals. Throw
out the values and you throw out the bases for civil communication and
conflict resolution within the organization.

~~~
Asooka
I have never seen an organization subscribe to any set of values other than
"do what will make the most profit". The only goal is to increase profit. This
works out pretty well, because it pits my desire for profit versus yours, and
encourages socially beneficial policies, because too-greedy profit seeking
destroys further chances of profit. We do not have shared goals, we have the
opposing goal of maximising profit in a largely zero-sum game. However, due to
how the system is set up, we can collaborate and increase both our profits
more than what we can do each on our own.

I don't see how anything else can be a working system. Everything else can be
gamed by semantic manoeuvring from the side of the profit-seekers. The only
way to make sure a given set of values are followed is to make them the most
profitable course of action, ensuring via evolutionary mechanisms that only
the ones abiding those values survive.

------
navinsylvester
Pretty unfortunate to see lot of comments with an undertone like Indian IT
workers deserved this situation. It's not just a problem which can plague
Indian workers alone. Lets focus on what can be done to mitigate this issue.

#1 Firing is an inevitable process but it should be a transparent process and
employees should be treated with dignity. Firing an employee for cost cut
shouldn't be any lesser than 30 days notice period.

#2 IT service industry costing method is flawed. Head count is inflated to
increase project cost. Need to adopt a better costing model.

#3 Any form of automation which would result in job cut should be a board
decision and not by the lower rung. The team which will get affected by the
decision should be informed so they can be well prepared.

Jobs are getting fewer since we are optimizing and automating(don't forget AI)
- all good but this shouldn't be at the cost of sustainability.

~~~
tempForaReply13
You aren't going to get a lot of support from the West.

We've been dealing with this kind of thing for years, because of labour
arbitrage. Asking for help, advice, or for us to join you in some kind of
organization now that it's affecting you is... kind of funny actually...

But, in all honesty, we'll be training you to train the machine models that
will replace all of us eventually, so, maybe it's time for all of us to suck
it up and get along.

------
known
Indian IT is making money by selling you, not software to USA; If you are
sacked, hire a Criminal lawyer to get your share of Company Profits;
[http://www.scbaindia.org/Web/aspx/directory_new.aspx](http://www.scbaindia.org/Web/aspx/directory_new.aspx)

------
teyc
There is a silver lining for Indian IT in all this. Indiscriminate firing to
meet quota is a forcing function for indigenous software companies to grow and
thrive. Will there be enough work for all of them? Maybe not. Will it raise
the quality bar for those who wish to persist in IT? Most certainly yes. This
is not the end.

~~~
nonamechicken
There is already insane competition for government and bank jobs (since these
jobs are more or less guaranteed for life). I know so many people who did
their bachelors in engineering degrees writing bank exams. These type of news
will make Indian IT even less attractive.

Layoffs in IT sector lead to a dip in popularity of software engineers in
marriage market: [http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/ites/layoffs-in-
it-...](http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/ites/layoffs-in-it-sector-
lead-to-a-dip-in-popularity-of-software-engineers-in-marriage-
market/articleshow/59497476.cms)

------
jordigh
“Quit by 10 am, or you’ll be terminated and no benefits or relieving letter
will be provided”

This sounds like a horrible threat. What are labour laws in India like? Is the
company abusing the legal system by forcing their employees to quit via
threats? Why do they want them to quit instead of firing them?

------
zmakr
This is a blessing in disguise. A majority of the Indian IT workers were
focused on working for outsourcing companies. Recently, I have seen the
startup scene gaining momentum in India. This will stop India's brain drain as
well bring in more revenues to the country directly.

------
binaryapparatus
Requires login or wrong URL? Is there alternative URL? Doesn't work for me.

~~~
jordigh
Same problem for me. I don't know why LinkedIn shows me login pages too.
Someone else fetched the story for me:

[http://www.lick.moe/paste/2f6bbfa63965f2c539e4436a028cf90d](http://www.lick.moe/paste/2f6bbfa63965f2c539e4436a028cf90d)

------
jamisteven
Whats worse? "your fired" or "welcome, stagnant wage growth for 10+ years
awaits you"

