[apachelongbow]

In the spirit of tbhp can someone please explain what is maang, faang and the other abbreviations? I have spent too many years outside IT and last i knew was sdlc somehow turned into full stack ..

[V.Narayan]

Let's look at hard data if we can.

Of the 50 lakh employees in India's IT sector how many have been laid off in the last 8 weeks since the tide turned? - either in hard numbers or as a percentage of the total.

High visibility lay offs by super high visibility social media giants is one thing but figuring out what are the actual lay-offs of all companies in India's IT sector is another. Noise and whineging {what Prince Harry does} should not overshadow facts.

I'm no industry expert but I don't quite see any mass layoffs in India yet. Uncertainty, yes, as the globe wobbles and the controversial Masayoshi Son makes a puddle for the first time but mass lay-offs in India not yet. Could happen but we don't know yet.

Originally Posted by mohansrides

During the pandemic years, while large swaths of society were steeped in unbearable pain, information workers (IW) enjoyed unprecedented professional ascension. With lockdowns and work-from-home, their privileges skyrocketed - lots of jobs, huge salaries, big bonuses, sizeable increments, zero commute, and not to mention the lowest risk of catching Covid. The term “new normal” was being bandied about with gay abandon and there was a palpable sense of infallibility among IT and software folk.
What was really disturbing was that while enjoying a windfall of good fortune these information workers and their families were some of the strongest proponents of lockdowns and shutdowns. Their only concern appeared to be their own personal safety. The overarching sentiment was that if others had chosen professions or trades that were outside of the digital economy and that depended on society being open, well then those people were squarely responsible for their own plight and the IW community should not have to endure an open society for the sake of such folk.
Now the same IW community is practically demanding the empathy that they didn’t provide to the millions of folk who not only lost their livelihoods, but also their lives in many cases as a consequence of not being able to provide for their families during lockdowns.

+1 . I agree with all of this. Thank you for saying it. We only need to read the WFH thread on Team BHP to see this. The attitudes were especially interesting to those of us who worked from our places of work right through the lock downs. But still a young man or woman, the ordinary employee, losing a job is still deserving of empathy regardless of industry or regardless of any selfishness displayed in the past. Losing a job for effectively no fault of yours is a damning experience at all times.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by apachelongbow

In the spirit of tbhp can someone please explain what is maang, faang and the other abbreviations?

Meta (FB), Microsoft, Google, Apple, Amazon, Netflix & Twitter. We can come up with any number of acronyms using them in different combos.

[SoumenD]

Now Amazon is planning to layoff 10000 employees.

Link

[kiku007]

On a lighter note.

The ongoing battle between loyalists and opportunists has entered a new crossroads of sorts.

The recent spate of layoffs in the information technology sector has led to the loyalists feel vindicated that their decision to stay loyal and not make hay when it shines to be the right choice. They went on to claim that this insulates them from any firing in the upcoming months which was quickly met with damning silence from their HR department who would neither confirm nor deny this belief.

This caused a sort of nervousness and the loyalists camp went a step further to prove their loyalty by offering to return any loyalty bonuses they were paid and nullify any wage increases that were offered to earn their loyalty. Both of these wouldn’t have happened if not for the opportunists and now that it has been proven that the opponent camp was wrong, it is only fair to return to where things were. That’s apparently best for the employers, employees, industry and the nation.

However, the opportunists who got laid off recently seem to have one more card to play. Sensing the opportunity (pun intended) they have offered their services at 10% discount then pre-Covid salaries. This has caught the attention of the HR and bean counters but has caught the loyalists off guard. Classic opportunistic move.

At the time of publishing this story, the HR wouldn’t say anything more than, we’ll let the employees/market decide what works best for them and we’ll follow their lead.

Meanwhile, LinkedIn has reported an increase in requests from users to do the following,
1. Un follow this connection.
2. Don’t show me these type of posts. I’m not interested.

[androdev]

I jokingly tell my kids that I never wanted to grow up to be the dad/uncle who would say "think about the kids in Africa who are starving" but they made me just that guy. We can cut some slack to the guys who are being opportunistic (or risk taking) and not make a virtue issue out of it. To a large part, this goes with age and it's for the good. Imagine everyone born with infinite wisdom right from childhood - that would be an awful world to live in.

[V.Narayan]

With no disrespect to those who work in IT and bearing in mind this thread is after all about employment in IT I thought it might be useful to view matters holistically, with data, of where we stand on employment/unemployment as a whole in our country. CMIE puts out a detail report on this topic (I think each month). The report from October 22 is quoted below.

Employment fell by 7.8 million in October 2022. The count of the unemployed rose by 5.6 million. And about 2.2 million quit the labour markets. The labour force shrunk from 432 million in September to 429.8 million. Employment fell from 404.2 million in September to 396.4 million in October 2022.

The fall in employment was entirely in rural India. But, it was not in agriculture. Employment fell essentially in non-agricultural rural India in October 2022.

I like looking at data rather than opinions. Social media including this thread has too many opinions not backed by data. That's the grumpy old man in me muttering.

Let the context sink in of unemployment in other sectors. 7.8 million jobs lost while IT in India experienced a mini boom over 2020-22. This data speaks to the point @mohanrides makes in his post #624

According to NASSCOM in the period 2020-22 the Indian IT sector created 8.73 lakh jobs {direct & indirect, I believe} that explains the sudden wage spurt, shortage of talent and folks doing double employment. While high profile lay offs have occurred in USA, and risk of recession in Europe is real and some rottenly run Unicorns in India have laid off folks I don't see a mass lay off in India's IT sector yet. The risk is there though.

Looking at the data rather than social media's ever present echo chamber my take to my nephews and nieces {and fellow members on Team BHP} in the IT sector is that your industry is not having a bad time yet so don't waste your energy in chest beating and wailing while remaining alert to rough patches in 2023. In the meantime don't buy that Audi or BMW on EMI till a more stable environment emerges.

The detailed report is here --
https://unemploymentinindia.cmie.com...abnav&tab=4080 and a news article here https://www.newindianexpress.com/bus...s-2515409.html

Originally Posted by androdev

We can cut some slack to the guys who are being opportunistic (or risk taking) and not make a virtue issue out of it. To a large part, this goes with age and it's for the good. Imagine everyone born with infinite wisdom right from childhood - that would be an awful world to live in.

As always you put it so wonderfully. One cannot fault a young person trying to grab opportunity. And at 30 most don't fully get the macro picture. Some don't even at 62 I agree we shouldn't fault the young who take up 50% increases at unicorns. It is simply not possible for a 30 year old to know even be aware of the balance sheet machinations of PE investors, founders, bloated valuations, cashflows. Can't blame the kid.

[am1m]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

I'm no industry expert but I don't quite see any mass layoffs in India yet.

That's true so far, we saw far worse in during the economic crisis of 2008-09. I saw a lot of friends get affected back then.

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

Uncertainty, yes,

I think more than anything, this is a prolonged period of uncertainty. Often see contradictory reports in the media, one will be all doom and gloom, and the next day there will be another one saying India is poised to weather this economic storm. I'd think the experts would agree on at least the broad economic picture, good or bad.

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

We only need to read the WFH thread on Team BHP to see this. The attitudes were especially interesting to those of us who worked from our places of work right through the lock downs.

I don't know about this, so permit me to ask sir, do you mean WFH had something to do with layoffs? I can understand if we are referring to a general attitude where IT employees imagined the good times would last forever and set their expectations based on that. But we've seen that prior to every crisis in the IT industry (I've personally seen it in '01 and '08, where a lot of colleagues took crazy home loans on the belief that a 10% annual hike was a given. And there was certainly no remote work back then!). But remote working as a concept itself seems to be becoming a lightning rod, being blamed for all corporate ills. Some of which are actually down to mismanagement, bad planning, and the general state of the economy. (Just my opinion.)

[Samurai]

Today when I went into Linkedin, this was the first post I saw from someone:

Don't limit your search to MAANG (Meta, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google) companies. There are many fantastic companies out there in terms of:
Pay
Work-life balance
Work culture
Career growth
and a lot more things.

I found a list of 115+ such companies on the basis of their marketplace/field.

Of course, the first company he listed was Ola. Google heaven to toxic hell of Ola is a dramatic shift. But at least one doesn't have to be in the streets.

Originally Posted by kiku007

They went on to claim that this insulates them from any firing in the upcoming months

Actually, this was never true. When the scythe comes out, it cuts deep and it doesn't spare loyalists.

[V.Narayan]

Originally Posted by am1m

I don't know about this, so permit me to ask sir, do you mean WFH had something to do with layoffs? I can understand if we are referring to a general attitude where IT employees imagined the good times would last forever and set their expectations based on that. But we've seen that prior to every crisis in the IT industry (I've personally seen it in '01 and '08, where a lot of colleagues took crazy home loans on the belief that a 10% annual hike was a given. And there was certainly no remote work back then!). But remote working as a concept itself seems to be becoming a lightning rod, being blamed for all corporate ills. Some of which are actually down to mismanagement, bad planning, and the general state of the economy. (Just my opinion.)

I believe @mohanrides was referring to the attitudes especially on social media during the pandemic and the lack of empathy towards folks in other sectors. WFH had nothing to do with the layoffs in USA or with unicorns in India. Lay offs are a function of demand for a company's products and weak resource planning by the top management. WFH is a sub set within means of production. WFH in some limited form is here to stay especially in the service sector. How the IT network security issues will be handled is to be seen. The pandemic saw an exponential increase in IT attacks and incursions due to WFH. So it is a mixed bag - good for some employees* but not always acceptable to employer or most importantly customer. Lightning rod for corporate ills - that dialogue we only see on social media not in the Board rooms.

[androdev]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

One cannot fault a young person trying to grab opportunity. And at 30 most don't fully get the macro picture. Some don't even at 62 I agree we shouldn't fault the young who take up 50% increases at unicorns. It is simply not possible for a 30 year old to know even be aware of the balance sheet machinations of PE investors, founders, bloated valuations, cashflows. Can't blame the kid.

Soon after graduation, I had an offer from Sun Microsystem which was a very prestigious company back then. Not just that it was my dream company as I was using Sun Microsystems computers during my college days and they were very cool. Then a friend of mine referred me to a startup (partly to earn a referral bonus). I met the founder, who now is a very successful businessman and I was floored and signed up. The salary was same or marginally more (those days salaries was not high to begin with) but I was full of excitement and how I would change the world and so on. Most of my seniors and elders advised me to join Sun but I thought I knew better. I wrote to the hiring manager at Sun that I have decided to join this startup. He replied back if he could have a call to discuss to see if there is anything he could do convince me to join them instead. Like a stupid, I wrote a very lengthy and embarrassing letter about how I would be a small cog in a large wheel at Sun whereas I am going to do blah blah amazing things here - also peppered it with some patriotic nonsense. Boy, to this day, I feel cringe when I think of this letter. Thankfully, I lost the email along with my hotmail account.

The only bright side of the taking up the other job was that I met my future wife, not at work though, and it's the best thing that has happened to me (she reads my posts).

I continue to embarrass myself with immature decisions and I don't see an end in sight. I feel encouraged anytime I find I am not alone - what better place to find my tribe than a car forum

[shankar.balan]

Originally Posted by Samurai

Today when I went into Linkedin,

When the scythe comes out, it cuts deep and it doesn't spare loyalists.

LinkedIn is a place where generally one can say almost anything about one’s self and ostensibly get away with it. It appears that frequently depart freely from the truth on LinkedIn.

Ref the Scythe - brilliant imagery there of the Grim Reaper.

This mat come across as a bit cynical but it is true nonetheless.

They say Politics is the last refuge of scoundrels. To take a little inspiration from there, ‘Loud signals of Organizational Loyalty are the last refuge of the otherwise Unemployable’ - in this largely mercenary and self serving world, the concept of ‘organizational loyalty’ in the context of employment, is oftentimes most loudly espoused and touted by the men of straw who are otherwise unemployable and who are merely serving out their time while wearing a pair of ‘golden handcuffs’. In Good times Loyalty is a good buzzword even Organizations like to use. But it generally melts away like a snowball in the sun, when the tough times come.

At the end of the day, the Organization will always do whats right for It. You must always do whats right for You.

The only thing that really matters is ‘Conform and Perform or simply Perish.’

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by Samurai

Meta (FB), Microsoft, Google, Apple, Amazon, Netflix & Twitter. We can come up with any number of acronyms using them in different combos.

Since this confusing many non-IT members, going forward, let's use Big Tech instead of using the alphabet soup.

[libranof1987]

In a statement that actually affects his company (and his wealth) the most (since the year end holiday season = huge ramp up in sales), Bezos asks people to postpone large purchases, and warns that sales for the year end will be lower than Wall Street expectations.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos recently warned consumers and businesses they should consider postponing large purchases in the coming months as the global economy contends with a downturn and faces a possible recession.

The company’s stock has fallen more than 40% as surging prices and changing customer behavior weigh on Amazon and the broader tech sector.

The New York Times reported Monday that Amazon plans to slash its workforce, laying off 10,000 workers, the largest reduction in the company’s history. That’s in addition to a previously announced hiring freeze in its corporate workforce. The company is second only to Walmart in the number of people it employs in the United States.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/14/econo...omy/index.html

[One]

Originally Posted by androdev

The only bright side of the taking up the other job was that I met my future wife, not at work though, and it's the best thing that has happened to me (she reads my posts).

Such rare and refreshing love that she would also invite forum members over for a 7-course meal...

(hope she reads the replies as well)