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Old 2nd August 2019, 13:56   #271
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Originally Posted by Chetan_Rao View Post


One thing a lot of people in IT still don't realize, is changes in IT are akin to the 'boil the frog slowly' metaphor.
Another simile to the IT professional's life is that of a Thanksgiving turkey. You are praised, and fed well till the day you are suddenly killed.
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Old 2nd August 2019, 14:00   #272
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Even before I turned 40 (this year), I've been more or less prepared to be let go at anytime. Not a feeling of insecurity or anything like that, I've just come to realize that that is the nature of the industry.

I started my career during the dot-com bust of 2001 and I've seen (though have been lucky enough...so far...not to be affected by) mass layoffs at every company I've worked at. So much so that I back up any personal stuff on a regular basis and frankly it will take me not more than 10 mins to clear out my desk at work.

Things are going well, I regularly up-skill, and I have no logical reason to expect this, but I am certainly seeing a much younger workforce around me. For the first time I now have a manager who's younger than I am (and I have absolutely no issues with that, we get along great!). Still, it does seem likely that companies are looking for younger people overall, so won't be too surprised if my full-time options dry up in some years. Fortunately I have several freelance opportunities for my skills and role and I think finances will be ok since we have no debt or dependents.

Perhaps it will be a blessing if it does come about and I can find something else to pursue, but for now my rationale is to make hay while the industry is still profitable.

Last edited by am1m : 2nd August 2019 at 14:02.
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Old 21st September 2019, 11:38   #273
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re: Jobs, Attrition & Layoffs in IT companies

I had written an article on job security in Jan 2003 in a now defunct Return2India web forum. It was reposted on Sulekha same year by someone I don't know. It was from a discussion on whether to Return to India (R2I) or Live in America (LIA).

When I read it today, I felt nothing really has changed. I am re-posting job security portion here. I also noticed that my writing style has hardly changed since then.

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First, let’s define the current meaning of job security. This is necessary because the meaning of job security has changed drastically since our parent’s generation. In our parent’s generation, job security basically meant the inability of the employer to fire you unless you screw up big time. Even if you worked for private sector, one never got fired for mediocrity or incompetence. Willful fraud or company bankruptcy was the only way to lose your job. Please note I am not taking about government, public sector, or even unionized jobs into consideration, they still remain the last bastion of the incompetent. These days job security means your ability to remain attractive or valuable to current employer and future/potential employers. And it has to be done in positive ways, not negatively as suggested by one forum member, which is bound to backfire with a smart manager. You can no more relax after bagging a job. Whichever field you are in, you have to constantly update your skills sets to remain competitive with your peers in the work place and job market. This can be done via self-study or continuous education courses or by attaining advanced diplomas or degrees. You can immensely improve your job security by being proactive in your work place, helping others instead of holding back, making yourself more valuable than you are paid. In addition, you should keep in touch with your friends from each of your former companies as much as possible. After a few years in a particular field, one does realize that it is a small world. You’ll have many former colleagues (managers/subordinates/peers) working in various companies in your field. When you do have to look for a job, these connections come in very handy. The impression that they have about your work ethics/competence/performance will be the key in getting your next job. You don’t want them to remember you as an incompetent, primaddona or a manipulative person. Finally, you should never burn bridges, because someday you may want to cross back or need a favor from somebody from the other side of the bridge. This is how one achieves job security in the current environment, and surely not by depending on the mercy of your current manager/employer or a future one.

There are two sides to the job security equation. The first one is what you can control, the one I explained just now. The second one is usually out of your control, which is the job market environment. You have worked in both India and USA, so you can judge for yourself which country has the better work environment for you. We don’t live in a perfect world. When jobs are plenty like in 1999, nobody minds when an outsider partakes in the bounty. However, when economy takes a dive, people won’t be that friendly anymore. I’ve known this all the time, but there was a research report recently which showed that most employers discriminate blacks based on the name on the resume. There was a 50% bias against the blacks, and these are against US citizens and blacks have lived in the country for centuries. The researchers did not include foreign sounding names in their study, if they had, it would have easily shown an 80%-90% bias against the foreign sounding names. Just like how manufacturing jobs left the country during the 80s, lots of service jobs are leaving the county these days.

Many IT companies are also moving Hi-Tech jobs to countries like India. As a technology provider to various BPO operations, I happen to be in a position where I get to see how companies decide where their BPO is done. If the reliability and quality requirements are met, price is the deciding factor. And no company can match the prevailing BPO outsourcing rates using American employees. This can happen to every service industry one by one. I don’t really see an opposing force against this, except some attempts by certain legislators to ban this practice. For example, none of the NJ state outsourcing contracts can be sent overseas. But the companies that benefit from outsourcing overseas have too much stake and fat budget for lobbying. Besides, Americans have gotten used to the low service costs. Therefore, I don’t think they can ever extend anti-outsourcing laws to non-government companies. Basically, in a few years most jobs would go overseas. You may have to compete with regular Americans for whatever jobs that are still left in this country.

Lots of people routinely make long term commitments based on short term situations. Such decisions can be advantageous only in the short term, and that may not remain so in the long term. In the company finance (asset management) area, they have a concept called maturity matching. According to this concept, you should finance short term requirement with short term liabilities (loans) and long term requirements with long term liabilities. You can apply this idea to life too. Just because you have job this year, you can’t plan next 30 years based on that. R2I or LIA is a long term commitment; you have to plan it out with a long term outlook. If you want to LIA, can you ensure your job security (not the old type) for the next 30 years? That’s the question you need to answer. I don’t know what you do and how well you do it, therefore only you can answer this question. When you are young and unmarried, you can be very mobile and take up jobs in any part of the world. As you get married, have kids, buy a house, your mobility grinds to a halt, your options become limited. When you were mobile, almost all of your commitments were short term. However, marriage, kids and house are all long term commitments, which demand long term planning. Therefore, you R2I decision should not be based on your current manager’s generosity to process your GC. Frankly, he can’t guarantee your job security anymore than he can guarantee his own. Can he guarantee you there won’t be any layoffs in a year? These situations are not in the hands of your Manager. It is highly depended on your company’s finances, unless of course one of you is working for the government or one of those tenured jobs. Even government jobs are not so safe these days. A year back Enron employees worked in a successful company with fat 401K funds, now many are jobless and no retirement fund. The old fashioned job security doesn’t really exist in USA unless you have a tenured job. I know a couple where the husband worked for a brokerage through a consulting company. The consulting company processed his GC, and the client company offered to take him as an employee once his GC was processed and once his current contract terminated. Once the GC was processed he bought a house and was all ready for the new job. When his contract ended, the client company decided to freeze all hiring. So, he is still with his consulting company trying to get a new assignment. But, the consulting company is not really interested to get him an assignment since he may leave anytime because of his GC. Therefore, now he has a house, mortgage and no job. He has offers from other states, but because of the house he is not able pickup and move. Therefore, be careful what promises you can depend on.
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Old 1st August 2020, 10:59   #274
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11,000 Techies Have Resigned From TCS, Infosys, Wipro, HCL, Tech Mahindra In Last 90 Days

https://www.indiatimes.com/news/indi...ys-519220.html

Interesting that they decided to resign all at once during the pandemic. Obviously, that is HR speak for terminating by "telling to resign or else".
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Old 1st August 2020, 11:34   #275
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re: Jobs, Attrition & Layoffs in IT companies

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Originally Posted by Samurai View Post
11,000 Techies Have Resigned From TCS, Infosys, Wipro, HCL, Tech Mahindra In Last 90 Days

https://www.indiatimes.com/news/indi...ys-519220.html

Interesting that they decided to resign all at once during the pandemic. Obviously, that is HR speak for terminating by "telling to resign or else".
The after effects of COVID down turn will be more significant in upcoming quarters since most of the contracts these companies have will be long term. The people who are already on bench for some time and may be asked to go during the initial round. So unless the economy picks up there will be large scale retrenchments.


Contrary to normal times, young employees below 30 have been hit hard by COVID related head count reductions. Conversion of interns to full time employees is affected badly in product companies. Startups which employs the younger employee pools have been firing in large numbers or closing down altogether.

Linked In is flooded with numerous job requests from this category of people. The bargaining power has been reduced significantly and salary does not seem to be a concern at all.

Last edited by poloman : 1st August 2020 at 11:43.
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Old 26th August 2020, 18:59   #276
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https://indianflipboard.online/accen...e-termination/

Accenture to fire 5% of its workforce; 10,000 employees in India to face termination

This is huge. Yet, their old habit of giving artificial reasons isn't dying. Just say it is because of the drop in business caused by pandemic. No, instead they say this:

Every year, as part of our performance process, we have conversations with our people about how they are performing, areas for improvement, their potential to progress, and whether they are a long-term fit for Accenture. This year, across all parts of our business and all career levels, we will identify approximately 5% of our people as our lowest performers, and these individuals will transition out of Accenture. This is consistent with our actions each year.

Oh, yeah... totally forgot this a very normal year.

PS: Accenture changed their name from Anderson Consulting about 20 years ago, probably because of the jokes on them for being long winded.

Last edited by Samurai : 26th August 2020 at 19:08.
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Old 26th August 2020, 21:47   #277
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PS: Accenture changed their name from Anderson Consulting about 20 years ago, probably because of the jokes on them for being long winded.
Also because their sister company/branch i.e. Arthur Anderson were Enron's auditors. You'd remember Enron They had to save their bacon.
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Old 26th August 2020, 22:13   #278
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Also because their sister company/branch i.e. Arthur Anderson were Enron's auditors. You'd remember Enron They had to save their bacon.
No, I was just joking. I knew the real reason since I living around NJ at that time, and knew people who worked in AC. The real reason is not Enron scandal. Accenture was renamed because of branding dispute between AA and AC. AA owned the Anderson brand, and AC was making all huge profits. So AC had to pay AA for using the name. Accenture was renamed few months prior to Enron scandal. But most heard about the renaming after the Enron scandal, and thought Enron was the reason.
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Old 26th August 2020, 23:32   #279
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Accenture to fire 5% of its workforce; 10,000 employees in India......
Unless the numbers are off, isn't this usual ? (it has 170k employees in India, 10k is ~5%). To trim non-billable numbers, 5% does seem the norm.
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Old 26th August 2020, 23:56   #280
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Accenture to fire 5% of its workforce; 10,000 employees in India to face termination

This is huge. Yet, their old habit of giving artificial reasons isn't dying. Just say it is because of the drop in business caused by pandemic.
It's actually pretty normal process there. Not just Accenture, even Deloitte does that. I believe they maintain the bell curve and every year bottom 5% are asked to leave. My brother works there since 4 years and every year he has to nominate his least performer, who are put into PIP. It's basically the first step of getting laid off there AFAIR. This year it's making news because of covid. But indeed this is not new for Accenture.

I am no way justifying the process. Infact I am totally against both frequent job-hopping/layoffs.

BTW the job market seems to have opened up August onwards. Lots of interview calls which weren't coming in June/July. Hopefully it gets better for everyone hereon.
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Old 27th August 2020, 00:38   #281
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It's actually pretty normal process there. Not just Accenture, even Deloitte does that. I believe they maintain the bell curve and every year bottom 5% are asked to leave. My brother works there since 4 years and every year he has to nominate his least performer, who are put into PIP. It's basically the first step of getting laid off there AFAIR. This year it's making news because of covid. But indeed this is not new for Accenture.
I agree with this as I have been told to nominate Low performers who were put in PIP and some actually did great and were retained but many were let go due to their consistent bad performance.
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Old 27th August 2020, 01:07   #282
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So... Accenture has been firing 10000 every year in India?
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Old 27th August 2020, 09:34   #283
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So... Accenture has been firing 10000 every year in India?
Not 10k but close (overall strength was not 170k till mid last year). It does cut ~5% every year globally.
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Old 27th August 2020, 09:39   #284
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So... Accenture has been firing 10000 every year in India?
Let us see it like this. Acc has been retrenching 5% of its population every year. However, till last year what they have been doing is to weed away bottom performers (5%) and replacing them with new hires. This year however, replenishment has not been the case since the outlook has been muted. That is the only difference.
As usual ToI has not done its research and has just made its own interpretation of the scenario.
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Old 27th August 2020, 10:34   #285
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So... Accenture has been firing 10000 every year in India?
Surprised that more are not talking about this in India. There is a bloodbath. Some niche profiles may get international offers, but the bulk has been in distress and hiring has gone down like never before. My friends in IIMs (which have better talent than the so called top 5 in the B school list because of the CAT- and I have an MBA from the top 10) are struggling to find jobs in FinTech, E-commerce and even AI and statistics related fields in India. Startups have closed en masse. Hiring has frozen. The fake news media in India are busy focusing on an actor's suicide while the fate of crores of graduates in India is doomed.

I had a belief earlier, and that's reinforced now, that the narrative about employment is dictated by a very limited number of specializations in India. A construction, mechanical or electrical engineer has no scope because citizens have celebrated this VC led explosion in startup investment without any growth in allied fields. In Israel, startups thrive on defense contracts, cyber security and even AgTech. In India, we don't give any respect to manufacturing at all, importing even pizza cutters from the EU. The result is clear. Those in niche fields with very specific software skills are in demand globally, and those with broader skills in manufacturing or marketing or other fields are struggling. But then, an actor's death makes more sense to be on prime time with the greatest TRP than the real plight of the most competent MBA graduates.

Last edited by Chetan_Rao : 27th August 2020 at 12:25. Reason: Typos.
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