[johnjacob]

Originally Posted by hrag

OK, so what's wrong with that? I still don't understand why NASSCOM is under fire here.

If the HR of a company, and that's a big IF, threatened to blacklist you under a skills registry, and you attempt / commit suicide due to whatever reason, the blame lies on the skills registry? Or the organization running it? One that's trying to curb the menace of fake resumes?

You learn something new on this forum everyday

hrag, why don't you re-read the very first post of this thread? Can you really call that ethical behaviour?

Certainly the blame for suicide lies entirely on the employee, but there is no reason to condone the unethical practises of a cartel of companies.

Which is exactly what the national skills registry is. Once you join it, there is no way to have your information ever removed from it (whereas a company is free to leave the registry at any time). There is no way to ensure our information remains in safe hands. There is no way for an employee to change information added to their record by their employer. There is no defined process for an employee to correct any mistakes or errors made by the empanelled background checkers in their record. My first employer has been closed for six years now. I have zero confidence that the background checkers will verify that I worked there, instead they will simply mark that as fake experience.

My last employer had joined the skills registry and mandated all employees to join it as well. I refused, and since they needed me more than I needed them, I was able to get away with it. In future, I will not join any employer that asks me to sign up with the skills registry, as I believe the skills registry is not in my interests. Luckily, it is mostly IT service companies that are in the skills registry, and they would not be my top choice of employer anyway.

And not to talk of the way these service companies blatantly inflate the resumes of their own employees when sending them to a customer.

[spadival]

Originally Posted by hrag

One that's trying to curb the menace of fake resumes?

Maybe IT professionals should start a National registry to name and shame IT companies that "pad" the employee resumes before they are sent to clients!!

Anyway, there is no use for such a registry because most of the top IT companies do it !! LOL. I know for a fact when my colleague's M.Tech degree mysteriously became 2 additional years of IT experience on his resume sent to the clients in UK !! Thankfully, I didn't have a post-graduate degree, so they couldn't pad my resume.

Originally Posted by Mpower

I'm sorry but this is a truly ridiulous statement. It is the hire and fire system.

Thanks for educating me, Read my posts AGAIN, even I know its a hire and fire system. I have stated it before and I am stating it again. I am not questioning whether the layoffs are right or wrong.. but whether they are done in a legally and morally sound manner.

How else would you characterize the situation where the "soon-to-be-ex-employee" is abused on the phone, confined to a room alone for 2 hours, hectored and then given blank papers to sign? This scene seems straight out of a mafia style real estate "deal", except there are no "real" guns used.

Originally Posted by Mpower

HR sometimes gives 2-3 months free salary depending on the person's experience.

Sometimes eh? So they are not legally bound to compensate a permanent employee when his/her contract is terminated abruptly without notice? But then these HR folks will point out that its the employee who has "resigned".. never mind the fact that he/she was forced to resign and hence they are not liable for compensation and are giving away 2-3 months salary only as a "goodwill" gesture.

[Sawyer]

Originally Posted by spadival

Sometimes eh? So they are not legally bound to compensate a permanent employee when his/her contract is terminated abruptly without notice? But then these HR folks will point out that its the employee who has "resigned".. never mind the fact that he/she was forced to resign and hence they are not liable for compensation and are giving away 2-3 months salary only as a "goodwill" gesture.

In most cases in the organized sector, the contractually due notice pay in terms of the letter of appointment is never denied. The 2-3-6 months referred is usually over and above that. I am very sure that none of the recognized players will deny contractual notice pay. Even for termination with cause. A month's salary payment is not a big deal for a company.
People still do not understand that no one has to be forced to resign. They can simply be terminated if in excess of current needs. By giving a termination letter even in India today, as long as the contractual terms of notice pay are met. This is usually one month, for junior appointments. There is nothing either moral or immoral in this entire system, that is the economic model we are switching to. Now one could validly argue about the appropriateness of that model, but in a chosen model, its application by parts of the system cannot be held immoral.
As I said in posts 6 and 8, these resignations are sought in the interest of the departing employee. That is what is so ironic about what is happening in many places, given the spirit of what is being done. Of course, in many cases, the HR guys are just as poorly educated and trained as many engineers today, so they slip up in the execution.
As some one here has remarked, it is something to learn to live with. And be prepared for, regardless of where you work, unless your presence is indispensable to your organization, in its eyes. Even there, if the organization goes bust, the job is still gone.
And while the so called "secure" corporate job environment is changing to this, the buying things and experiences on EMI culture is expanding. In a country that has no safety net for jobless people. Indebtness is like walking a tightrope at the best of times, and now the safety nets are dissolving.
We are going to see a lot more of the resultant messes when some one loses his balance, falls, and hits the ground of hard reality.
What is happening in rural India will spread to the cities.
In addition to all the other lifestyle diseases, now enhanced by the knowledge that job security does not exist anymore.
Welcome to the brave new world of global integration!

[hrag]

Originally Posted by johnjacob

hrag, why don't you re-read the very first post of this thread? Can you really call that ethical behaviour?

I'm quoting the entire first post here. What exactly is unethical here?

The thread initiator assuming and hearing something?

Originally Posted by Superleggera

Vishal Vadav, who was working for Wipro Technologies jumped to death from multi storied Wipro building in Electronics city.

He was on LOP for 3 months and looks like a clear case of forced resignation. Its high time that some Govt. agencies screened all the IT companies induction and resignation/layoff policies. I heard from many of my friends that if thet are on bench for a certain period of time,they have been asked to sign couple of blank papers and if we don’t do that the HR will threaten that his name will be black marked in NASCOMM and he will not get a job ever.

I work with Wipro, and i am ashamed by the moral and attitude of the senior managers and HRs in this company.

May his soul rest in peace.



News: Techie jumps to death

Related article:Sacked Wipro employee alleges harassment - SiliconIndia

The herd mentality on Team-BHP is as bad as the mob mentality one sometimes encounters on our roads

[greenhorn]

@ hrag
Duck test - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

and the circumstances do make it seem so...

[amitk26]

Originally Posted by Spitfire

So its not the employer who pushed the employee to suicide but his own wish to live a better life?

Somehow some people in this thread and many in not cash cow departments of companies ( read HR, General Admin , finance) do believe that pursuit of material well being by a young engineer is crime. Industry captains often say so in various IT publications without quoting the other causes which is setting rot in competitiveness namely inflating capabilities either by padding employee resume of faking past turnkey projects, unrealistic billing rates and inflated project costs which ensure their own well being and root cause of client distrust.

Originally Posted by hrag

OK, so what's wrong with that? I still don't understand why NASSCOM is under fire here.

If the HR of a company, and that's a big IF, threatened to blacklist you under a skills registry, and you attempt / commit suicide due to whatever reason, the blame lies on the skills registry? Or the organization running it? One that's trying to curb the menace of fake resumes?

You learn something new on this forum everyday

OK let me try to phrase what is wrong here
(1) This is invasion of privacy and is possible in India due to lax privacy laws.
(2) This is not out of choice but by force from certain employers.
(3) The worker subscribing to this service can not delete the profile once created and has no voice against malicious data provided by employers.
(4) There is no transparency in the process. No information is sent out to the person that his profile is being branded as fake and no chance is given to him/her to explain things.

(4) Suppose a person faked his resume once in his carrier and then he corrects himself down the line , This registry leaves no scope for correction. A resume is branded fake on whims and fancy of people operating this system.
No one fancy being Amitabh Bacchan with "mera baap chor hai ' being branded on forearm.

Originally Posted by Mpower

All the so called analysis are absolutely WRONG. The young man died because of lack of family support and lack of good advice from friends. When your life kicks mud in your face, you turn to your support system which looks like it was missing for this lad. 90 replies and nobody has hit on this simple fact. There are people with wife and kids that have lost everything and their shirt in business. This is nothing.

If I was in his place, I would have thrown the paper on the HR's face and moved on with my life.

I think you do realize from the original posts that the suicide happened in the office premises and young man was atleat 1750 Km away from his family. So he had no access to his friends and family at the time of incidence. One of the function of HR department is to counsel and provide guidance to employees and they failed in this case.

Originally Posted by Mpower

I'm sorry but this is a truly ridiulous statement. It is the hire and fire system. HR sometimes gives 2-3 months free salary depending on the person's experience. If you slack off all year and not study, are you going to blame the person who gives you the final exam report-card that says that you failed.

I am sorry but this is not free salary it is called severance package and in the places where hire and fire policy is followed , Severance package needs to be budgeted for.
IT and ITES sector is exempted from labour laws ( now extended for 2 more years) but for rest of the industry Indian laws do not follow hire and fire policy thus severance package is not mandated untill a company is winding up.

Companies do force to resign in order to save the 2-3 months salary . It may look paltry to you but when workforce in order of 23000 people has to be reduced as in case of Wipro it is a big money.
The 2-3 months salary is not free salary as you say but severance package. This 'Lala' mentality of Indian companies is the real issue.
In case you do not know, A company which is in deep finencial trouble like Motorola had severance package of 3 months of salary for every year of service in organization up to 8 years max. ( That is 24 months max in India) This is the reason no one heard suicides in Motorola India or Motorola worldwide despite workforce being reduced from 105000 at its peak to around 20K now .
I do not see why Indian companies sitting on mountains of cash can not announce downsizing openly and properly

Pleasenote At no point Motorola touted it as free money.

Originally Posted by Sawyer

In most cases in the organized sector, the contractually due notice pay in terms of the letter of appointment is never denied. The 2-3-6 months referred is usually over and above that. I am very sure that none of the recognized players will deny contractual notice pay. Even for termination with cause. A month's salary payment is not a big deal for a company.

This is not correct please do some more research on this.
Also I could not find any provision for severance package in Wipro quarterly statements issued to shareholders for Q1-09 ( not checked Q2 09 )
Some 23000 people have resigned or forced to resign from this company and they are surely saving money and bad press by forcing resignations rather then layoff.

Originally Posted by Sawyer

People still do not understand that no one has to be forced to resign. They can simply be terminated if in excess of current needs. By giving a termination letter even in India today, as long as the contractual terms of notice pay are met. This is usually one month, for junior appointments.

It will be good if the HR people of these organization stop thinking what is good for people and let them decide on their own. In many cases if a company closes down or there is a mass downsizing no stigma is attached.
But companies like Wipro , TCS and Infosys love the inflating stock prices and to keep equity analysts happy are very reluctant to accept the adverse business conditions.
In the press releases the layoff's are always linked to performance rather then economic cycle and thus any resignation without a better option in hand or layoff is a stigma.

Contractual term is same as the notice period during the heydays of industry when aspiration was high companies for forcing 3 months notice period now it is firing back.

[diabloo]

Originally Posted by Mpower

The young man died because of lack of family support and lack of good advice from friends. When your life kicks mud in your face, you turn to your support system which looks like it was missing for this lad. 90 replies and nobody has hit on this simple fact.

People have hit better reasoning than this. Lack of family because they are far away. Lack of friends since he was new to the city. Now who do you blame?

[spadival]

Originally Posted by Sawyer

Of course, in many cases, the HR guys are just as poorly educated and trained as many engineers today, so they slip up in the execution.

So have these poorly educated and trained HR guys (and gals) been fired or better still, asked to "resign" from their jobs for poor performance??

Originally Posted by Sawyer

And while the so called "secure" corporate job environment is changing to this, the buying things and experiences on EMI culture is expanding. In a country that has no safety net for jobless people. Indebtness is like walking a tightrope at the best of times, and now the safety nets are dissolving.
We are going to see a lot more of the resultant messes when some one loses his balance, falls, and hits the ground of hard reality.

I cant speak for others, but I have bought 2 cars with my own money, bought an apartment (with a home loan of course) when it was considered to be a depreciating asset and promptly sold it when people expected real estate prices to double every 2 days. All this on a very average salary, considering that I worked the better part of my career for that bastion of kanjoozi, called TCS . Coming to TCS, their corporate behavior is despicable at best. Even at the best of times (boom boom time), they paid lower salaries compared to the industry average and when the recession comes in, they are the first to cut back on salaries, and start laying off people.

With regard to safety net, you can hardly depend on an IT job to provide you a safety net. In fact, I hate that word "depend".. The only real safety net is yourself, your skills and abilities and your family.

[johnjacob]

Originally Posted by hrag

I'm quoting the entire first post here. What exactly is unethical here?

It is staring you in the face.

if they are on bench for a certain period of time,they have been asked to sign couple of blank papers and if we don’t do that the HR will threaten that his name will be black marked in NASCOMM and he will not get a job ever.

How can this be legally or ethically unjustified?

This statement may be hearsay, but I and many others have heard the same thing, and in many cases from reliable sources. So I don't think you can question its validity.

But anyway, you don't seem to be questioning its validity, only trying to justify it.

[hrag]

All hearsay, johnjacob. I can question any statement's or hearsay's validity and so can you.

[benbsb29]

Originally Posted by johnjacob

And not to talk of the way these service companies blatantly inflate the resumes of their own employees when sending them to a customer.

Tell me about it! The company i worked for initially, when informing the client of the experience of the team members mentioned almost all as above 2 years of being with the company, while the bitter truth was that almost everyone in the team was a fresher! This was the very first project that we were involved in.

When the client visited the offshore team, we were briefed by our managers about the experience we should quote in our interactions with the client. During one such interaction, one teammate blurted out that this was the first project for a lot of us. He was literally doomed, and ended up having to leave the company a few months later, as his feedback talks became quite predictable, he didnt even have to try.

Soon the client became quite aware of the tamasha that they got involved with. This coming from the company which claims to be 'Driven by values'. I'm sure i neednt say more.

[Spitfire]

Originally Posted by benbsb29

This coming from the company which claims to be 'Driven by values'. I'm sure i neednt say more.

Oh Infosys. Why dont we name the companies here. Why the hush hush... . Oye Infosys head honchos looking at these lines - you cant do JACK... LOL..

[Gansan]

I read an interview of the chief of Patni Computers (if I remember right) some years back. He mentioned about how the (then) chief of a very much value/integrity based company, who was earlier working for this man, took away a lot of employees as well as clients when he left to start his own outfit. He rued this fact and questioned what kind of integrity that was! Very sarcastic, but very good point too.

[Samurai]

One doesn't name companies to escape google search. So it is better to say IT company that owns more real estate than it ever needs in 100 years or founded by people who are simple even by middle class standards, etc.

[amitk26]

Originally Posted by hrag

All hearsay, johnjacob. I can question any statement's or hearsay's validity and so can you.

Leave aside Hearsay @hrag till now my comments were not specific to WIPRO but I did some analysis of WIPRO numbers and there is a strong correlation with the hearsay.



Disclaimer: I am no way for or against WIPRO my analysis on number of employees is based on reports available in public domain. By providing numbers below I am not trying to prove that any alligations against WIPRO are true but I do see a corelation between numbers and hearsay

read this first :

Wipro says bye to advance campus recruitments - CIOL News Reports

WIPRO had 7000 Recruitment from Campus in 2008 which are being accommodated in 2009

Now read this report from Angel broking. Angel broking is a firm doing stock analysis and is in no way related to employees.


Wipro stock (NSE:WIPRO; BOM:507685) price target is Rs487 by Angel Broking

Quoted from the report

"Wipro’s net employee addition in its IT and BPO Businesses stood at 711 in 1QFY2010. While the small number is not a surprise, given the as-yet uncertain business environment, this is better than Infosys and TCS, both of which had recorded net declines in their employee bases of 945 and 2,119, respectively. Wipro’s total employee headcount in its IT Services Businesses stood at 98,521 at the end of the quarter. The voluntary attrition rate stood at 8.4% in Global IT Services, while in BPO Services attrition stood at 14% quarterly. The attrition rate in Wipro Infotech stood at a low 7.4%."

Now key here is to match these two numbers,

Do you really think the 8.4 % , 14/% and 7.4% net attrition in various arms of WIPRO ( that is after absorbing the numbers for approx 7000+ fresh recruits) are voluntary as stated by Wipro to Financial analysts ?

As no separate employee figure for 3 arms of Wipro are provided so taking a mean figure of 9.93% and factoring in 7000 new campus recruits the total number of employees leaving should be approximately 16,000.


As the economic environment and probability of finding another suitable job does not match with WIPRO voluntary attrition figure the number seems to be fudged and it matches the hearsay.

What is the reason that WIPRO wants to break attrition as voluntary and involuntary ? The reason is not hard to understand the desirability of company as employer of choice depends on the past record and WIPRO does not want to show that all attrition is involuntary. It translates to goodwill which is shown on the balance sheet as well.