Information coming in from TCS (and this letter) indicates that mid-level managers and consultants are being targeted for mass layoffs, which was never seen in TCS in recent history. AST or Assistant Consultants with Band D, who have shown little or no improvement in the last 2 years, along with ASOC (Project Managers) who are band C and above, and other middle to higher level managers are those which are in the firing line.
Employees and tech observers are actually surprised with such mass layoffs, considering that TCS is known for ‘job security’. The case become more curious considering that TCS has plans of hiring 35,000+ freshers for 2014-15 session.
A TCS spokesperson recently said: “We continue to be leading recruiters of IT talent across the world, not only in India. In this fiscal year, we have a total hiring target of 55,000 professionals and we are on track to meet it.”
Some employees, on condition of anonymity, revealed that TCS plans to fire mid-level managers who are drawing fat packages and under performing, and replace them with low-cost freshers and train them. Although this is a common practice in more of the IT services companies, firing 25,000-30,000 employees is certainly not normal.
In fact working conditions at TCS are so good that it experiences lowest attrition rates compared to other IT companies, and maybe this can be the reason that ‘old horses’ are being removed in order to shuffle the talent cards.
Another source informed us that broadly speaking, all those employees with more than 8 years of experience (with $70-100 / hour billing rates) and with no assigned projects are immediately fired. In fact, if we believe this source, then there is no issue of projects with TCS; but with costs-cutting as they have decided to get away with ‘excess fat’ and hire freshers on a mass scale to ‘keep the balance’. Scary situation indeed.
Why TCS Firing Is Bad Compared to Yahoo Layoff
In the month of October, Yahoo India fired around 500 employees from their Software Development Center (SDC) in Bangalore. Startups, which are in dire need of talented engineers quickly absorbed this shock, as most of the engineers were hired by them.
However, the case with TCS layoffs is different. Most of those who have been given pink slips are highly paid consultants and managers who have quit programming and chosen managerial positions. Yahoo engineers were programmers and developers, and even with a slight compromise on their annual take-home, they can be hired by start-ups.
But managers and consultants are specialties of MNCs, and a start-ups generally don’t require them.
Employees With Pink Slips Have Tough Road ahead
Most of the TCS employees who are in the line of fire are drawing packages upwards 20 Lakh per annum. They are the ones with 8-12 years experience and have got into a comfort zone.
These professionals are married, with kids – They have a family and mortgages to take care of. With so many people getting fired, the supply for such people is going to far outstrip (if there is) the demand.
They will now have to probably take up jobs with half their salary packages or even worst not get a job at all!
Source : http://trak.in/tags/business/2014/12/22/tcs-employee-firing-pink-slip/
