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.
Immediately escorting fired employees out of the building is an extremely aggressive signal, and I don't know if it gets used much outside of USA.
It's possible to do layoffs in a completely different way, but it takes time and management patience. When Nokia fired thousands of employees back in 2011-13, they created a program called Bridge that offered former employees seed money to create startups, and even the possibility to negotiate for a spin-off license of IP assets created at Nokia:
It seems that the program was a success by any measure. Nokia is still around and doing better than in a long time, after shedding the mobile phone albatross to Steve Ballmer for an inflated price.
I won't give too much details, but basically it was this:
Bigwig liked me.
Guy directly under bigwig, was my theoretically boss.
back then I didn't understood office politics, and kept communicating with bigwig directly, because project was his idea, and his coding style was similar to mine (when he used to code) so he understood what I was doing.
I made a genuine screwup due to mental illness (now treated), guy under bigwig fired me.
I complained to bigwig on the same day, he unfired me.
I still had screwed up though... so bigwig gives me some deadline to fix my stuff.
Some weeks later, about 3 days before deadline, bigwig had to take a business trip...
So guy under bigwig shows up, tell me to show him "now" the project, since I was counting on using all the days on the deadline, it wasn't ready, so he tells me I failed and I was fired.
I tried to argue, and find bigwig... but he didn't let me, instead he made me get escorted out of the building, I didn't even got to clean my desk (like 2 years later a co-worker that grabbed my stuff returned them to me when we went to the same event).
Of course I still tried to contact bigwig, but I just wanted to ask my stuff back. Found out that they deleted my e-mail, blocked my personal e-mail from their server, reception stonewalled me (kept giving me obvious excuses to not pass on my call to anyone), banned me from the building (that had other companies too but...) and so on.
And that is how I found out the hard way how office politics work...
But, seriously, in some views the day the screwup happened was the day to leave. Sometimes we seriously overstay our welcome. The 'bigwig' had no business overriding the manager in charge at all.
Anecdote: I had to terminate a contractor; he said "ok, I understand, can I just send a quick email to say goodbye?", so I let him walk back to his desk where he typed for a minute.
Few minutes later we realised he had run "rm -rf" on the central source code repository.
Restored from backup in a couple of hours, but I'll never repeat that experiment.
I've seen this happening in the UK to around 40 colleagues at 10am one day. I'm assuming it's because it's a sensitive job information-wise so one is not allowed to touch his computer anymore. I've heard non-contractors still get paid the missing weeks as per their contract, they're just not allowed in the building. It's miserable, by the way. The mood continues in a low for months when it happens.
I was working for an famous US company in their Romanian offices. When I resigned nobody escorted me out of the premises.
And that's:
- in a developing country
- in a country not known for its excellent reputation regarding fraud, corruption, theft, etc.
- as an employee holding the "keys to the kingdom" (access to multiple production environments, admin level access to source control systems used by 90% of the company's products, etc., etc.)
I know that I wasn't fired, I resigned, so things are not quite the same, but people who were fired got the same treatment. Just leave the company stuff behind, pack your personal stuff and leave at date X.
That's the reason - you resigned. You knew for weeks or maybe months that you will be going away, it was not a surprise to you that it will be your last day at work, if you wanted to sabotage your employer you would to it before informing them about resignation. It's totally different the other way around especially when highly sensitive data is involved (like credit cards) or if you have keys to the kingdom. Some people have instant urge for revenge after firing talk. That's why companies that don't know theirs employees well or don't trust them, are escorting them immediately out of the building "just in case". I agree that it shouldn't be like that but sometimes, if you are not sure how employee will react is better to be save than sorry.
>Immediately escorting fired employees out of the building is an extremely aggressive signal, and I don't know if it gets used much outside of USA.
I saw that in Moscow in 2008 (one big investment bank fired several guys from our team in 20-30 minutes in front of my eyes). It was very unusual. They did now allow a fired person to touch his computer after firing him.
My buddy was in his cubicle, then the network went down. Everybody was standing in the aisles chatting about it, milling around, and HR showed up. Read a list of names, got them in a group, escorted them out of the building. Then the network came back up. Back to work!
Years ago, I was a consultant onsite at my client, a high street bank, they were going through layoffs, my contact there had stashed a bottle of champagne and some paper cups in his desk, his plan was when they called his name, he would pour everyone a cup before going to meet his fate.
He was the only one who didn't get called... Neither of us could stop laughing...
This happened to one of my colleagues working in an Indian IT company. Instead of security, it was his manager who escorted him out. There was nothing sensitive about his project either.
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.
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.
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."
I'm in the US, and on a contract sure, as a contractor I was once told 7 weeks before that my contract was not being continued (new CIO put a freeze on all new hiring/contracts/contract extensions while they evaluated workload). That contract had already been extended twice.
Also once, as an employee not a contractor, I was laid off and while I was given time to say some farewells to colleagues I was politely asked not to attempt to log in. I had worked there long enough that I received 6 months severance pay so I had time to get another job.
FWIW, All of my career has been in the American mid-west in "employment at will" states. I've never been asked to sign a contract as an normal employee.
While a company has to give you a few weeks notice in Germany (unless you're fired without notice because stole something etc.), they can simply send you home with pay if they don't need you anymore or don't want to let you near sensitive data. I've seen multiple people who were fired and told to clean their desks and go home (but they weren't escorted out). But a least they got some paid time off to search for a new job.
Are you sure that's not because it is unusual for an IT specialist in Poland to be fired in the first place? Most of the time it is an employee giving notice because he's got a better offer elsewhere, not being laid off.
I've actually seen such thing in Poland for a DB admin - the guy was asked to come to his manager's office where he was told that he's fired, and other admins used that time to change all the production DB passwords.
It's mostly a US (not American, America is a continent after all) thing.
In Latin America getting laid off means being called to HR in the morning around 10:00am and getting told "you're being let go, please clean out your desk, fill in your boss on any pending work and finish your workday"
I've only seen one person escorted out of the building in the US way and that was because he was stealing corporate info.
American refers to people form the United States in colloquial language across the globe, so the person you replied to was correct in their use of American.
In the US, regardless of the way things are handled in terms of escorting/not escorting ppl out of the building - you do typically get 2 more paid weeks unless you were terminated for stealing etc. Some union employees get severance packages far exceeding the 2 paid weeks period.
Someone is losing their job unexpectedly. Nearly everyone spends too much of their income and saves too little for retirement/emergencies, so losing your job unexpectedly can have devastating financial consequences. Even bouncing back and finding another job could set your retirement back years if it doesn't happen quickly enough, and ruin your credit if you don't have appropriate savings.
I don't think there's a way to make it "more human." The opposite extreme of your scenario is bringing everyone (either on site, or everyone getting laid off) into a room and break the news in one shot. I've had coworkers who have been laid off in the "put everyone in a room" way. 60 people told at the same time their position had been eliminated, leave their badge at the door on the way out. That's not any less cold. I'd argue individually telling folks is better. It lets people have an emotional reaction if they need to, and not have to worry about the other dozens of people around them.
If you need to lay off many people at once, there is no good way to do it.
"Nearly everyone spends too much of their income and saves too little for retirement/emergencies, so losing your job unexpectedly can have devastating financial consequences."
UK: in larger organisations (I mean big enough to have more than say 20 employees being made redundant) there is a consultation process that lasts a month or can last up to three months depending on the number of people being made redundant. There is a process that has to be kept to and there is a statutory minimum amount of redundancy pay [1] as well as payment in lieu of notice. Redundancy payments are tax free up to a limit
The result is in my experience less secrecy (consultation period) and some sort of financial safety net, at least a few months worth.
Interpersonal relationships can become 'interesting' during this period, but deliberate vandalism would be self-selection for redundancy and possible criminal action. Management become very 'correct' - to the extent of external 'consultants' sitting in on meetings and taking notes - and you can bet on morale being significantly impacted during and for up to a year after a long consultation.
As pointed out below, the consultation period is before those being made redundant are (officially) selected. In large organisations - for extra fun - you have things called 'redundancy pools' based around areas of work or grades that all share a risk of redundancy but only (e.g.) 5 out of 25 will actually be made redundant. I should also point out that larger orgs often offer voluntary redundancy at enhanced terms within given 'pools' - unions where they exist will often bargain for enhanced terms.
Not a pleasant time but does give people weeks/months to find something else and take what financial precautions they can - and perhaps decide that 'VR' (voluntary redundancy) is possibly attractive. Yes, you do lose good people sometimes.
Severance just accelerates the firing process. If you've got to provide 3 months severance, you're laying people off at least 3 months sooner than you otherwise would. I'm sure there have been companies contemplating layoffs that have been able to just barely make numbers to avoid it.
Not arguing against severance just saying that "well throw some money at them" doesn't necessarily make it any better.
It does not make it better for the companies, but it does make it MUCH better for the employee, as they now have 3 months to find a job before having to dip into any savings, retirement, or make painful phone calls to creditors looking for payment forgiveness and other things
Companies generally do not tell you 3 mos in advance you are being laid off, so if there is no severance then you are blind sided and are instantly with out income
I would much rather my layoff come 3mos sooner and have 3 months to look for a job before having no income, then been "allowed" to continue to work 3 months longer with no severance
Because people feel strength in numbers and don't beat themselves up that only THEY are being let go. If all those other people are being fired - including Bob over there who (50% chance) worked harder than me - then it's not my fault.
There are some valid reasons for it. It's sad the way that it happens, but I've been there on occasion where they didn't do that. One stats guy decided he was angry that it happened . . . . he started deleting all the loss curve data we needed off of the network. There was a hurry to stop him which resulted in the network staff having to unplug all the cables from the routers. Hours of having to put the cable back in and who know how much work was lost.
It is. If it ever crosses (generic-you) your mind to do that, don't. The revenge is very unlikely to be worth the very significant legal risk you are incurring. Stick to tradition and bad-mouth them with friends at a bar.
or start a rival company and put them out of business, by slowly taking away all their main clients and then winning a case in court overturning the noncompete agreement using legal precedents in your state.
What you need to do immediately before informing an employee that you are letting them go is revoke their access to critical systems and/or disable their accounts. That way, you can allow them to go back to their desk and say their goodbyes to their coworkers without risking them doing silly stuff like delete data.
This leads to people who are sick finding out before they are fired, that they are fired. Happened at a client's place a couple years ago, they letting go of all the senior sysadmins, killed their credentials, then fired them. 2 of the admins were out sick, and they lost their email, and their access to the monitoring tools.
When the employees came in, they were escorted by "guards" to get their stuff, and not allowed to say goodbye to anyone. That said, they were allowed in the next day as a guest with no issues.
Company's assume the worst of people so they put in all these policies and procedures instead of treating adults like adults. If the adult decided to delete something. Charge them with a crime. I would go ahead and guess that no one that was laid off in that time would have done something so brazen.
Last I had lunch with any of them, they were doing better in their new gigs. More money or freedom.
Let me clarify: the type of procedure I suggested requires close collaboration between HR, legal, IT and the department the employee is in, and it requires careful execution. That can ensure that employees are not terminated while they are out sick, among other things.
For example:
It's Friday afternoon. HR calls department manager and asks them if Bob is currently at his desk. Department manager confirms.
HR then asks department manager to ask to have a quick chat with Bob, and to notify HR immediately before that meeting starts. Department manager arranges this with Bob, who is wrapping up another meeting.
15 minutes later, department manager sends an email or IM to HR saying he/she and Bob are about to head over to the meeting room, where Bob will be fired.
HR confirms, then contacts the IT department and asks them to immediately revoke Bob's access to all critical systems. (The procedure for this will be established well in advance, and documented. Ideally a script will make this a single-click operation.)
In the meeting, Bob finds out that he is being let go at the end of the day, and told that he can spend the remainder of his time at the office saying goodbyes and maybe even writing a goodbye email to his coworkers if he chooses to do so. He is explicitly instructed to BCC his manager and HR in that email. He is also made aware, both verbally and in writing, that his access to all other systems has been revoked, and even attempting to use those systems will alert HR and result in him immediately being escorted out.
--
Of course you also need strict policies such as "employees cannot use their personal email addresses when signing up for products and services on behalf of the company." That way if you fire someone you don't lose access to critical systems. Have a shared email for each department that is used for that purpose.
Or, you just ghost people. Walk in one day and your badge doesn't work. Or you somehow get in and you can't log on "sorry ma'am can't find you in the system here".
Didn't Twitter do something like that recently?
Although, begrudgingly I agree that it's something that should probably be done if you know somebody is being let go.
This happened to me once. I was not allowed in the building so I called a colleague to bring me in as a visitor. Upon trying to login, "account has been disabled". Called IT, "you've been fired". Called my line manager, "I have no idea what you're talking about". Turns out someone forgot to extend my contract on the system.
Last layoff I saw happen (I survived), they emailed the people being layed off and told them to meet in a conference room. So as all of them got up, they noticed the rest of us staying. We all instantly knew. 15 minutes later, they all come walking back to get their personal items with armed security guards patrolling (maybe a dozen).
I started looking for my next job that day. I don't want to work for a company that does that to people. Yes, layoffs happen, but 1) NO management got layed off. 2) Treating people like this during the layoff (armed guards, herding them into a room together), is just disgusting.
They hired them just to monitor the situation. The people there could not have been a more docile bunch if you drugged them, which made it all the more painful to watch.
One company I worked for had people come to meeting room 1 or 2. When room 2 was full they locked the door, opened the fire escape and told those people they were laid off and to leave now...
Even without abandoning a generally capitalist framework you can impose restrictions on what corporations can do. Even among countries with a capitalist system the American system is unique in how easy it is to fire people.
Or you need a revolution to overthrow the totalitarian regime(s). Just saying, there's always options, just depends on how motivated you are to change things.
I once had a manager get into a fist fight with the engineer he was laying off. The HR manager was in the room at the time.
When management gets together to decide how to handle the notice, the legal department weighs in and says that you have to handle all notices in the same way so you don't create any discrimination liability, and, you have to anticipate the worst case situation where the employee becomes violent.
So you wind up with security escorting the just-fired employees out of the building.
It's because as far as the company is concerned, the employee and his neighbor are replaceable commodities, with their replacements able to handle their work with minimum business impact. That is how it is in most of the roles in most of the IT companies in India. They are in the services field, not the innovation or product or value addition field.
In industries where the company values the employee, this hardly happens. Of course I am excluding employees who have considerable access or reach, who can cause significant business impact, ex. financial sector.
But, whatever the company thinks of it's employees, it's a good practice to not humiliate the employee. Suing also doesn't work in India. So a service job in the IT sector is only a slight degree away from bonded labor.
Call a company meeting. Tell everyone who is staying to sneak out before hand and not attend the meeting. Lay off everyone at the meeting while you lock them out of their computers. Do this on the last day of the month so nobody has insurance the next day.
I've seen this in other countries, where the person asked to leave had authority over outgoing payments, trades, contract signing, critical systems access, etc. that sort of thing.
If you terminate such a person without some preparation, they can go back to their desk and do mischievous things. That's the idea behind this.
The best way is for the company to tell in a few lines that this is all they can do due to market pressure and any possible helps they can offer over mail. Its pointless to call in to a room and deliver through hr which creates unease to both humans.
I think the problem is with the ubiquity of firearms in the USA; you want to escort someone out of the building before he/she tilts and starts shooting other people, starting from the manager that just threw them under the bus...
Most US businesses prohibit employees from bringing firearms to work, usually when there is an office shooting the fired employee has returned, often days later, for his revenge. Really does not impact the day of dismissal.
Laws vary from state to state, and sometimes even between jurisdictions within a state. In Nebraska for example, yes I can get the permit, but the law governing that permit says that any private property owner may prohibit persons from carrying on their property by simply posting this sign: https://statepatrol.nebraska.gov/vimages/shared/vnews/storie... . If I want to be a law abiding gun owner I have to respect that (despite the fact that it is silly), otherwise I could have the permit revoked, and possibly face other legal repercussions.
It falls under the same umbrella as trespassing. You have permission to remain on private property within set rules.
From a legal point of view, it’s no different to “no shirt no service”.
(yes, even with a permit. I have a government-issued license to operate a couple of classes of motor vehicle. You're perfectly entitled to forbid me from doing so on your property.)
I once worked at a place where a few of the guys organized an informal "bring your gun to work day" each week, where we'd go target shooting after work. Well at some point corporate got wind of it and, of course, freaked out and banned it. We had enough people who objected to the ban to make a stink of it (I hesitate to say we were "up in arms over it"), and eventually after negotiation we agreed to keep everything locked up in our cars in the parking lot.
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).
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).
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.
>>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.
> 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.
Hmmm ... at $dayjob-1, I watched one of the major Indian IT houses take over a large US companies infrastructure in the interests of cost savings. Driven in large part by your standard gaggle of very expensive (and often clueless) big name consulting firms.
The net result is that this former customer took a system that worked well, and replaced it with a system that doesn't. Add in frequent outages, "core team" changes on the IT side, and on the customer side (they fired all their internal developers and most of their support) ...
... This would make for a compelling "do not try this at home, kids" type case study. Somewhere in there, the expensive consultants made some other egregiously bad statements to the customer, resulting in a disastrous policy with regard to their core analytics.
I give them another 2 years before they reverse course and fire the IT firm and the consultants.
From my personal experience, the money you "save" is rarely worth the headaches associated with this. Call it a Pyrrhic victory. It looks like you are saving money. You really aren't.
This said, and going back to the OPs point, this change was inevitable. Automation is going to wipe out low level jobs in this space, and the most at risk are those whom have not adapted. The Indian IT firms have not adapted.
I'm guessing a lot of companies that offshore are going for cost savings and many of those wouldn't spend much on training anyway. India really needs to focus on product development to move up the value chain. Look at South Korea as an example. Practically half the electronic gadgets we buy come from there.
I'm seeing a move to eastern Europe from India for support level work. The time zone and language barriers are much easier there than India as well as the cost structures are inline generally.
Also culture. Seriously don't underestimate culture. In Eastern Europe/Russia "no" means "no" (and is often followed with "why are you asking me to dumb things" or "are you stupid?". In India, they have 200 different ways of saying "yes", with only a few of them actually meaning something along the lines of getting the things you need done actually done.
This isn't a slight, it is simply culture. There are many cultures where saying "no" is rude or offensive. Unfortunately, this is very difficult to translate remotely, and requires a long time of cultural assimilation.
I manage a lot of "offshore" staff, and have done for about 10 years now. I'll have the Eastern Europeans/Russians any time, also because frequently the outright or muttered "are you stupid?" is followed by a "here is how you should do this", which many times turns out to be a good way doing what I want done.
My team can call me stupid as much as they like, if it results in a better product/service.
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.
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.
One can forego severance in the worst case. But in India, the companies won't give us service certificate if we don't dance to their tunes. This certificate is required for the next job.
To elaborate on your point, and to seek a little clarity on what's going on here...
The severance deal thing is kind of like a bonus for helping make the transition easy... you can forego the bonus and "stick it" to your employer, but it won't necessarily affect your future employment opportunities.
I assume the certificate thing is like a proof of employment? So HR saying "Play by our rules or we'll do everything in our power to make your life difficult" is coercive and should be illegal if it isn't already.
This certificate is also important during Visa interviews. The Offer Letter, Appointment Letter, and Relieving letter - all these three are important documents that the next company insists upon. Then there is the whole dance around getting the Form16 (Tax Assessment) document, the Gratuity (an amount given after spending a defined number of years) and EPF (related to pension) amounts.
While it does little good for me to say it, that is something that probably needs to change. Failure to do this could lead to some skewing of labor markets. It is in the same category as taking the passport of a foreign worker and indentured servitude.
That was labor and environmental and capital control arbitrage, plus subsidy from the government for utilities. (Now there is legitimate supply chain advantage in the area while other advantages are vanishing, though.)
It is interesting that he mentions Western protectionism. Those of us in the trenches know that oursourcing rarely works in practice but for that part of the management that is in charge of the outsourcing program, after moving on to greener pa$tures. His successor usually receives the blame for later failures.
>> but for that part of the management that is in charge of the outsourcing program, after moving on to greener pa$tures.
But that is outsourcing "working". that is the intended goal of those managers, to aid themselves not the company not the employees but personal advancement
A lot of jobs were meant to be automated. Jobs (actually the work itself and the tasks invilved) generally go through phases. Phase 1 is to find cheaper ways to do the same thing and Phase 2 is automate that thing.
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.
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.
It didn't read to me like the parent was blaming anyone; just stating that this should come as no surprise. Management outsourced jobs to India to cut costs; if they find a way to cut costs cheaper than outsourcing to India then that is what management will do.
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.
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?
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
> If there are no lower level positions for people to take on, how will the masses work their way up and improve?
I agree with that. First time I thought about it was when Obama said we don't want those low skilled jobs. I felt that was too broad a statement. Don't we want all levels of jobs to enable people to enter at any level? For me, it was hard to go through school all at once with confidence that I would enjoy my job afterwards. I found I preferred to go to school for a bit, then work, then go back, then work again, then go back to studying again to refine my focus, interest area, and be able to follow current trends. In order to follow this pattern I needed to first experience a bit of low skilled manual labor.
Maybe everyone doesn't need to do that but I found it helpful.
That's kind of the issue with automation in general. Its funny to see the 'fuck you we're automating jobs/art/literally everything' coming from a subgroup of an industry that is apparently now cannibalizing itself through automation.
Of course you can make a very strong argument that they should have never hired techies for things so easily automated. I suspect we don't see this in the west because there is a tendency to simply automate from the outset due to the high cost of labor.
"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.
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.
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?
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It's pretty paltry in the US. You can't take social security until 65 (I think it's 67 now). You get unemployment but it's administered at the state level and in most states it caps out at under $800 a month, but it's been a while. A moderate mortgage is twice that.
Also, we get our health benefits from companies and not the government, so as soon as you are laid off, all your health benefits are no longer paid by the company. You can pay for it yourself, but with a family, it's easily over $1000 a month with even meager health insurance.
Welfare is hugely capped as are food stamps. You can only be on them for so long and it's such a social stigma in the US, most newly fired people don't even consider it.
On top of that, US companies don't like hiring people who have been laid off. They think something along the lines of "well if they got laid off there, there must be a reason." It's ironic because layoffs are generally the fault of the leadership, yet the workforce takes the blame. Corporate leadership likes to think they are there for a reason too and therefore infallible.
I never thought I'd be playing the, "who has the worse government." between the US and India. Honestly I thought India would be better at social protections than the US is, simply because every modern country is better than the US is.
All that said, I'm sorry to hear India is going through this. It really sucks. We have the highest percentage of people who gave up looking for work than we've had for a long time (if ever). It will taint your workforce for years to come. The US still hasn't gotten over it and it's been going on full force for 20+ years now.
>>You get unemployment but it's administered at the state level and in most states it caps out at under $800 a month, but it's been a while.
My state is 50% of your pay upto ~$1,500 a month, this seems to be about the average, i can find no state that under $800, the lowest is Mississippi coming in at $940
That depends on where you live, using Mississipi as an example, the average home is $113,000 with a traditional mortgage the payment would be $576 no where near the $1,600 you caim is a "moderate mortgage"
In my area in the midwest the average home is closer to $150,000 however that still would not be a $1,600 mortgage
That would be about a $360,000 mortgage, almost double the national average home price
>>On top of that, US companies don't like hiring people who have been laid off.
This has largely been disproved as a myth or as out dated thinking, that may have been the case 20 or more years ago, but I do not believe that is the case today
>The US still hasn't gotten over it and it's been going on full force for 20+ years now.
The US still has not gotten over it but it has not "been going full force" for 20 years, far from it.
Government Intervention in the market, and various other factors masked some systemic problems, in the attempt to prevent more damage the government and other actors have simply band aided over the problems that are now a festering infection just waiting to be exposed
has the actual maximum weekly benefit numbers...yes, Mississippi is the lowest at a maximum of $235/w.
Benefits are usually for up to 26 weeks (some states are less.)
Note though--
1. This is the max state benefit you can receive. Roughly speaking, If you earned less than 104 times that the prior year you will get less.
2. They can deduct/delay benefits if you are receiving severance (depends on the state)
3. If you earn anything (get a part-time job, or some contract work,) while receiving benefits, that will be deducted. (Exactly how depends on the state).
4. You don't get benefits if you resigned or were fired for cause.
5. You have to be actively seeking work (so no vacation to recharge your batteries after being laid off....they can and do check travel records.)
6. Job search costs and paying for the full costs of healthcare is usually in excess of what you will get in State benefits.
1. Yes and the claim I was refuting was the MAX was less than $800 per month, at $235/wk that means the max is $940 per month, which is more than the claim I was refuting
2. If you earn additional income then yes the government benefits should be reduced, I fail to see why this is a bad thing, Unemployment is not a job, it is allow people to have some income if they find themselves with out a job through no fault of their own. if they are getting income from other sources they should not be collecting unemployment as they are not unemployed
3. See #2
4. There are some exception to this (like changes terms and conditions of employment), but unemployment is for people that find themselves jobless through no fault of their own, if you are at fault for your joblessness you should not collect unemployment as it should be assumed you understood the consequences of your actions which created your joblessness
5. Yes a person on unemployment should have to prove they are seeking employment, I fail to understand why this controversial. No the government should not pay for you to take a vacation or "recharge your batteries"
6. What are "Job Search costs", going to indeed and sending emails cost money now? by health care I assume you mean health insurance, which is really different than health care. And is really well outside the topic of this conversation, unemployment is not designed to cover health insurance costs nor should it.
1. Was not disagreeing. And there are more than 4 weeks in a month. :-)
2. Yes, but arguably severance is something you earned (vested) over many years of service...it's not income for work you are currently performing. Some states are stricter about sources of income while unemployed than others.
3. Which is a disincentive to work part time while unemployed. If there is a dollar for dollar reduction of benefits (most states are not stupid enough to do this) it's better to sit home than try to work part time while looking for full time employment.
4. Life is complicated. What if you have to resign to take care of a dying spouse? These are all issues states grapple with. I'll note in the story we're commenting upon, the workers were basically blackmailed to declare that they were "resigning."
"The HR representative calls an employee from a list and she is heard warning him to “Quit by 10 am, or you’ll be terminated and no benefits or relieving letter will be provided”"
Of course, this was outside the US, but many times there is pressure to say you "resigned" rather than be "fired".
5. OK. Doesn't mean that taking a short time off from looking for work isn't beneficial. We're not talking about going to Hawaii here.
6. Travelling to job interviews/job fairs. Writing and sending out resumes. Paying for educational/training resources. It's meant to tide you over between episodes of unemployment. It's not charity. It's insurance the employer was paying into while you were working there. FUTA and SUTA taxes pay for the program.
And if you employer was paying for some of your health care benefits while you were employed, and now you have to pay that share plus an admin fee under COBRA, while your income has gone to zero--how are health insurance costs then supposed to be covered? (Yes, you can have lots of money saved up...not feasible for everyone.) What exactly do you think UI should be paying for if not health insurance/care costs? Food and shelter only?
Like I said it's been a while. Don't forget federal and state taxes get taken out, so you don't get the actual number in the bank.
>That depends on where you live, using Mississipi as an example, the average home is $113,000 with a traditional mortgage the payment would be $576 no where near the $1,600 you caim is a "moderate mortgage"
In my area in the midwest the average home is closer to $150,000 however that still would not be a $1,600 mortgage
That would be about a $360,000 mortgage, almost double the national average home price
Yes, you have a point. If you are a highly paid IT person and happen to have bought a really cheap house in a really low cost state. You got me. Don't forget property taxes and insurance. Also, you are assuming current interest rates and a 30 year mortgage. Not many banks refinance to unemployed people, so you're stuck with what you're stuck with.
>This has largely been disproved as a myth or as out dated thinking, that may have been the case 20 or more years ago, but I do not believe that is the case today
Got a link for that? If it's subsided, it's fairly recently.
>The US still has not gotten over it but it has not "been going full force" for 20 years, far from it.
Government Intervention in the market, and various other factors masked some systemic problems, in the attempt to prevent more damage the government and other actors have simply band aided over the problems that are now a festering infection just waiting to be exposed
I was referring to outsourcing. I'm not sure what you are referring to.
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.
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.
Almost all of India's big IT shops make most of their money in the western economies. So it is the global economy that has progressed while the sector chiefs and the media patted themselves on the back, calling India an "IT Superpower".
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
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.
Define 'well' without some sense of 'values', and I might start to believe what you think here..
Otherwise I'm inclined to suspect your critique and resistance might simply be some sort of transferrence of wanting to maintain the dominant own anglo/protestant 'congregational personal piety' values in US culture to the more intrinsically communitarian sense required in this context - (assuming you are from US)
e.g. the philosophy of "I can believe what I believe and you can believe what you believe, I can associate or not associate with others who beleive the same thing, there is no 'correct' way, all things are valid so long as they are 'good', although I don't define 'good', because human nature is naturally good", etc, which is itself an intrinsic and communal set of 'values' embedded within the US culture that is directly traceable to the english/low-countries protestant reformation in combination with the values of enlightenment philosophy..
Agreed some companies get carried away with values lip-service without actually following through though, and, if I'm correct, perhaps this common mode should be the default.. but best to be aware of hidden bias..
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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?
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.
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.