Microsoft: 4,437
Satyam: 4,236
Fujitsu: 2,291
Patni: 2,166
Infosys: 1,586
IBM:1,413
L&T:1,374
Intel:1,340
Ernst Young: 1,182
Qualcomm: 1,139
TCS:1,132
Enteprise Business Solutions: 1,035
Oracle: 974
Deloitte: 930
Marlabs: 934
Xceltech: 899
Multivision: 863
Rite Aid: 802
Goldman Sachs: 767
Wipro: 760
This is a theme for migrating Linux users who feel they are more comfortable with the Windows interface.LXP is a project that provides Linux/Unix users with a desktop that has a Microsoft Windows XP "look & feel" that is nearly identical to the real thing.
The LXP project has achieved this by collecting and modifying different pieces of the Open Source GNU software such as icewm, idesk, xfe, and others.
The LXP theme has been tested on the following distributions:
Fedora Core 3, 4, 5 and 6
Open Suse 10.1
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10
Ubuntu 6.06, 6.10X
ubuntu 6.06, 6.10
Kubuntu 6.06, 6.10
Debian Testing (Etch)
Sourceforge project : http://sourceforge.net/projects/lxp/
Read more...Sources has revealed that the TCS, India 's largest software giant is going to take few tough steps to sustain in the present environment . Since economists and experts don't see a economy recovery in the near time , most of the customers are feeling the pain of slowdown and are pressurising the outsourcers to maximise the efficiencies .
To keep itself equipped against the global economic activity , the company has rolled out four measures which are going to be implemented with immediate effect .
The four measures are as follows :
There will be no recruitment of experienced professionals unless the company feels its extremely required .
People will be given cross skill training to manage the internal needs .
Since outsourcing means saving money by working from a low cost place , the company will concentrate more on offshore leverage . Non Critical positions on onsite will be moved to offshore .
There will be no promotions until the situation improves .
If you are in the underperforming section or in the under utilised section , the company might counsel you or might even ask you to leave .
Its not only TCS , all the companies are implementing different kind of measures to sustain in the present environment . It might not sound good to the employees , but if the companies has to sustain , they have to undertake this . The companies are trying to do everything so as to retain employees . As a employee of the organisation , its time for us to stand by them and help them sustain .
Do remember that When your company does good , it will always do good to you .
Read more...A provision intended to require banks receiving federal bailout funds to give hiring priority to U.S. workers over foreigners with H-1B visas was left in the economic stimulus package when U.S. House and Senate negotiators agreed on a compromise bill this week.
The US$789 billion stimulus bill was subsequently approved by the House of Representatives Friday, and a vote in the Senate is expected Friday night.The provision designed to curb the use of H-1B visas was proposed last week by Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) as an amendment to the Senate's stimulus legislation. The proposal initially sought to bar H-1B hiring by financial services firms receiving bailout money, but it was later modified to restrict such hiring.
The stimulus bill, once it is approved by the Senate and signed by President Barack Obama, will require firms that take bailout funding to make a good-faith effort to hire U.S. citizens before people who are in the country on H-1B visas.Opponents of the measure says it is so restrictive that affected financial services firms likely will stop hiring H-1B workers altogether.
However, the provision doesn't prevent them from using offshore outsourcing contractors, which typically are heavy users of H-1B visas.As a result of the conference agreement, Sanders said in a statement Friday that he expects the H-1B provisions to be adopted along with the rest of the stimulus bill. He added that what may have prompted the negotiators to keep the H-1B restrictions in the bill were all of the ongoing layoffs and other job losses.
"With thousands of financial services workers unemployed, it is absurd for banks to claim they can't find qualified American workers," Sanders said.The proposed restrictions require firms that receive money under the federal Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) to comply with hiring rules set for "H-1B dependent" firms -- those with more than 15% of their workers on visas.
Those rules set a number of strict requirements for hiring H-1B holders, including a need for companies to attest that they actively recruited American workers and are not displacing or replacing U.S. citizens with foreign workers.However, the impact of the new legislation on offshoring of IT work may be limited. Ron Hira, an assistant professor of public policy at Rochester Institute of Technology and co-author of the book Outsourcing America, claimed that many TARP-recipient banks "have huge shadow workforces -- people who work for the bank indirectly through outsourcing contract firms."
The TARP-related hiring provision "will rectify some of the indefensible practices of quasi-nationalized banks," Hira said. "But unfortunately, it doesn't close the loopholes where most of the abuse occurs."Hira said the amount of outsourcing by Wall Street firms has actually increased since the bailout program began last fall, citing deals such as offshore outsourcer Tata Consultancy Services Ltd.'s October agreement to acquire a unit of Citigroup Inc. that does business process outsourcing and IT services work.
Similarly, Wipro Ltd. agreed in December to buy Citigroup's IT subsidiary in India.In addition, Hira contended that "many, if not all, of these banks have human resource practices where they force their American workers to train foreign replacements, and subsequently lay off the American workers." That practice "sometimes results in tragedy," he added, citing the 2003 suicide of a former Bank of America Corp. programmer who reportedly was laid off after training his replacement.
A provision intended to require banks receiving federal bailout funds to give hiring priority to U.S. workers over foreigners with H-1B visas was left in the economic stimulus package when U.S. House and Senate negotiators agreed on a compromise bill this week.
The US$789 billion stimulus bill was subsequently approved by the House of Representatives Friday, and a vote in the Senate is expected Friday night.The provision designed to curb the use of H-1B visas was proposed last week by Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) as an amendment to the Senate's stimulus legislation.
The proposal initially sought to bar H-1B hiring by financial services firms receiving bailout money, but it was later modified to restrict such hiring.The stimulus bill, once it is approved by the Senate and signed by President Barack Obama, will require firms that take bailout funding to make a good-faith effort to hire U.S. citizens before people who are in the country on H-1B visas.
Opponents of the measure says it is so restrictive that affected financial services firms likely will stop hiring H-1B workers altogether. However, the provision doesn't prevent them from using offshore outsourcing contractors, which typically are heavy users of H-1B visas.As a result of the conference agreement, Sanders said in a statement Friday that he expects the H-1B provisions to be adopted along with the rest of the stimulus bill.
He added that what may have prompted the negotiators to keep the H-1B restrictions in the bill were all of the ongoing layoffs and other job losses. "With thousands of financial services workers unemployed, it is absurd for banks to claim they can't find qualified American workers," Sanders said.The proposed restrictions require firms that receive money under the federal Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) to comply with hiring rules set for "H-1B dependent" firms -- those with more than 15% of their workers on visas.
Those rules set a number of strict requirements for hiring H-1B holders, including a need for companies to attest that they actively recruited American workers and are not displacing or replacing U.S. citizens with foreign workers.However, the impact of the new legislation on offshoring of IT work may be limited. Ron Hira, an assistant professor of public policy at Rochester Institute of Technology and co-author of the book Outsourcing America, claimed that many TARP-recipient banks "have huge shadow workforces -- people who work for the bank indirectly through outsourcing contract firms."
The TARP-related hiring provision "will rectify some of the indefensible practices of quasi-nationalized banks," Hira said. "But unfortunately, it doesn't close the loopholes where most of the abuse occurs."Hira said the amount of outsourcing by Wall Street firms has actually increased since the bailout program began last fall, citing deals such as offshore outsourcer Tata Consultancy Services Ltd.'s October agreement to acquire a unit of Citigroup Inc. that does business process outsourcing and IT services work. Similarly, Wipro Ltd. agreed in December to buy Citigroup's IT subsidiary in India.
In addition, Hira contended that "many, if not all, of these banks have human resource practices where they force their American workers to train foreign replacements, and subsequently lay off the American workers." That practice "sometimes results in tragedy," he added, citing the 2003 suicide of a former Bank of America Corp. programmer who reportedly was laid off after training his replacement.
The Indian IT industry, which recently lowered its growth projections on the back of a slowing economy, sees no immediate impact of the recent US Senate vote to prohibit banks, that are bailed out, from replacing laid-off workers with foreign guest workers (read H1B workers).
The situation, however, would hurt the fortunes of Indian IT firms if the amendment becomes policy since the top 10 H1B visa list is made up largely of India-based firms that provide outsourcing services, including Infosys Technologies, Wipro and Satyam Computer Services. The deadline for companies to request petitions for new H-1B visas is April 1. Both US (read Silicon Valley) and Indian companies have repeatedly stressed the need to raise the cap, which was reduced from 195,000 to 65,000 two years ago.
However, Senators Sanders and Charles Grassley (a well-known H1B opponent) recently introduced an amendment that would require bailed-out banks -- where there have been layoffs -- to hire only Americans for two years. This was accepted by the US Senate a day after it was revealed that Americans lost almost 600,000 jobs in January. The amendment, though, has to go 'reconciliation' (a legislative process) before going to Congress and finally the President before it becomes policy.
It is feared that these banks (bailed-out with taxpayer money), in a bid to contain or cut costs, would outsource and offshore more work to low-cost countries like India jeopardising the chances of American workers from getting a job. The senate amendment seeks to prevent this, and it could affect the fortunes of the Indian IT industry since outsourcing from the Banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) sector accounts for almost 40 per cent of the sector's revenue.
"Wall Street caused the crisis, millions of people lost jobs, including 100,000 in financial institutions. Now they want to bring in foreign workers," Senator Bernie Sanders said in a release. It is feared that the bailed-out automakers too would face a similar diktat. This is another lucrative revenue segment for local IT firms.
Software body Nasscom opines that it's up to American banks to choose whether they need to outsource more work to cut costs. "The wording is very confusing. Besides, one may also remember that it is applicable only to H1B dependent companies (an H-1B dependent employer is one whose workers brought in with that visa comprise 15 per cent or more of the employer's total workforce). We hardly have any such IT firms in India," explains Som Mittal, President, Nasscom.
"There won't be any immediate impact but if the issue persists and becomes policy, then the concern could become grave," cautions Ganesh Natarajan, Chairman Nasscom and deputy Chairman and Managing Director of Zensar Technologies.
The H-1B visa issue has always been a bone of contention but the economic recession has added fuel to fire. Vinu B Kartha, Partner at Research and Advisory firm Tholons says: “There can’t be a complete ban on outsourcing because it is a free market economy but the new administration in the US will make it difficult for those companies do business who are outsourcing their work. Companies will get incentives to not to outsource work like tax refunds and other benefits.”
Analysts say it will be difficult for the Indian IT companies to get new projects and they will now have to ensure that none of their existing accounts are under the purview of law. The slowdown will ensure that only the best qualified people get jobs in the US and this is where the Indian workforce will suffer. “Outsourcing will continue but the Indian IT vendors will have to focus on verticals other than BFSI like telecom, manufacturing, healthcare among others,” explains Kartha.
Incidentally, Microsoft which was among the top 10 firms getting approvals for H-1B visas in the year ended September 30, 2007, also was questioned by Senator Grassley when it recently downsized its US workforce. He called on Microsoft to give preference to American workers over visa-holding H-1B foreign workers during its downsizing.
There have also been fears that President Obama, once elected, would revisit the outsourcing and offshoring story that could adversely affect Indian IT firms. However, analysts note that President Obama has filled some of his top White House positions with people like Senator Judd Gregg and Diana Fareell (ex McKinsey Globa Institute) who not only support expanding the H-1B visa programme, but also see offshore outsourcing as postive for the US economy. McKinsey, a management consulting firm, has published research that argues that offshore outsourcing to low-wage countries brings "substantial benefits" to the U.S. Its studies and reports have been cited by the tech industry in support of the H-1B visa programme.
Observers also note that the amendment isn’t as tough as the one Senator Grassley proposed on February 5, which would have prohibited firms from hiring H-1Bs altogether.
The US government, as part of its stimulus plan to revive the depression in the US economy, recently decided on including an amendment that imposes a ban on firms receiving government bailouts, from hiring workers from other countries. Microsoft has recently been asked to remove foreign workers that are employed under the H-1B Visa program, resulting in the software giant announcing that 5,000 jobs will be cut in the next six months; including 1,400 immediately.
H-1B visas are offered by the US government to enable international students and highly skilled international workers, from all over the world, or who are already living in the USA, the opportunity to live and work in America legally.
From the beginning, there has been criticism from various quarters, over the role of the H-1B program in replacing US workers. There were several instances of US staff being replaced with H-1B workers. The ploy employers used is to hire these H-1B replacements from contract job shops. This way the companies could claim that they had not applied for H-1B visas, making it possible for them to legally replace their US staff.
Another complaint was that US Employers hired H-1B workers because they pay significantly less than they would have to for US workers. This cheap labor causes depression in the overall wage structure.
Currently, 65,000 H-1B visas are granted by the US annually to Hi-technology workers from countries like China, India and Philippines.
The US government states that they are not against the H-1B program, but it has to be used in the actual spirit of why it was started in the first place – to have alternatives for specialized workers when there is no availability in the US. It was also clarified that since the 900 billion dollars for the stimulus plan is being paid by the American taxpayer, it is only fair that American workers are hired.
This decision for foreign countries could mean hundreds of thousands of foreign students studying in the US universities will not get employment and millions will be made jobless.
The US government is also planning on controlling outsourcing. American firms that move their jobs to other countries will not be eligible for any tax breaks. Obama, in his address said, “We will restore a sense of fairness and balance to our tax code by finally ending the tax breaks for corporations that ship our jobs overseas.”
This will affect more than 1,000 American firms that have over the years moved their jobs outside the country. The government is doing away with a particular provision of the tax code where US companies pay lower taxes for profits earned from foreign countries. There has been opposition for this tax code for a long time, as it was seen as an encouragement for companies to send their jobs abroad, when they rightfully belong to the American workers. The government’s aim through this move is to make outsourcing unattractive to companies in the US.
However, many believe that tax breaks when compared to savings through outsourcing do not stand a chance. While the idea of tax breaks would certainly appeal to the US businesses, it would require a huge tax break to change the established trend of global outsourcing. It would be highly unlikely for companies involved in significant outsourcing to take their businesses, and the related infrastructure and human-resource costs back onshore. So, the impact of this move may be very little.
People who oppose this move say that this move will only hurt the US as outsourcing makes a lot of sense; both economic and logical. It is left to be seen what actually happens. However, with Obama focusing on the revival of the US economy, this is the kind of positive reaction that Americans expect from their new President.
Bangalore: Indian information technology (IT) services firms could see business slowing from US banks and financial institutions that have been bailed out by that country’s government, which has also become increasingly protectionist as it tries to protect jobs in the world’s biggest economy.
At least two people familiar with the matter said they have recently seen IT outsourcing tenders with so-called “buy American” or work-onsite clauses that ensure that the business goes to an American firm or to one operating on American soil.
“I have seen some ‘buy American’ inserts in a small number of requests for proposal, but this doesn’t seem to be enforceable,” said Phil Fersht, research director for global business and outsourcing services at AMR Research, an IT advisory firm.
According to Fersht, one of these was for a health care firm, and a few others for financial services firms that had been bailed out by the government.
According to the fine print of the final stimulus Bill, passed in the US, troubled assets regulation programme (TARP) recipients cannot outsource call centre work to foreign firms and can hire only a limited number of foreign workers on H-1B visas.
The second person, an executive at an Indian IT services company who did not want to be identified also said that some US firms that had usually been comfortable with moving work offshore were becoming risk averse in the current environment. “They (customers) insist that critical work should be retained within the US,” added the executive who said this measure wasn’t protectionist, but a possible reaction to economic uncertainty.
Nasscom, the Indian software industry’s lobby group, said the US government had to do this to tackle an economy on a downswing. “The fact of the matter is that they are giving funds to TARP. They have to look at generating employment locally. We will see some of these kinds of small issues rising. We are confident that better sense will prevail,” said Ameet Nivasarkar, vice-president of Nasscom.
The US, the world’s biggest spender on technology is in a recession, triggered by a crisis in its financial system, which has seen several firms going bankrupt and several others being wholly or partly taken over by the federal government. The world’s largest economy has shed 4.4 million jobs since December 2007 with nearly half of those losses coming in the last three months, prompting President Barack Obama to announce plans to cut tax breaks for firms that move jobs to foreign shores.
Indian IT services firms such as Infosys Technologies Ltd and Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) derive a significant portion of their revenue from companies in businesses such as banking, financial services, and insurance. Such firms contributed almost 41% of the $40.4 billion (Rs2.09 trillion) revenue of Indian IT services firms in the year to March 2008. As business slows from US firms, Nasscom forecasts that growth for the IT firms will halve to 16% in the year to March.
An analyst said outsourcing firms could also face subtler constraints. “At least those programmes are overt,” said Peter Redshaw, vice-president for research in banking and finance services at Gartner Inc., a technology research firm, referring to the US legislations. “A second issue is the rise in ‘soft constraints’ where governments, central banks and regulators put pressure on banks (such as greater scrutiny or a need for higher transparency) that may inhibit decisions to go offshore.”
“So, banks may in some cases be prohibited from going offshore or they may need to be more politically sensitive and risk averse in their operations,” Redshaw added.
India’s two largest IT firms, however, said they were yet to encounter TARP-related constraints. TCS and Infosys Technologies said that they haven’t seen any impact due to these measures. “Currently, we are not seeing any such impact from any of our clients,” said V. Balakrishnan, chief financial officer at Infosys.
Still, the legislations itself were passed only last month and it is likely it will take a while before Indian firms feel the fallout.
Analysts say that a bigger impact on offshoring would, however, be felt if Obama goes ahead with his plan to cut tax breaks for companies that offshore work.
“However, I would expect clauses to be put into contracts that allow for work to be pulled back onshore in the event of tax changes that impact offshoring,” said Fersht of AMR.
Notice period? What notice period?
Questions are being raised about how IT consultancy giant Cap gemini is laying off employees in its Indian offices. The company sent out an email to employees early 2008 saying they need not serve a 90-day notice period when they quit their jobs.
The notice period was reduced to 30 days. This was done without the consent of employees as it results in huge savings for the firm - Capgemini will now have to pay outgoing staffers a month’s salary instead of three months, an insider told IT Examiner.Another message followed, asking employees to sign on a tailored resignation letter.
While most employees fell prey to the nasty nip, few decided to snub the proposal, calling it illegal, said the source.According to our source, this method has been adopted to lay off around 2,000 employees over several months, in Bangalore, Mumbai and Kolkata.
In these tough times, it’s shocking to see companies choosing methods that can hardly be termed as legal to cut costs. Shrinking the notice period without employees’ consent is unethical.Our source said that those who refused to sign the resignation letter pointed out that their appointment orders clearly states that the notice period extends to three months.
The HR department responded by de-activating their email IDs and even threatened them, the source said.A few employees, who spoke to Capgemini’s India HR head Dr. Sripada Chandrashekhar, were told that if the company decides to shrink the notice period from three to one month for 2,000 employees, it certainly has to be legal.
“Following the massive revolt, Jnanes Kumar who was heading the HR process back then was deported to another division. Arun Kumar was brought in as replacement,” the source said.A senior advocate, on condition of anonymity, told IT Examiner that, “as per Indian laws, companies cannot shrink the notice period in the case of permanent employees.
But it can be done with those still on probation. Otherwise it is illegal to reduce the notice period without the consent of employees.' According to him, in such cases employees usually give up and sign the resignation letter. 'A company has an upper hand in these cases as employees are reluctant to individually sue the company fearing high expenses of the legal process. Even if one wins the case, there is no guarantee that the company will hire him/her in the same position.
The best way to battle this is by approaching an employees’ union and fighting the legal case, making it more economical.'IT-BPO union, UNITES has made an appeal to the Capgemini employees to raise their voice. “I am aware of what’s going on at Capgemini. Employees often commit a mistake by succumbing to the pressure. Capgemini has done the same thing by forcing them to sign it. We cannot intervene once they sign the resignation letter,” said UNITES India general secretary, R Karthik Shekhar told IT Examiner.Shekhar added, “It’s illegal to violate the terms and conditions mentioned in the agreement.
If they have promised three months’ pay, they have to hand it over the same day. This is unacceptable. Even if they throw workers out citing poor performance, this has to be given in writing.”He made an appeal saying, “We can go to the labour commissioner with this problem only if the employees are courageous enough to talk to us.”Capgemini failed to respond to our queries by press time. But do they have anything to say at all?
Wipro Technologies is right- sizing. To improve operational efficiency, it has decided to sack more employees than it usually does on the basis of performance. In the current quarter (January-March), 7 to 8 per cent of the people working in its global IT services division will have to leave.
In normal times, only 0.5 per cent of the employees are sacked for professional reasons. But the proportion was higher at about 2 per cent in the last two quarters. In the current quarter, it will rise above 7 per cent. The global IT services division, mainly catering to the US and European markets, had 60,605 people at the end of December.
Financial Chronicle learns from several Wipro employees that the number of people on the hit list could be as high as 5,000. This, however, could not be confirmed with company officials. FC emailed a questionnaire to the company’s human resources head, Pratik Kumar, who, in response, only said, “Wipro would not like to comment on this.’’
The people being eased out are mainly freshers not yet confirmed in their jobs and staff who have three to five years’ experience. Also, a number of managerial- level employees (such as vice-presidents, general managers, project managers and project leaders earning over Rs 12 lakh annually) are also facing the axe. Earlier, senior- level staff rarely came under such intense scrutiny.
An employee on the hit list told FC on condition of anonymity, “At the moment, employees with higher salaries are being laid off to save cost.”
Another senior- level employee, who has spent a over a decade in Wipro, said people at that level had been asked to justify their positions. He said, “Senior people have to take on more responsibilities. We have to manage more employees in out teams, acquire more clients and more projects.”
Senior employees will get about two to three months to justify their presence in the company and if they fail to do so, they will have to go, he added.
Junior staff are being trained across all processes, reducing the need for senior employees. Since January, Wipro has a introduced certification test for all staff barring the senior management. Those who can’t score over 70 per cent and clear the test in three attempts are shown the door.
Employees said that many project teams, especially those in the financial services sector serving European or American companies, had been halved.
A software engineer, currently benched, said all benched staff had been told that if they couldn’t get into new teams within three months, they too would have to leave.
Generally, IT firms place 5 per cent of their employees under the non-performance rating. After being put through a mandatory improvement programme, about 0.5 to 0.8 per cent of them are asked to leave each year. However, bad market conditions and a drive for optimisation have meant that involuntary attrition has increased.
MUMBAI / BANGALORE: After Tata Consultancy Services and IBM Global Services, Patni Computer Systems has laid off close to 400 employees citing non-performance issues. The country’s sixth-largest exporter said it was part of a routine appraisal exercise, carried out every year to weed out non-performers, and not related to any slowdown issues. “This was an absolutely regular appraisal that is important for any performance-driven organisation. It is something standard we do every year.
Employees who have got 0-1 rating on a scale of 5 typically form the basis for the first-level shortlist. These are performance-based resignations; we’ve not issued any termination letters,” said Rajesh Padmanabhan, executive vice-president and head – global HR, Patni. He said the comparable figure for last year was 148.
In February this year, in the backdrop of a pronounced slowdown in the US, TCS had asked about 500 employees to leave for non-performance. Shortly afterwards, IBM was reported to have laid off 700 freshers. In case of TCS, the figure was about 0.5% of its total workforce and for IBM, about 1% of its India workforce. For Patni, the figure is closer to 3% of its 14,800 workforce. A Patni spokesperson said the company continued to be a net hirer. “Retrenchment is a word used when you are facing negative growth or no growth and cutting down on your labour costs. We continue to recruit — the number of new employees we intend to hire, according to our quarterly results communication, is about 2,000,” said a Patni spokesperson.
Industry sources said the employees were asked to leave a fortnight ago and some of them were even at the designation of project manager. “Usually, these do not happen at project manager levels. But I know in this case, a project manager working on a GE (General Electric) contract was asked to leave,” said a source, with knowledge on the development, who did not wish to be identified. Some people in the industry attributed the layoffs to the challenging business outlook Patni and other software companies were facing. “The performance index is being unfairly used on people on the bench. These employees are not working due to lack of projects,” said a person closely associated with a number of software companies. Bench is a term used to indicate employees who are not working on any available projects because they are undergoing training or are between projects. As a strategy, companies also maintain a bench in readiness for new projects. In a slowdown, because of postponement or cancellation of projects, the bench size increases more than what companies plan for. The Patni stock has risen 15% on the BSE in one month on the expectations of a buyback, which has now been announced for July 10. In the same period, the IT index has gained 2.43%.
Mumbai: Even as troubles in the financial services and automotive sectors globally continue to worry India's IT service companies, Infosys Technologies is focusing on smaller acquisitions in the healthcare space.
"We are looking at small acquisitions, of the range of $100-200 million, as managing a large acquired entity would be tough in today's circumstances. We are looking at firms that offer services to healthcare companies," V Balakrishnan, chief financial officer (CFO) of Infosys, the country's second-largest IT services firm, told DNA.
Infosys is also evaluating firms in the consulting space, where it lost out to HCL Tech in the race to acquire UK-based SAP consulting firm Axon Plc in August.
However, an analyst, who did not wish to be named, said Infosys is unlikely to make a deal in the consulting space.
"Acquisition in the consulting arena would generally be of large ticket sizes, upwards of $500 million. Moreover, for a firm of the size of Infosys, a lot of synergy would happen by having a bigger consulting firm with capabilities in multiple domains," the analyst said.
Infosys has begun evaluating firms in France and Germany. Besides, Balakrishnan said the company is evaluating firms in Japan with an aim of getting a stronger foothold in the 'closed Japanese market'.
The Japanese market for IT services is estimated at $108 billion.
Amongst the top IT firms in India, Infosys have been the most conservative as far as acquisitions are concerned. In 2003, it acquired an Australian firm, Expert Information Technologies, for about $24 million. Four years later, it acquired Philips' global BPO operations. Infosys' cash reserve stood at about Rs 8,450 crore at the end of Q3 (Oct-Nov-Dec) 2008. For the year to March 2009, Infosys has forecast revenues of between $4.72 billion and $4.81 billion in dollar terms and Rs 21,309 crore and Rs 21,731 crore in rupee terms.
Mumbai: Even as troubles in the financial services and automotive sectors globally continue to worry India's IT service companies, Infosys Technologies is focusing on smaller acquisitions in the healthcare space.
"We are looking at small acquisitions, of the range of $100-200 million, as managing a large acquired entity would be tough in today's circumstances. We are looking at firms that offer services to healthcare companies," V Balakrishnan, chief financial officer (CFO) of Infosys, the country's second-largest IT services firm, told DNA.
Infosys is also evaluating firms in the consulting space, where it lost out to HCL Tech in the race to acquire UK-based SAP consulting firm Axon Plc in August.
However, an analyst, who did not wish to be named, said Infosys is unlikely to make a deal in the consulting space.
"Acquisition in the consulting arena would generally be of large ticket sizes, upwards of $500 million. Moreover, for a firm of the size of Infosys, a lot of synergy would happen by having a bigger consulting firm with capabilities in multiple domains," the analyst said.
Infosys has begun evaluating firms in France and Germany. Besides, Balakrishnan said the company is evaluating firms in Japan with an aim of getting a stronger foothold in the 'closed Japanese market'.
The Japanese market for IT services is estimated at $108 billion.
Amongst the top IT firms in India, Infosys have been the most conservative as far as acquisitions are concerned. In 2003, it acquired an Australian firm, Expert Information Technologies, for about $24 million. Four years later, it acquired Philips' global BPO operations. Infosys' cash reserve stood at about Rs 8,450 crore at the end of Q3 (Oct-Nov-Dec) 2008. For the year to March 2009, Infosys has forecast revenues of between $4.72 billion and $4.81 billion in dollar terms and Rs 21,309 crore and Rs 21,731 crore in rupee terms.
IT services company HCL Technologies has asked 450 employees at its Delhi and Bangalore offices to leave. A majority of those axed were on the bench.
An HCL Technologies official, who spoke to ET on the condition of anonymity, said that the company had sacked 400 people in Delhi and another 50 in Bangalore in the last one-two months. The firm had earlier asked those on the bench, the buffer of employees kept on the rolls for new projects, to get assigned to projects or face the prospect of being asked to leave the firm, he said.
In an email reply, a company spokeswoman didn’t comment on the number of people sacked by the company but indicated that the move was linked to the performance of employees. “HCL follows a systematic process of performance review and development, and the expectation of the organisation is for employees to meet the stringent performance standards. This is a routine and ongoing process,” she said.
As of December 31, 2008, HCL had about 52,957 employees. The global downturn has impacted the revenues of clients of Indian IT companies, thereby dampening demand for software services.
The US financial meltdown has finally managed to do what the BPO sector has been trying to do for years on end - reduce the attrition rate of employees by 5-15 percentage points. BPOs that were coping with 30-40 per cent employee turnover are now reporting numbers between 20 per cent and 30 per cent.
Industry insiders as well as sector experts said that companies are unlikely to miss this opportunity to rationalise bloated boom-time salaries. "Companies are aiming to go back to the cost levels of 2005 and 2006. So, we will see an across the board reduction in salaries," said KPMG Head (people and change advisory) Ganesh Shermon.
Genpact, the largest BPO in the country, reported attrition rate of 26 per cent for the nine months ended September 30, 2008, down from 30 per cent in the same quarter of 2007. 24x7 Customer said the drop in attrition has been 10 percentage points this month. The company's annualised attrition rate is 38 per cent.
For Satyam , the month-on-month attrition has come down by approximately 15 percentage points. Healthcare BPO Cbay Systems has seen a drop of 10 percentage points in the last few months. And Nasdaq-listed Syntel has seen a 4-5 percentage point drop.
BPOs, on their part, said this had less to do with the economic meltdown and more with the human resources development practices they have put in place. But analysts said that this has happened because of the global economic uncertainty - employees are choosing to stay put on their jobs than risk new ones.
Companies said they had not seen any contraction in the demand for their services and they will keep on hiring people in large numbers. Cbay Systems, for instance, plans to increase its headcount by 10,000 in the next 18 months. "Satyam BPO has not witnessed any diminishing of demand from our existing customers," added Satyam BPO Global Head (human resources) Naresh Jhangiani.
What is certain is that salaries in the sector will soon get rationalised. "We believe there is an opportunity for salary rationalisation. We are looking at not only the entry level but the middle and senior levels as well. We might see a drop of 5 per cent in salary levels in the coming few months," said Syntel Global Head (human resources) Srikanth Karra.
"Going ahead, salary increases will be on the basis of productivity. While the fixed salary should remain the same, the variable pay will see changes," Cbay Systems chairman and CEO Raman Kumar said. "At the middle- and top-management level, things had gone a bit haywire and this period will bring the required balance."
Read more...With Barack Obama taking over as the President of the United States, outsourcing of activities from the US to the Indian market might get adversely affected, hitting the pharmaceutical sector the most, a top industry official said.
"President Obama has a conservative stance on outsourcing of services since he wants to create jobs and protect existing ones (in the US). As the Indian pharma industry is sustaining mainly on outsourcing, especially from the US, the future does not appear very smooth," pharma major Promed Group's President Deepak Bahri told PTI.
The Promed group manufactures and delivers branded as well as generic pharmaceutical formulations to Russia, CIS, south-east Asian countries, the UK and EU.
There will be increased competition in the US generics market since the US Food and Drug Administration-approved plants will enable many players to enter into the US market, earlier ruled exclusively by a few big companies, Bahri said.
"Companies that are cost-effective and good in supplies will survive," Bahri said.
With the global economy in a recession, it would make business sense for Indian pharma companies to address the CIS markets.
"CIS nations are taking aggressive steps to address their healthcare sector. Therefore, Indian pharma companies should be ready to grab the opportunities available in these markets," he said.
Though the healthcare system in the CIS countries are in a process of reformation, there are several challenges for the drug manufacturers.
"The shift towards the generic market has opened the gates for a variety of international companies and the market has become fiercely competitive," Bahri added.
Pharma companies have experienced a dip in profit margins on account of the global slowdown, Bahri said, attributing it to competition from China and appreciation of the Rupee against the US dollar.
Indian companies, however, have proved their manufacturing and research and development capabilities and the CIS nations can benefit enormously by establishing tie-ups with Indian pharma companies, he said.
"Today, the markets have evolved with time. In countries like Russia, consumers are ready to pay a higher cost for quality and there are international competitiors who are fighting for a share of these growing markets," he said.
The global meltdown could negatively impact Indian pharma exports but "good relationships with the target audience help to sustain longer in the markets," Bahri said.
Marketing of pharma products calls for a strong field-force network complimented with a robust supply-chain. A growing product portfolio is the key to beat competition and this will ensure a constant flow of income into the business," the Promed chief said.
The Promed Group is an emerging Indian pharmaceutical entity offering pharmaceutical products to global markets and has clocked a growth rate of 119 per cent for the period April-December 2008 as compared to the year-ago, Bahri said.
In the last five years, the company has recorded a Compound Annual Growth Rate of 34.49 per cent, an absolute growth of 340.80 per cent and an average yearly growth of 68.01 per cent.
The group clocked a turnover of Rs 100 crore (Rs 1 billion) in FY 08.
Read more...ASSOCHAM president Sajjan Jindal has expressed serious concern over the Obama administration decision to deny tax benefits to US companies that outsource their jobs, adding that it will prevent free flow of goods and services under WTO regime.
In a statement, Jindal said that the beneficiary of outsourcing jobs has not only been the receiving country but more so the country which has outsource their jobs in the past and the trend will remain so even in future. Estimates reveal that a US$ job outsourced fetched the outsource country more than 10 times of economic benefits and therefore discourage outsourcing by denying tax benefits can prove disastrous, Jindal added.
The entire world is reeling under pressures of global meltdown and assuming that protective measures like denial of tax benefits will work towards benefis of domestic economy will prove be a serious mistake. It will also go against the spirit of competition and free market economies in which trans-national trade barriers are fastly fading away and the color of the capital is becoming colorless.
Jindal has called for its immediate renew for final withdrawal as the rest of economies will get inspired with this decision to provide unnecessary safeguards for their corporates.
John Kerry has been claiming that loopholes in the tax code encourage companies to send jobs off shore. .
Here's the loophole:
...the ability to defer and often never pay taxes on foreign-earned profits. The result: foreign profits of U.S. companies end up taxed at a lower rate than their U.S. income, creating an incentive to invest overseas in factories. The jobs are where the factories are.
And here's how it works
The tax code is written in a way that allows companies not to pay the full 35% U.S. corporate tax rate on foreign income when that money remains invested overseas.Backing up a step, here's how it works before the loophole: A company earns $100 million abroad in Lowtaxistan where the corporate tax rate is 20%. The foreign subsidiary pays that money to the U.S. parent. The parent then pays $35 million to the U.S. government and takes a credit for the 20% (or
$20 million) payment to the Lowtaxistan government. So the net to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service is $15 million.But here's how it works with the loophole: The U.S. subsidiary simply keeps the money offshore and certifies to its accountants that the money is invested overseas. It never remits the money to the parent and so never pays the $15 million extra to Uncle Sam.
The buzzword for people in the know in big corporations is "unrepatriated earnings" i.e. money you make off shore that doesn't come home to the US. Apparently, its getting to be more and more prevelent.
These are called "unrepatriated earnings" and they are increasingly commonplace. ...What we know is that the amount of unrepatriated foreign earnings is growing substantially. The non-partisan Congressional Research Service in a report last year said it had increased to $639 billion in 2002 from $403 billion in 1999....
If you look into the issue on companies balance sheets
What you'll find is something like this from Pfizer."As of December 31, 2003, we have not made a U.S. tax provision on approximately $38 billion of unremitted earnings of our international subsidiaries. These earnings are expected, for the most part, to be reinvested overseas. It is not practical to compute the estimated deferred tax
liability on these earnings."Pfizer says it added 15,000 U.S. workers through its recent purchase of Pharmacia. Still, only 37% of its work force is in the U.S.
Note that the $38 billion total of unremitted earnings is cumulative over the years. In 2002, Pfizer had $29 billion, so the increase was $9 billion in the past year, helping the company substantially shave its tax bill.
According to the article, this is how the tax code has been set up since the early 1900s, when the ability to move capital and goods so freely was never considered.
And, being the Journal, they, of course, are not advocating fixing the problem by closing this loophole. Nope, they claim that we need to allow our firms this tax break so they can stay competitive with lower taxed nations. Lest our firms simply move off shore. This argument seems falacious to me. There are lots of reasons that companies decide to stay in the US. Better workers, tradidition, infrastructure, rule of law, you name it, we've got it.
After a decade of outsourcing transform India into much of the world's back office, Indians are worried that President Obama's new Administration—and the slowdown in the global economy—will cast a shadow over one of the fastest-growing sectors of their economy. Obama's $787 billion stimulus plan will make it increasingly difficult for U.S. companies receiving bailout money to hire foreigners on H1B Visas. The budget the President recently presented may also make it harder for U.S. companies that send jobs overseas to receive tax benefits.
In India, where the $63 billion IT sector makes up almost 7% of the national GDP, the moves are worrying government officials. Acting Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee groused about it over the weekend in an interview with CNN-IBN, a content partnership with Time Warner's ( owned by India's TV18. "We will have to address this issue," said Mukherjee, whose ministry has spent the last five months trying to restart India's slowing economy with tax cuts and spending plans. "We are opposing protectionism, not only here but at every forum."
Even more vexing for India's outsourcing industry is the lack of clarity about what might be coming next from the U.S. During a Feb. 24 speech to Congress, Obama said the Administration will eliminate "incentives for companies that ship jobs overseas," but the White House has not provided additional details. A line item in Obama's budget titled "Implement international enforcement, reform deferral, and other tax reform policies" is the only hint tax experts in the U.S. and in India have had about the policy. The estimates for tax revenues generated by that budget change start at $15 billion in 2009 and go up to $25 billion in 2012. Those inexact estimates, says Rosanne Altshuler, co-director of the Tax Policy Center (a joint venture of two Washington think tanks, the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution), is an indication that the changes in tax policy have not yet been worked out, and likely will not become public until April.
Indians with a stake in the outsourcing industry are now waiting and watching. "Of course we are concerned," says Mohandas Pai, a board member and director of human resources at Infosys (, India's second-largest IT company by revenues. "But nobody knows what the devil is being referred to [in the Obama statement]."
At a time when nearly 5 million Americans have applied for unemployment benefits and another 1.7 million are working part-time jobs because they can't find full-time work, immigration and outsourcing have become key political issues in the U.S. As he did during his campaign, Obama has made clear during the first weeks of his Presidency that he intends to pursue policy changes to discourage outsourcing and the use of U.S. work visas—especially H-1B visas—that could cost American jobs. At no time has he made the exact policies clear, says Altshuler. Even within the government, the changes remain a mystery. Edward Kleinbard, the chief of staff for Congress' Joint Committee on Taxation, was forced to offer up a guess about the cryptic item in the budget during a meeting with a group of international lawyers last week. "Deferral will certainly be at play," he said, according to a report in Tax Notes, a publication of the Tax Policy Center. He was referring to how corporations are able to defer paying tax on income earned overseas until they bring that money back to the U.S.
That may not do enough to discourage outsourcing, says Andrew Kokes, vice-president for marketing at a Nashville-based outsourcing firm with 4,000 employees in India. Even if the U.S. proposes a punitive tax on companies doing work offshore or offers a tax break for those that do not, the changes wouldn't be large enough to offset the 20% to 30% benefit companies get in lower labor costs when they do certain work offshore, he says. "A tax break can't compete with that kind of arbitrage," says Kokes.
The U.S. is not alone in this increasing aversion to foreign labor and to outsourcing. As the pain of the global economic crisis intensifies, countries all around the world are adopting policies that make it tougher for foreigners to get jobs. In the Gulf countries, where several million Indians are employed in jobs ranging from construction to banking, governments have cut down on work visas and sent unemployed Indians home by the planeload. A Dubai-based official with an airline (who asked not to be named) says construction companies chartered more than 30 flights in January alone to fly workers back to India. In Malaysia, 43 Indian workers who have overstayed their visas expect to be deported this week, as thousands more leave voluntarily. On Mar. 2, the British government started an inquiry into whether immigrant workers should be restricted to sectors of the economy that have documented worker shortages.
In India, these decisions have raised hackles. India's IT sector is seen as a source of national pride—an area where Indians see themselves as competing successfully on the global scene. Moreover, the millions of Indians living overseas send back more than $30 billion a year in remittances, making up 3% of the country's GDP, according to estimates by the International Labor Organization. Political groups, parlaying for support in upcoming elections, have grasped the issue, threatening boycotts and asking the Indian government to intervene behalf of its expatriates. "We feel that in the current economic environment it is imperative for global corporations to collaborate on technology and innovation," says Suresh Senapaty, the chief financial officer of Wipro , one of India's largest IT services companies. "Policies of protectionism will only hinder the revival of the world economy."
While the change in rules for H-1B hires may be popular in the U.S., it could have a long-term impact that policymakers are not foreseeing, according to a report on March 2nd researchers at Duke and Harvard universities. Disheartened by the change in visa rules, nearly 100,000 foreign workers could leave the U.S. and return to their home countries, researchers concluded. The two-year study asked those who had returned why they left the U.S., and found that increased opportunities in India and China made it easier for these highly trained workers to leave jobs in Silicon Valley and start businesses back in their home countries. "Short term, this will have no impact on the U.S., but long term this could spell disaster," says Vivek Wadhwa, the lead researcher on the study and a research associate at Harvard's law school. "When we start recovering, then the people we need are going to be in India and China."
Since 1990, the H-1B program has allowed foreigners holding at least a bachelor's degree to work for six-year spells at U.S. companies and to have a chance to apply for a green card. Companies such as Microsoft and Google have hired thousands of foreign workers on H-1B visas. It is unclear how many of them applied for—or received—green cards, but the green card backlog in the U.S. in 2006, the last year for which data are available, was more than 1 million.
At the same time, Labor Dept. and U.S. immigration statistics indicate that just a little more than half of the allotted H-1B visas went to the high-tech sector; others included workers in fields as diverse as academia, medicine, and the nonprofit world. Several studies have shown that while there is documented fraud in the H-1B visa system and that H-1B workers often depress the local wages for similar U.S. workers, these highly trained immigrants do fuel a disproportionate portion of U.S. innovation. Wadhwa points out that nearly half of Silicon Valley startups—including Google—were started by immigrants, and nearly a quarter of U.S. global patent applications are from foreigners. "Without doubt, these H-1B workers are adding to the innovation pool in the U.S.," says Wadhwa.
Washington US President Barack Obama on Friday opposed the idea of inviting overseas nurses, including from India, to fill up the huge shortfall the United States is facing right now.
America like most of the Western countries is faced with acute shortage of nurses and in recent years it has allowed medical personnel from India, China and Philippines to immigrate to work in hospitals.
"The notion that we would have to import nurses makes absolutely no sense," Obama told a gathering of health experts and lawmakers at a White House meeting on health care reforms.
Instead, Obama argued that the best possible approach to meet this shortfall is to train people inside the country.
"For people who get fired up about the immigration debate and yet don't notice that we could be training nurses right here in the United States," he said responding to an observation made by Congresswoman Lois Capps from California.
"We have a huge shortage of nurses today. Estimates are that the US will be lacking over 500,000 nurses in the next seven years," said Democratic lawmaker Capps.
Last week, a legislation was introduced in the US Congress to create a special category of nursing visas, which would facilitate much faster and easier brining of trained nurses from Asian countries like India.
Called the "Nursing Relief Act of 2009" the legislation proposes to make provisions for the new category of visas for registered nurses with an annual limit of 50,000.
The legislation notes that there are more vacant nursing positions in the US than there are qualified registered nurses and nursing school candidates to fill those positions. And according to the Department of Labour, the current national nursing shortage exceeds 126,000.
Obama said there are a lot of people in the US who would love to be in the nursing profession, and yet the government is not able to providing them the resources to get them trained.
"That's something that we've got to fix. That should be a no-brainer. That should be a bipartisan no-brainer, to make sure that we've got the best possible nursing staffs in the country," Obama said amidst applause.
Read more...Bangalore: IT major Infosys dismissed reports that export-driven IT companies will resort to large scale layoff, following reports of slowdown of the US economy. Run-up to Budget 2008-09
Talking to reporters, on the sidelines of global launch of 'Finacle 10', a new version of core banking software here, Infosys Board Member and Human Resource Head, T.V. Mohandas Pai, said all companies undertake appraisals of its employees twice every year and identify the people who do not perform up to the expectations.
He said if the underperformers do not improve even after extra training then there will be a 'separation' or 'parting of ways'.
"This is no way a layoff. I think the media has created the reports that slowing down of the US economy has caused this and people have become more sensitive to it," he said.
Pai said the industry will hire 4.3 lakh people this fiscal and by this fiscal-end the IT industry will have two million people on its rolls.
He said the number of underperformers, being relieved, was 'very very small'.
We have cut down on at least 20% of the total recruitment,” said a senior HR official of TCS in Gujarat. “Our focus has largely been to hire more experienced candidates than go in for fresh recruits”, the official added.
Similarly, international IT firm, Keane is not just going slow on recruitments, but have also adopted a ‘just-in-time-approach’ on hiring. “Since the last three years, we used to hire 30-40 % more people than the previous year. But this year we are sticking to almost the same number of people we recruited last year”, said Keane India senior VP S G Raja Sekharan.
“Since January we have already made job offers to 3,000 students, which is in the range of what we had did last year. We do not want to make job offers and scale back (if market conditions deteriorate),” he said.
“The confidence level in the markets is low compared to the levels that existed three years back. It is very difficult to forecast where the markets are headed in the recent future,” Mr Sekharan said.
IT-giant Wipro has introduced stringent ‘quality measures’ into their hiring pattern. “We have made our process even more stringent and brought in measures to ensure quality of hire. Innovative measures have been introduced including setting up a Talent Quality Group within Talent Acquisition”, said Wipro Talent Acquisition VP Pradeep Bahirwani.
In order to hire quality manpower, Wiro has also started campus hiring in US and UK. “We have pioneered programmes like Wipro Academy of Software Excellence (WASE) which helps graduates learn while they work on projects with us. We have an active campus program in India and have also started campus hiring in US and UK,” he said.
HYDERABAD: Wipro Technologies, the country’s third largest IT services exporter, has decided not to hire fresh recruits till demand picks up.Pratik Kumar, executive VP (human resources) Wipro admitted that there were delays in bringing on board campus recruits for the next fiscal.
“None of the IT services firms is hiring and Wipro is not an exception. We will not be hiring till demand picks up. While we will honour all offers that we have made to campus recruits in 2008-09, there can be some delay in bringing them on board,” he said. The global economic slowdown has forced most IT services firms to go slow on hiring.
Wipro has issued about 8,000 offer letters to campus recruits in 2008-09. Generally, these recruits will be absorbed by the firm in 2009-10. “We may not be able to bring all of them on board in FY10. But we are in constant communication with them on when they can join the firm. Besides, we are looking at providing some avenues to keep them occupied,” he said.
Wipro Technologies has taken up a slew of measures to cut cost. “We have adopted about 30 measures to cut cost and most of them are related to increasing operational efficiency. We believe that we can improve our utilisation levels by a couple of points,” he said.
The utilisation rate at Wipro’s global IT business has been steadily rising and at the end of the third quarter, stood at 79.4%. In the third quarter of current fiscal (FY09), Wipro recorded consolidated revenue of Rs 6,634.3 crore, while the firm’s IT services business revenue were at Rs 5,079 crore. The firm, however, is still high on taining and faculties and skill upgradation. Wipro’s not for profit trust Mission 10X has partnered with Hyderabad-based Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University (JNTU) for conducting faculty enablement programmes.
Barack Obama’s anti-outsourcing stance concerns India
American President, Barack Obama’s anti-outsourcing movement came as a big blow to the Indian IT Industry. Of the total foreign currency earned by the Indian IT sector, 60% ($64 billion) comes from outsourcing. At present, about 1,000 American companies have shifted their jobs in abroad. Barack Obama, in his first US Congress session on February 25, 2009, said that his government would give tax breaks to companies that would retain jobs in US and vice versa. This would badly hit the American companies that have outsourced jobs in abroad.
Kamal Nath, India’s Minister of Commerce and Industry, said that he will clarify this issue with Washington. Indian government will also discuss this anti-outsourcing movement in the World Trade Organization. Mr. Nath said that his government would make sure that America’s movement is compatible with WTO when they had been talking about bi-lateral trade and movements of goods, people and services. He also said that one has to see how the US companies are using India as a base for technological development. It can not shutdown instantly.
Moreover, the US companies that are receiving bail out money would not be able to hire employees through the H-1B visa which is another major blow to the thriving Indian IT industry. As per his election agenda, Obama started this outsourcing movement to retain jobs in USA. The US President has also set goals to creat 3.5 million jobs in the country.
Obama’s decision upset the heads IT companies in India. Kris Gopalakrishnan, CEO, Infosys, said that outsourcing increased the competitiveness of US companies and it created more jobs inside the country. Ashok Soota, CMD, MindTree, said that Obama’s speech was an extension of what he had said in his campaigns. Sujata Rakhra, Vice President, Marketing and Communication, APAC, Perot Systems said that businesses today are truly global than ever before and such protectionalist measures would not only restrict innovation but would also hamper the progress of globalization.
Along with Indian IT companies, this new decision also upset many US companies that are saying that such a move would hurt US.
Taken from a speech today from Barack Obama, isn't just ignorant, it's exploitative and offensive:
"There's also another kind of violence that we're going to have to think about. It's not necessarily the physical violence, but the violence that we perpetrate on each other in other ways," he said, and goes on to catalogue other forms of "violence."
There's the "verbal violence" of Imus.
There's "the violence of men and women who have worked all their lives and suddenly have the rug pulled out from under them because their job is moved to another country."
Ugh. Words aren't violence. And to suggest they are betrays a nonchalance about the First Amendment that's rather disturbing (but not surprising given the generally hysterical reactions to Imus). After all, if words are as bad as guns, if Imus' comments were even remotely comparable to the Virginia Tech slaughter, then words, like guns, should be heavily regulated,
right? Or even banned?
The outsourcing line was even worse. No one has the "right" to be paid by someone else for their labor. Employment in a free market is peaceful and voluntary, on both sides. So is the decision to stop that agreement, both for the laborer, who may find a better job, or for the employer, who may find someone who can do the job better, or cheaper, or both. There's nothing remotely violent about any of it.
To compare a business decision to employ cheaper labor to the senseless slaughter of innocents--even if by way of tortured, nonsensical metaphor--is really reprehensible. It reeks of exploitation. "See, the people who are really upset about this massacre, the people who really care about the victims, they vote for me, and take the same position I do on controversial issues."
Also, does this also make the poor people in developing countries who take outsourced jobs complicit in the "violence?"
Jesus. Couldn't the politicians wait a full 48 hours before propping up the dead for campaign speeches?
On Tuesday night in Washington, US President Barack Obama proposed abolishing tax subsidies for American companies who outsource work offshore. It may be premature to start a heated debate on the nine words he devoted to this issue in a fairly long speech to a joint session of the US Congress, but it is necessary to establish the fact that in the real world his intentions may well remain only a paper promise.It’s somewhat as feasible as commanding a rollback of the tides!
Outsourcing, shorn of all its political and cultural contexts, is a business requirement, pure and simple. It is necessary for companies to retain competitiveness and enhance shareholder value, and no amount of administrative fiats can reverse or stall a commercial entity’s drive to do so.
Punitive measures in the United States to reduce outsourcing will no doubt affect Indian technology firms in the short term. Even now, a major chunk of revenue for these companies flow in from the US, and any protectionist measure will undoubtedly have a negative impact on the fiscal health as well as market capitalisation of Indian IT companies.
However, in the long run, it will prove to be more of an opportunity for sustained growth. Indian companies will start seriously exploring and tapping other markets to broaden their client base. Companies in the larger non-American world too need to enhance competitiveness and increase returns for stakeholders, and outsourcing is an essential tool they will need to do so. And it is difficult to think of a stronger vendor than India for such services globally.
Unfortunately for American companies, President Obama’s plans may actually end up damaging their long-term prospects far more than the short-term effects on Indian technology service providers. The competitiveness of US companies is bound to suffer in a globalised economy as well as diminish the returns they in turn can pass on to their stakeholders.
US companies will have to make a hard choice at this stage. No outsourcing means companies will have to strictly regulate their overheads, and be prepared to face far greater competitive pressure. Either way, their profit margins will take a dip.
Therefore, the main negative fallout of Mr Obama’s proposal will be on the very firms that he wishes to encourage to hire more Americans and at the expense of the American stakeholders of these companies.Earlier, the Bush administration had argued that tax cuts and deregulation actually prevent American firms from needlessly exporting jobs, even though US regulations were weaker and corporate tax rates lower than those in most other countries.
The argument also was that the efficiency of US capital would increase through optimal outsourcing policies and practices by rewarding companies with tax breaks for outsourcing work. These companies become more competitive globally and are also able to improve their bottomlines and enhance shareholder returns. President Obama’s proposal to end tax subsidies for outsourcing companies fly against the face of these arguments, and are also extremely unlikely to significantly reduce the lure of labour arbitrage.
For most companies the decision to outsource is not an easy one, and it only gets tougher when you have no option but to farm out services to a third party purely for economic reasons. But apart from the cost factor, there are other compelling reasons for outsourcing. The other main factor is the availability and use of technology.
Historically, companies have found it hard to manage advanced technologies over which they had no control. They were unable to update or provide technology solutions to critical business requirements in spite of having access to the right technology. In such a situation, it made sense to move out those jobs to places where it finds the right balance with the latest technologies that suited their business model.
This is one of the main reasons why outsourcing gained so much credibility and momentum over the past years.When you base taxation policy on populist expediency and not on sound economics or even ground reality, companies might stay for some time but when the going gets really tough they will relocate to places where they get tax incentives. They go where they can make money and that is sound business, if not sensible economics.
When you take away the tax cuts, you accelerate that process much more instead of stemming it.The key deciding factor here will be the cost of quality labour in the preferred outsourcing destinations. If US companies find that even with the added tax liability factored in, the cost of outsourced labour is cheaper than US labour, they will continue to outsource. Executive fiat or not.
For Indian IT-enabled services and BPO firms, this means more severe pressure on their margins and sustained labour cost control. This also means that the Indian vendors have to start investing heavily in strengthening internal operational processes and governance systems that can closely track the delivery efficiency of their organisations.
Read more...Mumbai: MphasiS Ltd, the Bangalore-based IT services firm that is now a part of international technology giant Hewlett-Packard, may add more Americans to its workforce to avail the tax breaks announced by US President Barack Obama on February 25.
Speaking to DNA Money, Ganesh Ayyar, chief executive officer, MphasiS Ltd, said, "The option of increasing Americans in our workforce is open to us in view of the recent announcements by US authorities. However, we will have to factor in many other things before that, like onsite cost versus margins. We also have to evaluate client willingness."
However, an analyst tracking the sector felt IT companies talking of recruiting more Americans and actually walking the talk were two different things. "Putting more people onsite will send their costs soaring. Moreover, clients might not be willing to pay that much," he said on the condition of anonymity. The analyst, however, added that MphasiS earns 94% of its revenues through time and material (T&M) contracts and so, is in the position to renegotiate contracts if onsite postings increase.
Of the 29,988 employees the company has, 1,721 work onsite, with the rest being offshore. As much as three-fourth of the company's revenues comes from offshore work, with onsite contributing the rest. MPhasiS' billing rate for onsite is about $71 per hour and for offshore, $17.
The US region contributed 67% to its revenues in the first quarter (November-January) of financial year 2008-09. MphasiS follows a November to October fiscal. In Q1, Europe, India and the Middle East and Asia Pacific accounted for 22%, 7% and 4% of revenues, respectively.
Its parent Hewlett-Packard, through its acquisition of US-based EDS Corporation, contributed 45% to MphasiS' revenues in the first quarter. "This is the first time we have taken into account business from Hewlett-Packard in our books after the acquisition. We will definitely look to increase its contribution further, because the EDS-Hewlett Packard combine too has grown five times in revenues. So, the relationship holds huge potential for us," said Ayyar. MphasiS gets outsourcing and infrastructure solutions projects from Hewlett-Packard.
Meanwhile, in these times of price negotiations from clients, the company may look at increasing the work hours of employees for cost benefits. However, Ayyar said, "Nothing of that sort is in practice at the moment." MphasiS added 9 new clients in its first quarter, including six through the Hewlett-Packard relationship. The company's revenues stood at Rs 9,77.7 crore in the first quarter of FY09, compared with Rs 8,94.72 crore in the quarter before that.
However, the BPO business fared badly due to project cancellations from a few clients and also due to the appreciation of rupee against the pound. MphasiS earns 43% of its revenues from the banking, financial services and insurance sector, with technology, manufacturing and retail, and telecom providing 25%, 13% and 9%, respectively.
Continuing to play the anti-outsourcing card, Democrat presidential front-runner Barack Obama on Wednesday said while America cannot "shy away" from globalisation, it would have to take measures to ensure that jobs are not shipped overseas.
"We have to stop providing tax breaks for companies that are shipping jobs overseas and give those tax breaks to companies that are investing here in the United States of America," Obama said in during a debate with rival Senator Hillary Clinton in Cleaveland, Ohio.
The Illinois Senator, playing to the gallery of those workers who have been displaced in manufacturing jobs as a result of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and generally to the anti-outsourcing crowd, said he would ensure that every pact the US signs has environmental, safety and labour standards to protect workers and consumers alike.
"We can't have toys with lead paint in them that our children are playing with. We can't have medicines that are actually making people more sick instead of better because they're produced overseas," Obama said.
At the same time, he said, Americans cannot "shy away" from globalisation. "We can't draw a moat around us."
"The problem is we've been negotiating just looking at corporate profits and what's good for multinationals," the African-American Senator said adding, "as President, what I want to be is an advocate on behalf of workers".
Facing the heat from US presidential hopefuls who blamed "shipping jobs" to China and India for rising US unemployment, the India Inc had last week launched a counter offensive through the media, telling Americans that the industry is creating new work opportunities for them
Read more...Barrack Obama: on outsourcing
President Barrack Obama's views on 'outsourcing', articulated in the run up to the US presidential elections, is a real cause for concern for the $60-billion Indian IT and ITES industry, which has grown rapidly on US orders, in the last over a decade. Obama had spelt out his views against outsourcing and is opposed to companies shipping jobs overseas.
However, one hopes pragmatism will replace the rhetoric, now that he is the US President and that he will see the mutually beneficial, 'win-win' strategic advantages of outsourcing. A closer look at outsourcing will, in fact, reveal that the game now is not just irreversible, but any adverse action against it will be mutually harmful. First of all, outsourcing in IT and ITES industries is no different from the larger trend of outsourced 'contract manufacturing' in the manufacturing sector and hence it should not be looked at with disdain.
In the past, US lost jobs in textiles and garments, shoe and toy making, and in other low-stuff industries, first to Japan, then to South Korea and later to China and other low-cost countries. Even in computer hardware, Intel ceded the low-cost advantage in chip making to companies in South Korea and Taiwan. Dell and IBM did the same in desktop computers and laptops.
Today, the ground reality is that US no longer has the capability and infrastructure to manufacture such low-cost products. The trend is the same in the IT and ITES sector and it is not an exaggeration to say that US has no (ready built) infrastructure left to enter and compete in low-end IT products and services. Indian IT industry may have grown exponentially, but mostly the work 'outsourced' is what some people call as 'coolies' jobs.
It is only recently that Indian giants, such as TCS, Infosys and Wipro are offering some competition to US biggies IBM and HP in the services contracts. But, volumes and values fetched so far are negligible. Secondly, US companies have hugely benefited by outsourcing in general and in R&D activities in particular. Some higher-end jobs outsourced to India have created high value products at low costs and the US companies have been able to sell those products globally, including in India and obtain higher returns. In fact, money spent in India in such activities may ultimately be recovered from sale of such products here.
Thirdly, Indian IT companies have themselves been huge consumers of hardware products from the US companies. Generally, US-based IBM, HP and Sun Microsystems have been in the race to sell hardware in India. Networking companies like Cisco have also been selling hardware for the fixed phones, the wireless and for the internet.
Thus while Indian software coders write codes for US companies, US companies find readymade market for 'Made in US' hardware stuff. Fourthly, Indian IT and ITES companies are also huge consumers of 'Made in US' software. Not only the hardware giants, such as IBM, HP, Sun and Cisco sell their software services, others like Microsoft now have a huge market share in all types of industrial and consumer software.
Fifthly, the outsourcing has created indirect markets for US companies, as the overall computer literacy has risen by larger penetration of computers and computers softwares. For example, by adopting e-governance, the government sector has created a huge market for hardware and software.
Markets have expanded for products related to security, data-warehousing, etc. Thus benefits to the US companies by way of local demand for computer products in India may far exceed the presumed direct loss of a few thousand jobs in US. Sixthly, it should not be presumed that if the US companies were forced to do their work locally under some legal or other compulsion, the software coders' jobs would go to US citizens only. Sooner or later, companies will find a way out to work circumvent those compulsions.In nutshell, bad times call for adopting flexible and innovative strategies and serving the customers in a better manner, so that when the markets recover, Indian IT companies develop better competencies, products, services and the skill-sets necessary to serve the future markets.
Read more...Infosys layoffs employees at Australia location.
Top IT firm Infosys Technologies is restructuring its Australian operations. This has created some redundancies, downsizing its workforce at Infosys Australia by around 5%, a source briefed in the matter said.
The subsidiary employs 360 people, a majority of them from Expert Information Services, the first acquisition Infosys Australia made six years ago.
Infosys board member and director for human resources Mohandas Pai confirmed that there were some separations from Infosys Australia. Responding to a mail from ET, he said: “We have had an organisational restructuring in our Australia subsidiary and as a result, some positions have become redundant. It is the first time after the acquisition that this is being done.”
The tech leader has, however, promised that the laid-off employees would get assistance for outplacement as well as severance pay.
A few months ago, Gary Ebeyan, who used to head Infosys Australia, quit the firm citing personal reasons. He was replaced by Jacqueline Korhonen, a former IBM executive. Revenues and profits of Infosys Australia have been slipping in the past three quarters of the fiscal in part due to the impact of the currency movements.
From a first quarter revenue of $34 million and a net income of $3 million, its second quarter revenue slipped to $30.84 million and net income to $2.8 million. In the third quarter, revenue fell further to $26 million and net income to $1.62 million.
“The Australian dollar is weakening significantly,” explained an analyst, who said Infosys could be laying off staff in other regions such as the UK as well. In Australia, Infosys’ largest customer is Telestra, he added.
TCS puts 130 more UK employees in scanner. No hikes in Salary this year. More Job Cuts are Possible in TCS.
Just a day after the report of India’s biggest software exporter TCS laying off several employees at its UK office, comes a report that the company has put another 130 employees under scanner.
According to a report in a business daily, the 130 employees are said to be working for its UK-based insurance client Legal and General’s (L&G’s).
In June 2008, TCS signed a five-year agreement with L&G to provide IT managed services. Under this, TCS was to provide application development and support services from the client’s premises plus TCS’ new delivery centre based in UK.
Earlier reports said that Mumbai-based TCS laid off most of its marketing team in London, plus a large number of professionals in the consulting division. According to sources, the targets were mainly the high-end consultants who are said to be an expensive lot to keep on the bench, and marketing.
Giving reasons for the over 100 layoffs in the UK office, TCS CEO & MD S Ramadorai said that either the contracts of these employees had ended, or can be due to bad performance. He added that going forward in the year, a lot of emphasis will be on employee efficiency.
This week, the IT major also accepted that it may go for further job cuts to tackle global economic downturn. The company also ruled out salary hikes next year.
Ramadorai said, “There would be no hike in salaries in the forthcoming year” and added that “job cuts are possible if the situation worsens”.
Once the cornerstone of a booming local tech economy, AOL executed its second major round of layoffs in two years amid a weakening market. AOL is shedding 10 percent of its workforce by the end of this month.
Officials would not comment on the matter or put a number on how many workers at the Dulles campus lost their jobs yesterday, but AOL has said that it has plans to reduce its domestic headcount by 700 people. More cuts may be on the way; the company intends to finish the current round of layoffs by the end of March.
The tech sector has sometimes been thought of as immune to economic woes suffered by other industries, but the past few weeks have dispelled that notion as giants such as Microsoft, Intel and Dell have handed out pink slips to thousands of workers.
Yesterday's cuts at AOL followed an internal announcement by chief executive Randy Falco that such a move was on the way.
"The deepening economic recession has affected every corner of the economy, including our own," he wrote in a memo that was e-mailed to AOL employees in January. "Reducing our workforce is never easy, particularly in the current climate, but our goal in doing this is to provide our core businesses the resources they need to thrive."
Several dozen laid-off AOL employees gathered yesterday afternoon at Clyde's Willow Creek Farm in the Ashburn area. A collection of computer programmers, administrators and other office personnel exchanged phone numbers and asked former co-workers to keep in touch via the networking Web site, LinkedIn. Business was brisk at the bar, waiters said.
Many of the axed employees said they weren't given an estimate on how many people were let go or what departments were affected. One former employee said he didn't even know how many people in his division were now jobless.
"If there was a number, we wouldn't know it," said the former worker, who spoke only on condition of anonymity. "No one saw this coming."
The company was once famous for its popular dial-up Internet connection service, and in recent years it has tried to reposition itself as an advertising-supported Web services business with an acquisition last year of the social networking service Bebo, which claims 40 million users. Facebook, by comparison, has more than 155 million users.
AOL's first round of large-scale layoffs came in 2007, when the company cut 20 percent of its worldwide workforce of 10,000 people.
One analyst said yesterday that he was surprised that this year's 10 percent workforce cut wasn't even deeper.
"AOL isn't a leading-edge company anymore, and they're saddled with an old business that inhibits their ability to move into new areas," said Roger Kay, president of Endpoint Technologies Associates. "They'd like to be a portal, sort of like Yahoo, but they haven't been able to do that very well."
Affected AOL workers were e-mailed Monday afternoon that they needed to attend an "important meeting" the next day. In a comment posted to The Washington Post's Web site yesterday, one reader said her husband had been laid off from the Dulles office.
"We knew about it last night because the night before a layoff, AOL sends affected employees an email saying that they must attend a mandatory HR meeting the next day," she wrote. "He was given 2 months severance and 2 months free COBRA. He worked for AOL for 15 years."
Source: Washington Post
Layoffs History in India by Indian IT Companies. TCS, Infosys, HCL Tech, Satyam, Patni, Mastek, Motorola, Capgemini, Sun, Yahoo, Hexaware, persistent and GlobalLogic layoff employees from India offices.
Please find compiled list of all layoffs across Indian IT companies. This list include layoffs from TCS, Infosys, HCL Tech, Satyam, Patni, Mastek, Motorola, Capgemini, Sun, Yahoo, Hexaware, persistent and GlobalLogic.
India’s biggest software exporter, TCS, has asked several employees at its UK office to leave, as the company prepares to trim its payroll costs and cope effectively with the recession.
India’s second largest software services firm Infosys Technologies has downsized 5 per cent workforce at Infosys Australia.
The subsidiary employs 360 people, a majority of them from Expert Information Services — the first acquisition Infosys Australia made six years ago.
IT services company HCL Technologies has asked 450 employees at its Delhi and Bangalore offices to leave. A majority of those asked to leave are on the bench.
According to a HCL Technologies executive, the company had sacked 400 people in Delhi and another 50 in Bangalore in the last one-two months. The firm had earlier asked those on the bench to get assigned to projects or face the prospect of being asked to leave the firm.
T
ainted Satyam Computer has decided to lay off employees from its sales division in order to meet operating expenses and clear its debts. Nearly 10 per cent of its claimed workforce of 53,000 is engaged in providing support functions
Last year, Patni Computer Systems too laid off over 400 employees citing non-performance issues.
Around 59 employees of IT service provider Mastek are said to have opted to leave the company, three days after they were shifted to `virtual bench’ because of slowdown.
Last month, Mastek announced that it is putting 425 employees on virtual bench for the next 12 months following a slowdown in demand. The company had given two days to the 425 employees on virtual bench, the option of leaving the organisation.
More than 200 people Motorola India had hired just a few months ago to drive its mobile handsets business were reportedly laid off late last year. The company is also reported to have issued pink slips to at least 100 of its 4,000 employees in India in December. I
The US mobile phone maker also confirmed that the India operations will also face job cuts as part of its plan to shed more than 3,000 global workforce.
IT consulting and software company Capgemini has reportedly laid-off around 2,000 employees over several months in Bangalore, Mumbai and Kolkata centres.
IT giant Sun Microsystems reportedly laid off over 150 employees in India in January. According to a news report, most of the laid off employees were software developers working at the company’s Bangalore office.
The news report adds that the company may go for another round of lay offs soon. This round is likely to impact support staff from departments like marketing, human resources and sales.
Global search engine and web services provider Yahoo in December last year laid off 45 people from its India operations as part of its worldwide firing policy due to global meltdown.
The pink slips were in line with the company’s guidance given in October for the fourth quarter of 2008, which hinted at terminating the services of about 1,500 employees worldwide during the current quarter.
Pune-based Hexaware Technologies too is reportedly trimming its headcount across India. At one of the meeting HR Head reportedly said that the company would be axing jobs and slashing salaries.
Pune-based Persistent Systems has begun evaluating employees in a manner that would enable it to justify any possible manpower restructuring, including a layoff. Persistent employs over 4,000 across nine development centres in India and abroad. According to human resource experts, such a decision possibly points to a layoff in light of the downturn, which has resulted into a downward revision of IT budgets.
GlobalLogic, one of the largest outsourced product development companies in India, has laid off about 125 employees. While 108 employees were asked to leave ‘due to poor grading in the appraisals’ concluded in October, another 17 were told to leave because their ‘skill sets fell obsolete’.
The over $100-million company, which has delivery centres in Noida, Nagpur and Pune, confirmed the layoffs but said the figure is 115. Over the last two years, Global-Logic reduced its headcount to 2,000 from 3,000.
Courtesy Indiatimes.com
When Everyone else is facing the heat and laying off resources infy has stunned everyone by offering a 8% hike in Salary to its Fresher Recruits. Infy is recruiting 20000 Freshers.
Infy knows that it is there for the long haul, and it is using this downturn to showcase to the world that they are different.
Infy has extended the Training period of employees so that they are better trained to take on higher and complex responsibilities going forward.
http://navinsabharwal.blogspot.com/2009/03/infy-to-hire-20k-engg-grads-at-over-8.html
Microsoft, which has recently announced shedding some 5,000 jobs, will be giving pink slips to H-1B visa holders too, despite acknowledging that this category of workers has a significant contribution to the company's success.
Microsoft, in a letter to Senator Charles Grassley, has said the H-1B work visa programme helped hire the best available talent of the world.
The present Microsoft line can be seen in the context of the policies of the Obama regime, which gives preference to companies hiring Americans in giving bail-out.
H1-B employees have always accounted for less than 15 per cent of Microsoft's US workforce, the level that is used in immigration law to determine whether a company is "H-1B dependent," the letter said.
Answering a specific question from the Senator on H-1B people losing their jobs, Microsoft said: "Workers on H-1B visas and other temporary work visas make up only a small percentage of our overall workforce, but they were also among the employees impacted by the reductions announced in January. Employees outside the United States were also impacted."
The employees of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), who would be the victims of the company's recent announcement of massive layoff, may find some relief as the firm plans to help them in outplacement. The company had said that it will be slashing around 1,300 employees or one percent of its workforce across its global centers.
The software giant will aid in outplacement, counseling and alternate positions in subsidiaries if available and it has also tied up with a few placement agencies across the country. It has already sacked around 100 employees in Chennai in the last two weeks.
"Recruitment of experienced professionals has been frozen unless these are approved by the respective business heads for project-specific skills. Wherever possible, we look to retain experienced professionals within the company to take on these roles," Ajoy Mukherjee, Vice President and Head, Global HR, TCS told Times of India via mail.
The company has also specified operating units to raise the performance bar and utilize resources in the most effective manner. The process for undertaking this is a detailed one and will result in some involuntary attrition. The e-mail comes in the wake of the company's Managing Director S Ramadorai admitting that the firm had lost a few clients in recent times. He has already hinted that the company might do away with employee variable pay this year, which accounts for 20 to 35 percent of salaries.
Source: TheEconomicTimes
India’s second-largest software company Infosys will be inducting almost 20,000 engineering graduates this year at over 8.3 % higher salary from what was offered last year, even as the company seeks to cope with a lower demand for software services in its top export markets such as the US and Europe.
At a time when other industry rivals such as TCS, Wipro and HCL Technologies are deferring the
joining dates for new hires, Infosys is holding on to its commitment and that too at better salary levels than last year.
“We have increased the pay package from Rs 3 lakh per annum to over Rs 3.25 lakh per annum for those joining in June this year,” Nandita Gurjar, senior vice-president and global human resources head, Infosys, told ET in an interview. “The idea is to get the best talent even during this slowdown, to provide better training and prepare them for the projects,” she added.
Experts such as Prashant Srivastava, managing partner of Gallup Consulting, said that top tech firms want to retain their edge as preferred employers in the industry. “Proactive companies are preparing and hiring high performers for the future, as they don’t want to run after talent once economy revives in few years,” he said.
The offer letters and dates of joining have been sent to 20,000 freshers (2008-09), and the process of joining will start from June this year. Last year, Infosys recruited almost 18,000 (2007-08) engineering graduates.
The company has also increased the training period for new recruits from the current four months to almost eight months. “It gives them better understanding of a project because the predictability of what kind of work you will get is much lower than what it was last year,” said Ms Gurjar. Infosys visits some 1,100 engineering colleges every year.
At a time when the US government is mulling stricter work permit regulations, Indian tech firms such as Infosys will need to deliver more projects from India. “We have been preparing from past three years to reduce our dependency on H1B visa, which is hiring more and more locals in all the countries, where we work,” said Ms Gurjar.
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