Live data from Hacker News

India’s IT industry laid off more than 56k employees this year

qz.com

91–100 of 420 posts

Re: India’s IT industry laid off more than 56k employees this year

#91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I noticed a lot of outsourcing work is going to Ukraine and Belarus. India got a head start because of English language but right now many devolopers in Eastern Europe speak fluent English as well.

I don't think Ukraine is catching up to India, it's just different work. In my experience, the typical job going to Ukraine is a different breed. If you can deal with the time zone and language barrier, they have a weirdly large supply of very competent developers. In fact, C++ devs from that region are the secret sauce to a lot of large codebases I've seen.

> they have a weirdly large supply of very competent developers.

I've noticed this as well. Very strange that it is so "poor" but so talented. I guess that probably won't last.

Re: India’s IT industry laid off more than 56k employees this year

#92
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some cities even have their own networking team, as running their own fiber plant and all that entails (traffic lights and other devices that need comms) is usually cheaper than renting out copper or fiber from your local telco.

I'd be extremely surprised if that were true. Cities like to do this sort of thing because it expands headcount but I doubt it makes sense financially if you account for all costs.

There are companies that do it - http://www.midwesternelectricinc.com/traffic-signals/

But cities of a sufficient size (pulling up Chicago because its probably larger than the sufficient size), you find https://webapps1.cityofchicago.org/traffic/about.jsp

> Chicago has about 2900 traffic signals throughout the city. About 470 of these signals are interconnected through a fiber-network that facilitates the centralized monitoring and control of signal operations. Whether interconnected or not-interconnected, the signals are programmed to synchronize with signals immediately around it so that vehicles will pass through the intersections most efficiently. New signals are added and old signals are modernized every year depending on the need and availability of funds. While OEMC/Traffic Management Authority is responsible for maintaining the signal coordination and timing, Division of Electricity at CDOT is responsible for the maintenance of the signals and CDOT is responsible for the physical design, construction, and timing of signals.

It appears that the City of Chicago maintains their own. As noted there, that is maintained by the division of electricity ( https://www.cityofchicago.org/city/en/depts/cdot/provdrs/tra... ), which also maintains all street lights and signs. When one gets to a point where the municipality knows that there will always be work for some number of people - its cheaper to hire those people permanently than contract it out. This also provides a better SLA for the city (tax payers get rather annoyed if the street light is out and the response from City Hall is "we told the contractor about it, but they haven't responded yet - its the holidays.")

Re: India’s IT industry laid off more than 56k employees this year

#93
One thing I was hoping to get answered is, what is the revenue growth or dip these companies have seen. I think that may give a better context to this story. Job loss headlines alone sounds like doom and gloom, but that may or may not be the case depending on how the money is flowing...

Re: India’s IT industry laid off more than 56k employees this year

#94
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might be the case with many IT services firms but assuming that so called home countries brains only can do serious engineering is quite short sighted. I head an engineering team from India and our team is local talent for a firm which is outside India. We believe we do some serious engineering. There is this west fixation that serious engineering can't be done outside. I am not saying it isn't true on most cases but…

Engineering can certainly be done outside. However, there is a real risk in having the core business competency and value be outsourced rather than something built up with employees at the company with an interest in the company's success rather than looking at it as just the next project.

The distinction here is between captive development centers vs outsourced IT services. The latter has previously had more jobs and is experienced more layoffs now. The former is likely still a growth industry.

Re: India’s IT industry laid off more than 56k employees this year

#95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Ukraine is catching up to India, it's just different work. In my experience, the typical job going to Ukraine is a different breed. If you can deal with the time zone and language barrier, they have a weirdly large supply of very competent developers. In fact, C++ devs from that region are the secret sauce to a lot of large codebases I've seen.

> they have a weirdly large supply of very competent developers. I've noticed this as well. Very strange that it is so "poor" but so talented. I guess that probably won't last.

My guess this is due to the remnants of the good soviet math/science program in schools and universities. Which was originally heavily influenced by Kolmogorov by the way.

Re: India’s IT industry laid off more than 56k employees this year

#96
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Well, yeah, entry-level IT stuff was always a target for automation I see this as a progress. Since you replace the first-level IT stuff with automated processes, the now second-level IT stuff will sooner or later become first-level and so on. Therefore all the levels are pushed upwards and we tend to go to higher levels, no matter if we speak about developing, researching, improving etc.

At least in this case, 56,000 people in the 1st level lost their jobs. What's the total number of level 1's who matriculated to level 2? And is there a net job loss or are the laid off people finding other jobs that pay as well or better? Without answers for these and related questions, it's uncertain if this is good progress.

From the source article - http://www.livemint.com/Industry/4CXsLIIZXf8uVQLs6uFQvK/Top-...

> Preparing the ground for layoffs, each of these seven companies has already put a higher number of employees on notice by awarding them the lowest ratings. Cognizant has placed more than 15,000 employees in the lowest category (bucket IV), and Infosys has placed more than 3,000 senior managers in the category of employees needing improvement.

This isn't 56k entry level jobs. This is 56k jobs up and down the structure of the companies.

> As IT companies start working on newer technologies such as cloud computing, they are fast moving from a people-led model, which means they need fewer employees. Meanwhile, many of the IT companies have embraced automation tools to perform the mundane, repeatable tasks that were performed by an army of engineers earlier.

> “The entire pyramid structure (organizational structure) is getting disrupted,” the second HR head cited earlier added.

> That speaks of a bigger problem, said an expert.

> “What required 50 programmers, analysts or accountants 5 years ago can be done by a handful of smart thinkers and much smarter systems,” said Phil Fersht, CEO of US-based HfS Research, an outsourcing-research firm. “If I were Prime Minister Narendra Modi, I would be very concerned that a whole workforce generation needs reorienting to address work activities that are growing in demand.”

None of the articles speak to where the people who have lost their jobs are going.

Re: India’s IT industry laid off more than 56k employees this year

#97

It'll probably get worse for a lot of people. I work in the public sector, in a municipality. Our IT department has been relatively big on the server side, utilizing consultants ever so often to ensure best practices. To be honest I'm not an operations guy, and never have been, but I do work in management and my good friend who heads the IT department is struggling to find new roles for the operations people as we're…

Out of curiosity, how does blockchain come into play with Danish municipal IT?

Only thing I can think of is a ledger. If it isn't about currency then it is some sort of ledger.

Re: India’s IT industry laid off more than 56k employees this year

#98
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>These people are mainly relatively unskilled Not only that I agree with that, but I'd like to add the fact that after 2 years of working in a team splitted in Romania and India, the working experience with Indian programmers is relatively difficult. It's not something isolated to an individual, all of my colleagues have been complaining that they would really like to work with someone else, but not from India. I thi…

> I think it comes from their culture, they are not used to work hard or to do something willingly. Cut the crap. India is a country of 1.3 billion people, don't peddle bullshit stereotypes. Not working hard doesn't come from the culture; it's quite the opposite if anything. >They are doing it if they must, if someone tells them that they have to do it. Maybe the firm you are dealing with doesn't pay the employees we…

> Cut the crap. India is a country of 1.3 billion people, don't peddle bullshit stereotypes. Not working hard doesn't come from the culture; it's quite the opposite if anything.

Actually, I know this is anecdote but my buddy was an manager type position moved up from software and he had to deal with Indians. He had to go over cultural slides to how to deal with Indians and the slide explicitly talk about their world ethnics and how their culture view time.

The time slide was super interesting and the few thing I recall from it. It was talking about setting time line for the offshore team. And when they say they will have it done, it can mean anything, and that you have to have them to explicitly state a real date.

I'm not trying to shoot ya down or anything, just wanted to point out another experience in culture. The slides he showed me was suppose to be on the downlow too >___<. But the whole thing is about how to manage Indian programmers and many aspect of it was dealing with culture or how culture affects their actions.

Re: India’s IT industry laid off more than 56k employees this year

#99
Those people trying to understand why there is this level of mess in the Indian IT, let me give you some perspective. India was large a socialist economy focussed heavily on self reliance before the 1990's. To be precise 1992. This had both good and bad effects. Unions were rampant, production and engineering were largely focussed on delivering services and schemes administered through the government. Computerization was its bare minimal as unions largely thought of automation as some kind massive job killer. Trust me when I say this the luddite movement back then was so crazy there were national strikes every time the government tried to anything progressive.

Round about the same time, around mid 1980s, people were tiring as they were watching west take leaps way ahead of India. There were a few companies building products and providing services to many firms back then. They were not exactly very successful but they managed to hang on. Until 1992, when India opened up its markets. Import regulations were relaxed, and FDI was encouraged. Round about the same time, US and Europe was gradually outsourcing bulk of its work to India. These companies thanks to double benefits of both the sides of domestic and international economy, now experienced run away success. Early employees tasted success and growth never witnessed in the history of Indian economics. Companies grew 100% YoY. Head counts increased by 2x every year. Most employees came from middle class to lower middle class families. These were promoted in waves after waves, year after year. You could easily net a decent mid to senior management position in 5 - 7 years. They also got to travel abroad frequently, some of them even settled in US and Europe. Land prices in Bangalore and rest of India were at scrap levels. Dollar exchange rate to rupee was 35-40 rupees. So you had a lot of value available for bird feed prices. Salaries of course were gargantuan. While the ordinary Indian worker made a average of 5 - 10 K a month, Im talking of the really well of ones. Software and IT folks made in lacs, bonuses came in lacs. Stock options came in crores. Back then these kind of riches were unheard in Indian middle class households, unless you came from politics or bribe giving government jobs.

IT jobs now became the most sought after jobs in India. Needless to say this also caused a lot of bad habit to creep into most companies. Almost everybody aspires to be a manager. Largely because the perks are just too awesome, all you have to do is forward emails, circulate memos, approve leaves and do appraisals. It was the Indian private company equivalent of posh sought after Indian administrative services jobs. You get paid disproportionately more in all possible ways, Salaries, bonuses and stock options. You also get to travel business class frequently. Think of it like fully paid luxury vacation every few months.

Companies now have layers and layers of dead wood unproductive management, consuming too much resources and providing little to zero value in return. Most junior level folks are completely unmotivated to pursue a hard career in tech due to dismal financial prospects. Many mass immigrate to west to catch up on lost years. Every time US has a recessions these companies benefit as work gets outsourced. When US economy is good they get shafted.

VCs and US firms largely pay Indian salaries. Start up scene is not bright either. Most are started by Ivy league folks and graciously over spend all the cash on paying fat salaries to people from the alma mater. In short, with money drying up and automation coming in. Management jobs are getting eliminated. Not enough free money to go around. Many junior level testing and first/second line support jobs too are going. Next crash will be ugly. People will lose homes, jewelry will be sold. Kids will be pulled out of international schools.

They can't be reskilled and re-employed for the same reasons why someone weighing 150 kgs can't one just wake up and run a ultra marathon. Too much of entitlement.

Lastly this is just a repeat of the decade of the 1990s. With liberalization bulk of the people got shafted the same way.

Free money never did any good to people on the longer run.

Re: India’s IT industry laid off more than 56k employees this year

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they have a weirdly large supply of very competent developers. I've noticed this as well. Very strange that it is so "poor" but so talented. I guess that probably won't last.

My guess this is due to the remnants of the good soviet math/science program in schools and universities. Which was originally heavily influenced by Kolmogorov by the way.

And a lack of job prospects in the region. The decent developers have no alternative but to work in the local outsourcing shops.
Post reply on HN