Approximately 20,000 employees will be jobless out of Indian IT Industry soon, thanks to Infosys and Cognizant

Some of the worst fears about the Indian IT industry are coming true. While Infosys was already reeling under pressure due to whistleblower complaint to SEC since last several weeks, Cognizant CEO has spoken and made it clear that they are sacking about 7,000 techies. And now, Infosys has also confirmed that they are going to lay off about 12,000 employees in mid and senior level positions.

Now, though Cognizant says that they are getting rid of the "content vetting" business and shrugging it off as though its not a huge deal, the signs of slowdown across the IT industry are quite visible to those looking for them. This is an industry wide slowdown, not just affecting a handful of companies. What we've seen until now may not even be the tip of the iceberg.

The stock price of INFY has already tanked from ₹800 to ₹650 in the last month, the market never lies, there just cannot be a smoke without a fire. Some days ago, I wrote an article about how Indian IT Industry has become a nightmare to work for creative people. This is a very old problem and often ignored until now, and even now there are very few people in IT industry who even acknowledge this problem. They keep ignoring it as just another "chalta hai" thing and the mess keeps getting bigger and bigger.

As I wrote in a recent article, the market share of large companies like Infy and TechM is slowly and gradually being eaten up by emerging smaller firms, startups and the increasing block of freelancers in developing nations like India, Bangladesh and Pakistan. This phenomenon has created a huge dent in the profits of companies like Infosys and will continue doing the same if the work culture problem isn't solved soon. After all, which talented dude will want to work in an extremely toxic work culture, if becoming a freelancer is so much easier and pays almost the same kind of remuneration?

If Infy and TechM want to improve their profitability, they should focus on keeping their employees happy first. I don't know what kind of legal twists and loopholes these guys pull to implement 9.5 hrs working as a normal routine thing, it surely is an unethical thing even if not unlawful. If a programmer finishes off and delivers her code in less than 2 hours, why the heck do you want to keep her in office for the remaining 7.5 hours for? What do you hope to even gain by it, except screwing their lives?

The senior management in these companies need to ponder over these questions and take some decision over it. They need to especially sit with the programmers and testers, the lower rung of their work-force, because they are the ones who actually face this heat. In many cases, it is just a disgruntled supervisor or project-manager who is bent upon making their lives hell. Call these supervisors and conduct training sessions about how to handle their subordinates, especially the creative ones.

This isn't such a huge problem to solve if people are determined to solve it, just some attitude change is required, a bit from the employer's side and a bit from the employee's side!