IN the first week of February, 500 employees were laid off from IT company, Tata Consultancy Services. But Chinmay Sahoo, an assistant systems engineer with TCS, Chennai, isn't worried. In fact he is confident of his position in the company. Here's why.

"Those employees who performing badly, consistently (getting a rating of two for performance) have been laid off. The message is loud and clear: if you perform, you are safe and will even be appraised," says Chinmay.

Similarly according to news reports, IBM laid off 700 employees (mostly freshers) citing 'performance in aptitude tests that were recently conducted in undisclosed IBM India locations'.

On a different note, revenues drive the IT industry and according to Dr Rafiq Dossani, author of the book India Arriving: How this economic powerhouse is redefining global business, and a senior research scholar at Stanford University, they are not rising. "In the fourth quarter the IT industry has witnessed a decline in revenue from 40 to 35 per cent, although the margins have been steady at 25 per cent," he says.

So, if employees are confident about their positions, don’t the falling revenues mean anything?

Good and bad news
"The current layoffs we saw are only a way for companies to re-align costs. But we cannot rule out the impact of the dollar depreciation," says Balu Pandian, Director-Business Development of Jobstreet.com, a jobs portal. According to him India’s value in the global ITES market has been due to favourable costs and quality work.

And this won’t change. "However, those large contracts that companies hope to sign will get delayed," says Balu, who also feels that the presidential elections in the US, will affect this, since corporate America cannot afford to announce more offshoring projects during this time.

Several smaller IT companies have used strategies like faster promotions with fancy designations, to help retain talent. "Smaller companies may stop promotions altogether and the larger ones will think 100 times before promoting their staff," he says.

Also, no more 20 to 30 per cent hikes. Your performance will be checked thoroughly before your appraisal. According to Balu, this year hikes will be in the range of 10 to 12 per cent. "The hike cut-offs will be liable only to those companies, which have dollar dominated revenues. Companies earning their revenue in Euros or the Japanese Yen have nothing to worry about," he adds. At the moment Indian IT firms, which have dollar exposure for revenue, are Infosys, TCS, Wipro etc

So, should you worry?

Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images
(Photograph used for illustrative purposes only)

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e-mail: Suraj Anand

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