Our world has been changed quite drastically over the past 1.5 years. The recession changes everything, it brings down packages, brings down companies, brings down even countries! It reverses many trends but the trend it changed in Indian IT industrt has me surprised. Today’s edition of Economic Times has 2 stories that project 2 different trajectories.

Firstly, the headline today in Economic Times is “Indian IT reaches out to foreign hires” and this statement seems amazing!

Wipro corporate vice-president and HR head Pratik Kumar. “How can you justify the fact that despite significant revenues coming from overseas, we still have over 95% Indians on the payroll?”

On Economic Times Website I found the article saying “IT services may see over one lakh layoffs by September: Experts“.

“We expect the knowledge industry (IT) to see 3-5 per cent non-voluntary exits in the first two quarters of the financial year mainly in senior and middle levels,” Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Senior Director (Management Consultancy Services) P Thiruvengadam told PTI.

The first statement by Wipro actually seems like a US Senator is speaking! The whole trend seems so interesting where layoffs in India and hiring in US is being talked about the same time. How can this come about? This actually does not fit well with the whole strategy of Indian IT Companies who have the business model of having less paid Indians making software for high paying US Companies.

We can actually analyze these 2 incidents in multiple ways. Firstly we can see them as 2 different incidents. In India because of low pay structure, IT Companies hired lots of people and now since the work has dimmed they are firing. In US they want to get a better status as home recruiters (and not foreign companies).

Secondly, we can also see this as a strategy to paint a pretty picture in front of US. They will project hiring in US and firing in India as a way to show that they are not outsourcing! In this way they can survive through the recession, get public favor during this time and make lots of money after the recession.

Thirdly, there have been improvements in efficiency and that coupled with less work has led to layoffs. The hiring is much much further away and is just a face saving strategy. This will be only on paper and actual hiring will take place only after recession and may be even linked to contracts from US companies.

Whatever the case maybe, this recession has done enough ill effects now! It is high time it stops and we go to the next phase!

P.S. May be this is one of the contributing reasons why there are only 44,000 H1b visa filings in the first few days.

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