Honeymoon Is Over for IT professionals

The honeymoon is over for IT professionals in Hyderabad with the employer turning king, finally. The kid glove treatment that professionals have been used to over the last few years is now fast becoming a thing of the past with the global financial crisis over the last one week snowballing into stricter working conditions in IT majors.

When a senior manager breezed into his boss’s cabin and declined a sixmonth relocation to Bangalore that he had been asked to take up, he was curtly told to quit. “This was a rude shock — being given a pink slip for what was hitherto a routine behaviour,” confides a friend of the manager.

An IT major laid off 70 people recently for a more unexpected reason. They had over-quoted expenses filed for reimbursements. “These were to the tune of Rs 1,000 (per application) of say a mobile phone bill or some such small expenses. Earlier such things were overlooked in the larger interest to retain a good hand and the manager would ignore such small transgressions.But this time around, 70 people were asked to leave,” says a senior official of the firm.

Money management has become crucial, say industry experts, pointing out that with 50 per cent of the IT projects coming from financial institutions, there is no scope for any leniency in the execution of the existing projects.

“If earlier, I could say no to a project, I could get away with it with my manager sympathetically nodding to my reasons. Now, when a colleague recently said no, he was asked to quit,” says an employee of an IT major. He says that “you may quit” line has been dropped in the recent past fairly frequently.

Positions left vacant when people quit are no longer being filled. An IT major has ruled that all such positions would be left vacant for at least three months. And circulars to this effect were sent to all senior officials.

If jumping jobs was a favourite hobby among the mollycoddled professionals, they now rue that job sites have dried up of openings. “Less than a month ago, a search on popular job portals would easily yield at least three pages of openings in various companies. Now it throws barely half a page of job results,” rues an IT professional. A job portal official confirms that the number of openings posted by any IT firm on their web site has slipped from say 35 until recently to 20 now. It is not just IT but other sectors, mainly financial, that are reeling under the meltdown. “I was asked to trim my team of seven to four. The idea was to trim in a way that I saved maximum money so I had let go of a senior hand and two new recruits to strike a balance,” says a team leader working with a financial securities firm.

Unrealistic goals, a way to downsize staff

Some IT firms have taken another route to downsize. “They recruited a big team on high salaries for our insurance division. Now, they have set unrealistic targets for the team. They are working under great stress to meet the target, failing which they will face the axe,’’ says a senior executive of a financial services intermediary.

He notes that the focus of firms such as his is only on insurance. “Dmat, loans, SIPs are all sidelined now,’’ he says.

These harried professionals are hoping that the slowdown doesn’t last longer than the expected nine months to one year period.

“Salaries and increments would take a huge hit if this continues,’’ says a senior manager with an IT firm.

SOURCES:
Times Of India