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Indian IT Outsourcing Firms Cut 60,000 Jobs in First Layoffs in 20 Years (indiadispatch.com) 51

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: TCS, Infosys, and Wipro, India's top three IT outsourcing firms, have collectively seen their workforce shrink for the first time in at least 20 years. The trio reported a combined reduction of more than 63,750 employees in the financial year ending March 31, 2024.
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Indian IT Outsourcing Firms Cut 60,000 Jobs in First Layoffs in 20 Years More

Indian IT Outsourcing Firms Cut 60,000 Jobs in First Layoffs in 20 Years

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  • Customers fed up with crappy quality? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Friday April 19, 2024 @01:45PM (#64408556)

    Say it aint so.

      • Turns out customers can tolerate slightly worse quality.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gweihir ( 88907 )

          I have trouble believing that. I have reviewed "quality code" made by Indian outsourcing and, quite frankly, I have no idea how it could be made worse and still work to some degree.

      • In other words, even Indian programming wasn't bad enough to drive the bottom feeders away, let's try to put the quality limbo bar down a notch.

    • Not a chance (Score:4, Insightful)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday April 19, 2024 @02:52PM (#64408744)
      good enough is always good enough. If that wasn't the case 90% of us wouldn't be typing out /. posts on a windows PC.

      And good enough can be shockingly terrible, especially when we've had 40 years of non stop mega mergers and zero anti-trust law enforcement. They could care less what you, the customer think, because your options are to shop at one of the other companies they either own or own a controlling share in or go without.

      And increasingly "go without" isn't an option because they're buying critical infrastructure.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        "Good enough" is relative. And it can change what it is. For example, Microsoft is currently raking in cash like crazy, but they are at the same time failing as a technology provider on an organizational level (i.e. not fixable), because they cannot meet the requirements imposed by the current attack landscape. Last year, they nearly got killed by a series of absolutely horrific mistakes that show that do not even understand the basics of doing it right. The only thing that saved their bacon was that the at

      • good enough is always good enough.

        The term 'good enough' is purely a judgement call. We attempt to base that call in Reality; however, the actual reality is that the thing you are trying to do is imperfect.

        Imperfection can be a problem or not, depending upon your point of view. If you have a list of requirements and those requirements are all met, despite the lack of perfection, then 'good enough' is called... but who makes that list of requirements? Who decides that the imperfections will not materially affect our experience of the issue?

        G

    • It's OK, they've found somewhere even cheaper to outsource the work to. Only problem will be getting outsourced IT in Pakistan not to get upset at people thinking they're Indian.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dnaumov ( 453672 )

      Say it aint so.

      Completely backwards. Customers realized they are entirely content with even crappier qualiy done enormously cheaper by AI.

  • And are they going to leverage this into scamming the Indian government's equivalent of an H1-B visa?

  • I guess AI can do the needful.

  • My best friend's company has done that for years (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Zontar_Thing_From_Ve ( 949321 ) on Friday April 19, 2024 @02:04PM (#64408620)
    My best friend works in IT for a privately held company in a major US metropolitan area. I have forgotten the name of his company. Almost none of you would have heard of it anyway. Their business segment is so specialized that probably almost none of you who read this comment would even work for a company that might use his company for what they provide. Anyway, he's been there roughly 10 years. About 5 years ago, they started laying off some US based staff and replacing them with offshore people who live and work in India. They even replaced one of my friend's US based colleagues who was an Indian guy with a Green Card. About 2-3 years ago the company decided that the offshore India staff "cost too much" so they made 100% of them go on contracts that they can cancel at any time. They have started slowly but surely replacing the India based staff with people in Nepal. Now the based in India staff are seriously worried about losing their jobs to people in Nepal. All I can say is that the race to the bottom to cut salaries on IT workers can't end in anything good. I have no idea who this company would go to next if people in Nepal get "too expensive".

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by GoJays ( 1793832 )

      I have no idea who this company would go to next if people in Nepal get "too expensive".

      I can: AI Chat Bots.

    • to where ever labor was cheapest, but all anyone can remember about his books is that a few tinpot dictators borrowed them for speeches.
      • Billionaires are the result of underpaid employees because of regulatory capture leading to policy failures. If companies were required to hire locals first and the employees had functional unions, none of this would happen. It's entirely unsustainable and hollowing out of millions of jobs and leads to local poverty and underemployment.
    • Under-developed African countries enter the chat.
    • Employees are treated as a commodity? I am shocked!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      All I can say is that the race to the bottom to cut salaries on IT workers can't end in anything good.

      You just have to look at other industries. You know, like say, manufacturing. Most things are made outside the US, because it's cheaper to make stuff there because pay is lower.

      The same forces that pushed manufacturing overseas is the same forces pushing IT salaries lower.

    • "All I can say is that the race to the bottom to cut salaries on IT workers can't end in anything good." But the fact that India got expensive means the economy there improved, probably thanks to outsourcing. Isn't that a good end result, workers so rich and full of options such that they won't work for peanuts?

      • All of which will collapse once the multinationals who sought them out for cheap labor leave for greener pastures.

        The same can be said of China. Labor is moved by Capital to wherever is cheapest for Capital. If you're on the upswing your time in the limelight is about to end, if you're on the downswing, your time is still quite a ways off. If you're destitute and living under a dictator, good news you're about to be exploited for a few decades by even worse assholes. Stock up while you can, because humani
  • By no-code/low-code and ChatGPT. Wasn't this expected?
  • As much as I am not going to weep for their loss, it's more a message that tells me there is less to outsource than the idea of work being repatriated back to North America. Between the job cuts in NA and A.I doing some of the workload, that is the reason we are seeing India shed jobs and we're not feeling like we're winning on this end.
    • Job cuts are happening, costs containment as growth slows or worse sales slump.

  • Moving back to US/Canadian support (Score:3)

    by mprindle ( 198799 ) on Friday April 19, 2024 @02:44PM (#64408730)
    Our remote IT support has been based in India for years. At the end of April we moved to a company that has roots in the US and Canada. The little interaction I've had has already been way better than our offshore provider.

  • They didn't do layoffs (Score:3)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday April 19, 2024 @02:55PM (#64408756)
    they let the contracts expire. Nobody involved with these companies has a job. They're all "contractors". That's what happens when you're non-Union. It'll happen to you too if you live long enough.
    • I see what you did there. ;) It's probably a convenient way to dodge India's corrupt bureaucracy while shafting employees who failed to unionize.
  • Tata and WiPro has been hiring globally underpaid engineers in bulk in India since the mid 2000's. Maybe now that LLMs and code completers exist, there is much less demand for as many coders producing garbage.

  • If we really care about American jobs we need to stop doing business with offshore providers like TCS, Infosys, and Wipro. Biden and Trump have used American Jobs as an excuse to leverage tariffs against China. The same needs to be applied to any offshoring of jobs that can be done in America by a American.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      In the US you need to be in the top 1% to bribe your way into a college degree. In India you only need to be middle class for that.

      • Oh, they have "affirmative action" on steroids in India. Where 75% of the population qualifies for that. There are many finer rungs in that. And it's got nothing to do with your economic background. it's based on caste system. You can score a 0 and still come out as an engineer, doctor, scientist, lawyer, with flying colors. And that affirmative action applies to professor recruitments too. You would then be grooming the next crop of engineers, doctors, scientists, lawyers, law makers... That beautifully d

  • Cut jobs (Score:3)

    by smooth wombat ( 796938 ) on Friday April 19, 2024 @03:49PM (#64408936) Journal

    Or removed "people" they had on employers payrolls who mysteriously returned to India when an audit was done?

  • TFS is TFA. Where are the details? Comments are guessing but those are useless as tits on a boar hog.

    Where is the background information and analysis? We are not amused.

  • In call centers, they have a script. You say a certain phrase and they find the script to reply to it. You deviate from what they're expecting and they do a reset to get back on script. How is this different than AI? In programming, they use Google, Yandex or an AI engine to find code snippets which they don't understand and shove it in and screw around until it mostly works. Again, isn't this basically what AI does? In manufacturing, they try to pump out the bare minimum quality product they can sell
  • Probably not. I'm like probably millions of Americans talking to support who can't talk good English ! Tired of it.

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