Bloodbath in IT sector is for real: Infosys admits to firing 11,000 people last year

Settling the debate over the increasing job losses in the Indian IT sector, India's second largest IT firm, Infosys has said that the company had fired as many as 11,000 employees due to automation. The announcement came in the Annual General Meeting of the company held on Saturday.

TCS, Wipro and other IT companies have also handed out pink slips to their employees over the past one year.

Industry body Nasscom has for sometime been trying to argue that the number of lay-offs in the IT sector are being exaggerated in the media and that the IT sector remains a net hirer in the country. However, the number released by Infosys is reflective of the high number of pink slips held out by IT companies over the past one year in order to save costs and keep their control their falling margins in the sector.


“The company said that more than 11,000 jobs have been released due to automation. Revenue per full-time employee (FTE) increased by 1.2% as a result of automation, utilisation and productivity improvements,” reported Economic Times


Recently, an industry survey had said the demand for techies in the country increased by 24% in May 2017.


However, industry experts have been arguing that most of the new jobs are at the entry level with an average salary package of Rs 3 lakh per annum. Entry level engineers are replacing mid-level employees in the IT sector, as most jobs related to project management have been put on automation by companies.


For example, French IT company, Capgemini, which has its operations in India, is using IBM's cognitive consulting tool Watson to assign people to projects. Infosys is working on a machine-learning platform that will help project managers take decisions in allocating the number of people to projects.