Jobless to welcome darker days ahead!

MUMBAI: The ongoing financial turmoil has compelled IT sector, along with other sectors to keep a check on their workforce. Large number of job cuts and layoffs are becoming the headlines of newspapers and major topic of talk shows on television channels across the globe.

In fact, companies consider cutting jobs as a key way in lowering their expenses across all sectors.

While the top management of IT companies remain tightlipped and constantly shy away from sharing and revealing the actual impact of meltdown on their businesses, they have also forced their ex-staffs to remain mum from expressing their suffering caused by the monetary crunch.

Those who lost their jobs are living in deep fears and finding it hard to cope with their life and are feeling low.

“I was asked to leave my job, along with several others staff. And were told that the company would call us back after two–three months,” said an animation and graphic professional from Mumbai who lost her job one and a half month back. She said the project works at the firm where she worked decreased significantly following the meltdown.

But she is hesitant to disclose any further. “If I will talk more about my job issue and about the company, I will have to face lot of issues ahead,” she fears.

At present she works a faculty in a small computer institute to support herself. 

This young professional was working on special animation projects at Trine Game studio located in Malad – a western suburb in the city. It’s a gaming and development firms, a subsidiary of Trine Entertainment Limited, which offers interactive services for game development and its programming.

Though she showed the courage to disclose this much, many young professionals are really afraid of opening up.

When contacted by CyberMedia News, most of them preferred to maintain silence.

“Please, don’t ask me, I don’t want to discuss or say anything about my job and the company,” said an ex-employees of HCL Technologies at Bangalore. Though he lost that job, he was lucky enough to get a new job with the technology and scientific unit of Thomson Reuters in Hyderabad.

However, his peer who was also with HCL preferred to maintain a meaningful silence that reflected the gloom of joblessness gripping the IT sector.

Yes, this silence reflects a situation, about the IT companies and their policies in handling and controlling their staffs under the contract or bond policies, which don’t allow them to talk freely about their employers and firms even after losing their job.

Interestingly, a techie from Mumbai-based Lehman Brother Services Limited has a slight different story to share.

As he says, “While the financial crisis was getting bigger and worse in the US, here in Mumbai office we were unaware of its consequences on our jobs and future. Just for a month or so, our salaries got delayed, but there wasn’t any major impact.”

Further he adds, “Since our firm was taken over by Nomura, we all retain our jobs and none were asked to leave the company as many done in many other companies recently.”

Nomura, the Japanese financial services major has acquired the India arm of US’s Lehman Brothers, including its 1200 IT staffs. 

But how many of the techies who led a colourful life till yesterday can end their tale in a positive note? Not many.

There could be light at the end of the tunnel, but how far it is? Those who battle the recession war are answerless. And the same is the condition of those who are supposed to give an answer.

Surely, its a testing times ahead for these white-collar tech savvy groups, who will need more than just a technology to survive here.

And a learning time too!!!