Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Adobe Systems to scrap annual appraisals

About 10,000 employees at Adobe Systems, including 2,000 in India, have just completed what could probably be their last performance review. The global product services company plans to scrap the age-old practice of being pitted against colleagues and measured up by the bosses once a year.

"We plan to abolish the performance review format," says Donna Morris, senior VPHR at the company. Still in its blueprint, the plan is to have managers give regular feedback to their teams to ensure a quicker and continuous selfactualisation, rather than wait for the year-end.

Adobe took the plunge after it entered the digital marketing space, which required a completely different gamut of customer base and marketing strategies that called for an overhaul of HR processes as well.

Yahoo layoffs, possibly this month, could reach thousands, report says

Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson may be close to announcing a major reorganization and sizable layoffs at the Sunnyvale Internet company, which has been grappling with falling revenue, dissident investors and a changing Internet landscape.


Thompson's plans could lead to thousands of layoffs being announced in coming weeks, according to two news reports Monday that cited unnamed sources.

But analysts warn that cutbacks alone won't solve the company's problems.

"I wouldn't say there is fat to be cut. I would say there has to be a transformation of the company," said Ben Schachter, who follows Internet companies for Macquarie Equities Research. "They cannot continue to conduct business as they have for the last 10 years."
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IT cos like Infosys, HCL Tech, Cognizant, Wipro pamper placement officers for best talent

Once reserved for market analysts and key clients, Indian information technology companies are now pampering college placement officers by taking them on domestic and foreign trips as they seek to hire the best talent from Indian campuses ahead of competition.

Over the years Cognizant has been taking placement officers to cities like Bangkok and Dubai while others have been holding their offsites within their campuses. Infosys has also joined the race this year, although with a modest start in domestic locations.

Indian IT firms depend on campus recruits for a bulk of their hiring every year, making job offers to thousands of students every year. In this financial year for instance, Infosys is hiring over 20,000 students from campus while TCS is hiring over 30,000.

Such events, some analysts say are part of efforts to get the best interview slots when hiring from colleges. Infosys, which insiders say lost out in the talent scramble because it failed to get the socalled "slot zero" has now started Samvaad 2012, where the Bangalore-based firm hosts placement officers in Mysore, Pune, Hyderabad, Bhubaneswar, and Chandigarh.

Some 310 placement heads from a similar number of engineering institutions across the country are being invited, according to a company spokesperson. Through the event, Infosys seeks to impart skills, including "negotiation skills" to help these placement officers in their current roles.

Thursday, March 22, 2012

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IT services co Tieto to cut 1,300 jobs

Finnish IT services group Tieto plans to cut 1,300 jobs, or 7 per cent of its staff, as it struggles to compete against global rivals like IBM .

The company's share rose 6 percent to the highest level in 13 months on the move, which Tieto said will cut annual costs by 50 million euros ($66 million).

The cuts will include 500 jobs in Finland, 300 in Sweden, and around 500 elsewhere, the company said.

Goldman Plans More Layoffs

According to Reuters, The Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) is moving ahead with its cost cutting plan. To start with, the bank has sacked employees in its trading and investment banking divisions.

In 2011, Goldman reduced 2,400 positions, out of which 1800 layoffs took place in March 2011 as part of its annual review process. The recent announcement of job cuts also comes under Goldman's annual retrenchment of workers, who performed below expectations.

Mahindra Satyam, Tech Mahindra merge to create $2.4-billion company

The erstwhile Satyam Computer Services and Tech Mahindra announced details of their planned merger, saying the whole will be greater than the sum of their parts and positioning themselves as a player with the potential to challenge India's top-tier software companies.

The merger ratio, at 17 shares of Mahindra Satyam for two Tech Mahindra shares, was along expected lines, valuing the former Satyam at $1.8 billion (Rs 9,000 crore). CP Gurnani, the chief executive of Mahindra Satyam who oversaw the difficult transition of a fraud-hit firm to normalcy, will be the head of the combined entity, whose name has not yet been chosen. "It is a marriage made in heaven," Gurnani said on Wednesday about the merger, which becomes effective from April 2011.