40 sacked for fudging travel bills in Satyam

Hyderabad: Close on the heels of giving pink slips to a few hundred of its associates, Satyam Computer Services has sacked 40 employees on the allegations that they fudged travel bills.
“We take a strong view on this issue.

We reimburse employees’ travel costs as they go on trips and relocate. When they are not using the bookings done at the company offices, they submit bills given by the service providers,” a Satyam spokesperson said.

“In this case, we found that the bills were fudged over a period of three months,” the spokesperson added.

The idea is to send a strong message to the staff on this issue, keeping in mind the increasing travel costs.

In the quarter ended September 30, 2008, the company spent $28.70 million (4.4 per cent of the revenues) on travel expenses as against $26.30 million in the same quarter last year, a growth of about 9 per cent.

Recession-proof jobs: Software design, network administration, IT security

Source: NetworkWorld

Jobfox rates most recession-proof jobs with several tech professions in the mix. 

The 25 most recession-proof jobs include several technology-focused career paths, such as software design and development, networking and systems administration, and IT security specialists, according to an analysis by Jobfox, a career Web site.

Jobfox looked at the 120-day period ending Oct. 28 and ranked professions based on demand from recruiters and other employer agents using the online service. Sales reps and business development professionals came in first, while tech jobs showed up four times in the top 25. 

With median salaries of $75,000 to $85,000, software design and development was the fifth-most recession-proof job. Networking and system administration was in seventh place and commanded $55,000 to $65,000 in median salary. 

Technology executives, making $105,000 to $115,000, were the 16th most in-demand, up from a prior ranking of 24, according to Jobfox. IT security moved into the top 25 list at No. 20, with the field commanding a median salary of $75,000 to $85,000. 

Database administration, meanwhile, dropped out of the top 25 list. The rankings provided Jobfox’s first look at the job market after the government bailout of the finance industry. 

The IT sector seems to be faring well compared to the overall economy. In last week’s newsletter, we looked at U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers that show the IT profession actually added jobs in October even as the rest of the job market contracted. 

Still, a drop in the number of available tech jobs was seen on Dice, a job site for tech pros. 

There were 75,640 available technology jobs as of Nov. 3, down from 84,549 on Oct. 1. The number of full-time jobs dropped from 59,952 in October to 54,090 in November. 

Current numbers of job postings are also down relative to this time period last year, Dice chief marketing officer Tom Silver notes in his monthly newsletter. 

“In the past 12 months, the weak economy has been gnawing at the tech sector – in the last 30 days, it has taken a bite – as job postings on Dice have fallen 20% versus last year,” Silver writes. “To be sure, there is still a lot of demand with 75,000 open tech positions.” 

The metro areas with the most job listings were Washington, D.C./Baltimore and New York/New Jersey, with more than 8,000 postings each. Silicon Valley had 4,486 tech job postings on Dice, with Chicago, Los Angeles and Boston offering between 3,300 and 3,500 each. 

The top job listings on Dice were for operating systems (Windows and Unix), databases (Oracle and SQL), and programming languages (C, C++, C#) and (J2EE/Java). 

Will your IT job survive the financial meltdown?

Source: InfoWorld

Fearful tech workers tiptoeing along the shaky alleys of Wall Street -- and fretting about losing their jobs -- should take a deep breath. Of the more than 100,000 job losses expected as a direct result of the financial crisis, only a tiny slice will likely be from the tech ranks, figures Sean O'Dowd, an analyst at market researcher Financial Insights.

As with any market consolidation, finance companies "will look for redundancies and overlap," O'Dowd says. For IT, that means management, not programmers, admins, and other line staff. "I think [layoffs] will come out of the IT management layer such as CIOs, so you're looking at hundreds [of layoffs], not necessarily thousands. Companies will continue to need a lot of the rank-and-file IT folks."

Greg Carr, CEO of consultancy McGat Enterprises and an IT finance veteran who now runs a Web site that helps IT finance professionals manage technology costs, says he recently talked to his 16 IT management-level advisors from Unisys, Wells Fargo, Deutsche Bank, and other firms, "and they are all nervous. … My friend at EDS is looking for cover right now."

Although Wall Street firms' general pool of tech employees may be relatively safe for the moment, the tech vendors who supply them will see job cuts as their revenues fall.

And over time, there'll be a glut on the scale of the dot-com bust of IT finance pros looking for work, predicts John Estes, vice president of staffing firm Robert Half Technology. "We're advising our IT candidates, especially the ones really freaked out by this, to dust off their résumés and be prepared to show accomplishments with tangible results" to potential employers, he says. Still, Robert Half Technology hasn't received a flood of calls from IT workers yet, he adds.

Death of the discretionary spend

Estes, O'Dowd, and Carr agree that the biggest hit to IT finance pros will come to those working on discretionary projects. "There is a slow-up of IT projects, anything from VoIP to replacing legacy equipment," says Carr.

Capital markets firms have traditionally led in the adoption of new technologies, but given the uncertainty of the future, they've made an abrupt about-face. Financial Insights reports financial services firms put 22 percent of their IT budgets toward discretionary projects. "For institutions facing bankruptcy or being acquired, we see that spend being put on hold," O'Dowd says.

Or worse. Robert Half Technology provides tech workers to a systems integrator in the Northeast whose client is an insurance company. "They just put the brakes on a new project -- not postponed but cancelled," Estes says.

Assessing how much your job is at risk

Generally speaking, tech workers in finance fall into four categories. Business-infrastructure folks handle everyday IT needs. Networking pros are focused mostly on connectivity and latency issues. Datacenter administrators must be skilled in heavy transaction volume, grid computing, and virtualization. And some IT workers and developers support proprietary trading activities.

The financial crisis will affect the last group the most in the near term. That's because the bulk of job losses from the likes of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, and others will come from shuttered lending units -- thus, IT folks solely supporting these lines of business may be at risk.

Coming from a position of strength

The upside is that most of these at-risk financial IT workers have specialized financial skills that will continue to be in high demand from financial companies of all sizes on the prowl to pick up this talent. Such IT people have been eagerly courted, making the supply low; the financial crisis may give second- and third-tier companies a shot at this talent pool, and perhaps for less money than in the boom times. Such highly valued skills include working at the application level on algorithmic trading programming, complex event processing specific to a trading environment, order management, derivatives trading, and evaluation applications.

Although their skills are not easily transferable to other industries, "these are valuable jobs that you're not going to see going out the door," says O'Dowd. "Business analysts won't be going anywhere, either."

O'Dowd also predicts IT workers in business infrastructure, networking, and datacenters have at least a year of job security, as finance firms work through the heavy integration process caused by the current wave of consolidation. It'll take some time before these firms figure out their needs from here on out.

But after that, all bets are off. "Once they've evaluated their ongoing needs, you might see a spike in layoffs at lower-level IT positions," O'Dowd says. Still, O'Dowd contends such IT workers shouldn't have a problem finding work -- if not in finance, then in outside industries. "IT folks in the financial services industry deal with firms that demand the greatest amount of performance, scale, volume and speed," he says, "and they have the ability to see things in worst-case, stressed scenarios -- there may be a premium for folks like that."

That premium, though, may not be as rich as in the financial sector, warns Robert Half Technology's Estes. Salaries and benefits likely won't be the same.

IT sector job seekers face pressure

Source: Business Standard

Information technology (IT) employees and fresh graduates in Kolkata have started to see salary cuts and employee lay offs. IT and ITeS companies wanted either experienced personnel or was focused on cost cutting measures. A few of the IT companies have even put their Bengal plans on hold.

Although the financial turmoil has not yet prompted large-scale sackings in Salt Lake’s sector V, the IT hub for Kolkata, the general notion is that trainee jobs have dried up.

A slowdown in hiring and pay-hike squeeze had been forecast by the IT industry association, Nasscom, confirming the worst fears of young professionals.

“The attrition rates have come down by at least six to seven per cent in the past few months because of the market condition. This will surely slow down hiring,” said Som Mittal, the president of Nasscom.

The industry is working very hard to improve utilisation of resources, which will also have an impact on the need for fresh manpower.

Last year, the manpower growth in IT was around 15 per cent and the headcount had crossed 2 million.

“The average growth in increment, too, will take a hit and come down from last year’s 13 to 14 per cent to a single-digit figure,” said Sangeeta Gupta, the vice-president of Nasscom.

The situation will compound problems for youngsters either passing out of colleges or planning to switch jobs.

The indefinite postponement of the joining dates of a number of fresh graduates from Jadavpur University and Bengal Engineering and Science University, Shibpur, is another indication of the tough days awaiting job aspirants.

For instance, Wipro Technologies, one of the largest IT companies operating in Kolkata, has asked engineering graduates to join its business process outsourcing (BPO) department instead of joining as project engineers.

As project engineers, the students were supposed to get Rs 2.75-3.25 lakh a year, while as a BPO employee, this has been reduced to Rs 1.2-1.6 lakh annually, the students said.

According to a student of JIS Engineering College, Kalyani, the nature of job is that of a "technical helpdesk engineer" instead of "project engineer" as promised earlier.

According to students, the company had given them offer letters to join as project engineers after campus interviews in 2007. They were promised jobs in February 2009 after they passed out of college.

Wipro Technologies vice-president Pradeep Bahirwani clarified, "We are providing the students an option of a role in our BPO division, so that the engineering graduates commence work without delay. The technical support division will join with the same package that was mentioned in the original offer letter. "

Most companies operating in Kolkata are small and medium-size enterprises with less than 1,000 employees.

The city has only six big names in the IT arena at present - TCS, Wipro, IBM, Cognizant, Tech Mahindra and HSBC Electronic Data Processing (the back office arm of HSBC Bank).

TCS, IBM and Cognizant together account for more than 70 per cent of Kolkata’s software exports.

According to Kalyan Kar, MD, Acclaris, one of the fastest growing mid-sized companies in Kolkata, increasing cost pressure will force companies to devise measures to deliver more with less people.

On the other hand, Satyam Computer Services, India’s fourth largest software exporter, has categorically ruled out any investment in Kolkata till the government provides ‘adequate’ land to set up an IT SEZ.

In 2005, Satyam was allotted a 2.77 acre plot at the IT hub in Salt Lake for setting up a software development centre.

According to B Ramalinga Raju, chairman of Satyam, “We need additional land up to 25 acres so we can make it into an SEZ. We are waiting for the Bengal government to give us the additional land. We need to have an HR training centre and administrative building and so the additional land is a must.”

On the government’s part, Bengal IT minister Debesh Das, claimed, “Next month we will hand over 90 acres each to Infosys and Wipro at Kolkata IT Links. We are also trying to get 25 acre for Satyam at this facility or near the neighbouring Jagdishpur mouja.”

Wipro, Infosys employee cost cutting measures

Source: IBNLive

Bangalore: India’s top two IT companies are employing cost cutting measures on the HR front. In an internal communication sent to employees, Infosys CEO Kris Gopalakrishnan has urged the employees as the stake holders in the company to help in cutting the operating cost and controlling expenditure.

The company has set up a portal which invites employees to send in ideas which could range from ensuring all computers and lights are switched off at the end of the day to bigger business ideas which could be incubated.
So far the company has apparently received over 1000 such ideas which it is in the process of evaluating. It also says there could be more such measures in the near future.
Wipro on the other hand has asked the employees hired for the tech services arm to join the BPO arm instead. This it insists is a way to overcome delays in joining dates. This is being offered in Kolkata so far and Wipro says that such an option could also be made available in Orissa and Hyderabad as well.
“We are giving time bound offers which could extend anywhere between 12 to 18 months and they would be then able to join tech services again,” says VP Talent Acquisition Wipro Tech Pradeep Bahirwani.
The company insists there is going to be no change in salary structure for such employees. Employees who don't wish to take up such an offer will face a delay in on boarding by six months. It also says it will meet all 13,500 offers made for the year.

More financial services IT jobs cut

Source: ComputerWeekly.com

IT Job cuts in the UK financial services sector are continuing as companies get themselves ready for worsening economic conditions.

HSBC will cut another 500 jobs and Swiss banking giant credit Suisse has announced 650 UK jobs to go. Both announcements include IT jobs cuts.

Banks have been reducing staff numbers. They see IT and back office functions as surplus to requirements when business levels fall.

HSBC cut 1,100 jobs in its investment banking division in September including 500 front and back office jobs in London.

Credit Suisse, which made a loss in the third quarter of this year of £704m, has announced 650 job cuts including IT support functions.

"Due to market conditions and projected staffing levels required to meet client needs, we are reducing headcount by approximately 650 in the UK," said Credit Suisse.

Citigroup plans to cut its global workforce by 52,000 jobs across all businesses and geographies in the near future. Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit revealed last month that the bank would cut 20% of its employees at the group.

A Citigroup spokeswoman said half of the job cuts will come from the sale of business units. The company had earlier announced 18,000 job cuts when it sold its Global Services unit in India to Tata Consultancy Services for £300m.

Pandit said earlier this year that it was feasible for the bank to take 10%, 15% or 20% off its cost base, especially in IT and operations.

The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) is expected to make thousands of job cuts as it comes to terms with the economic slowdown. According to various reports last month, up to 3,000 jobs will be cut in the bank's global banking and markets divisions.

Barclays is also expected to cut IT jobs at its FirstPlus loans business as it closes to new business. It will keep its IT infrastructure to process existing customer loans, but is scaling it back.