IT professionals may get double-digit hike this year

Riding on the back of better operational performance, tech companies are likely to dole out higher wage increases for employees in the current year. After an average 8-10% hikes last year, the IT staff can expect a double-digit increase in emoluments this year, industry body Nasscom said on Wednesday.

The assessment, based on an internal survey of Nasscom members, indicates that attrition levels and lateral hiring will also increase.

Read More at Times of India

Heads rolling at Beats as Apple eliminating redundant positions, Ian Rogers & Trent Reznor to stay on

As Apple’s acquisition of Beats Electronics and Beats Music nears completion this financial quarter, the Cupertino and Culver City, California-based companies have begun work on transitioning select employees and technology resources from Beats to Apple, according to sources briefed on the transition. Apple executives have visited Beats’ Southern California headquarters this week and last week to offer groups of employees positions at Apple and to notify some members of the Beats staff that they will not be included in the transition.

Read more at http://9to5mac.com/2014/07/30/heads-rolling-at-beats-as-apple-eliminating-redundant-positions-keeping-developers-and-creatives-in-la/

2014 July Job Cut Report: 46,887 Job Cuts Announced Boosted by Microsoft

The unexpectedly large layoffs announced by Microsoft helped push July job cuts to the second highest level of the year. In all, U.S.-based employers reported plans to reduce payrolls by 46,887 during the month, according to the report released Thursday by global outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc.

The July total was up 49 percent from June’s 31,434 job cuts, which was the fewest number of cuts announced, year to date. It was 24 percent higher than the 37,701 cuts recorded in July 2013. The only month to see more job cuts so far this year was May, when job cuts reached 52,961.

Employers have announced 292,921 job cuts, to date. That is 1.3 percent fewer than the 296,633 job cuts announced in the first seven months of 2013.

Read more at http://www.challengergray.com/press/press-releases/2014-july-job-cut-report-46887-job-cuts-announced-boosted-microsoft#sthash.3IlGfNFj.dpuf

Microsoft layoffs hit D.C. office

Microsoft’s massive layoffs have hit the company’s Washington policy office.
Five policy and government relations staffers were let go in a restructuring process that hit both Microsoft and its subsidiary Nokia.

Read more at Politico 

Broadcom winds down baseband unit, cuts 2,500 jobs

Broadcom on Tuesday said it is winding down its money-losing cellular baseband chip business and cutting one-fifth of its total workforce, instead of selling the unit.

Chief executive Scott McGregor told analysts on a conference call that after Broadcom said in early June it would exit baseband and then tested the market for a possible sale, the company decided to shut it down.
Source: Times of India

Top global IT firms have more staff in India than home nations

It's a measure of India's strength in software services and the number of engineers it produces that some of the world's largest IT companies have more employees in India now than in their home countries.

And increasingly, these foreign companies are shifting their consulting base to India, thanks to the talent coming out of the country's business schools.

IBM, the biggest in the business, has been steadily reducing its US employee numbers and has simultaneously increased sharply its Indian ones. The company does not officially break up its employee numbers by geography, but the IBM employee organization Alliance@IBM puts the US figure for 2012 at 91,000, down from 127,000 in 2006. The last time IBM provided figures for India was in 2007, when it said it had 73,000 employees here. Since then, all estimates suggest that the company has added another 50,000 to 60,000 employees, taking the total count to about 1.3 lakh.

That puts the India number at more than 40% of the US figure. It also means — given IBM's global headcount of 4.3 lakh — that one in almost every three IBM employee is in India.

Read more at TimesOfIndia.