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Comment by jussij | Hacker News Reader

From the page:

At the meeting, Mr. Sikka also described how the company “released 11,000 jobs due to automation.” Many small shareholders appealed to the board to consider the “human cost” of layoffs in the software sector.

That quote made me chuckle, since I have witnessed first hand the IT industry in the West face massive job cuts through Out Sourcing and that has been going on for decades now.

Now I don't blame Out Sourcing per say, as governments let that happen, but it is a bit funny when the Out Sourcing gets Out Sourced.

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I agree with your comment. The author seems taken back by the callousness of the cuts, but this is nothing new in the United States or even in other western countries.

I think Indian IT firms have gotten a free ride for many years using labor arbitrage. Now that there's a whiff of protectionism in the air from the United States and cloud computing is surging things aren't so easy anymore.

> I think Indian IT firms have gotten a free ride for many years using labor arbitrage.

Got it. So Apple building the phone in China or Cisco building routers in China is not labor arbitrage.

That was labor and environmental and capital control arbitrage, plus subsidy from the government for utilities. (Now there is legitimate supply chain advantage in the area while other advantages are vanishing, though.)

Because that's what they said or implied at all.

No, they are all labor arbitrage. Manufacturing labor arbitrage is just a little more sticky since China has the production facilities.

How many storied have we heard, or lived through, of people being forced to train their Indian replacements in order to receive severance?

One can forego severance in the worst case. But in India, the companies won't give us service certificate if we don't dance to their tunes. This certificate is required for the next job.

While it does little good for me to say it, that is something that probably needs to change. Failure to do this could lead to some skewing of labor markets. It is in the same category as taking the passport of a foreign worker and indentured servitude.

Workplace stack exchange has a few stories of these letters: https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/relievi...

To elaborate on your point, and to seek a little clarity on what's going on here...

The severance deal thing is kind of like a bonus for helping make the transition easy... you can forego the bonus and "stick it" to your employer, but it won't necessarily affect your future employment opportunities.

I assume the certificate thing is like a proof of employment? So HR saying "Play by our rules or we'll do everything in our power to make your life difficult" is coercive and should be illegal if it isn't already.

More reading if you're thinking "what on Earth is a relieving letter?": https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/20945/what-is-...

This certificate is also important during Visa interviews. The Offer Letter, Appointment Letter, and Relieving letter - all these three are important documents that the next company insists upon. Then there is the whole dance around getting the Form16 (Tax Assessment) document, the Gratuity (an amount given after spending a defined number of years) and EPF (related to pension) amounts.

These jobs would have been automated regardless of whether it was in India or US.

The irony is the argument, which asks for the human damage is considered when considering the fate of the workforce.

In reality, as was the case in the past and will continue into the future, the cheap workforce will always be replaced with something that is cheaper.

It is interesting that he mentions Western protectionism. Those of us in the trenches know that oursourcing rarely works in practice but for that part of the management that is in charge of the outsourcing program, after moving on to greener pa$tures. His successor usually receives the blame for later failures.

>> but for that part of the management that is in charge of the outsourcing program, after moving on to greener pa$tures.

But that is outsourcing "working". that is the intended goal of those managers, to aid themselves not the company not the employees but personal advancement

A lot of jobs were meant to be automated. Jobs (actually the work itself and the tasks invilved) generally go through phases. Phase 1 is to find cheaper ways to do the same thing and Phase 2 is automate that thing.

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