Angry with poor pay hike, Indian techies push govt to make resigning easier

6pack

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Read more at the Source: http://tech.economictimes.indiatime...s-push-govt-to-make-resigning-easier/57422107

Indian information technology employees want the government to step in and make it easier for them to leave their jobs, at a time when they face the prospect of poor salary increases and slower job growth.

Over 28,000 professionals have signed an online petition asking the ministry of labour to stop IT companies from holding workers to a three-month non-negotiable notice period.

“It is unrealistic for anyone to plan that far ahead for their future actions and resign in advance not knowing state of the issue in next three months,” the petition said. IT employees say the petition is gathering support across WhatsApp groups and other messaging platforms.

The problem for the 3.9 million Indian IT employees is one of job mobility. “Three-month notice is clear exploitation,” said an employee at an Indian IT company, who did not want to be identified.

Human resource experts said the three-month notice period is being used as a tool by IT companies to combat high attrition rates. While these rates vary, most Indian IT firms face attrition rates of between 13% and 20%, according to industry estimates.

The extended notice period acts like a hidden retention policy forcing employees to think twice about leaving, while making it hard for a prospective employer to wait that long. “Many candidates are not able to apply for a new job as prospective employers are not willing to initiate the hiring process because of this clause,” Alka Dhingra, assistant GM at recruitment firm TeamLease, told ET.

In the IT services sector, employees are billable resources and it is likely that a company will lose money if a suitable replacement is not found, forcing companies to adopt every method to retain employees.

HR does not say anything about giving incentives to the hardworking people though. If a company does not want to lose good resources then give the good resources a good bonus or a good salary. If you want good people to work on a pittance then its your fault. Employees are not married to a company.

Another point is when an employer wants to terminate some one they do it a day or two. NO 3 month waiting period for the employees in such cases. One sided policies.

I wonder if employees can make their own one sided terms and conditions while joining a company and ask the company to sign it if they want the employee to work there.
 
Read more at the Source: http://tech.economictimes.indiatime...s-push-govt-to-make-resigning-easier/57422107



HR does not say anything about giving incentives to the hardworking people though. If a company does not want to lose good resources then give the good resources a good bonus or a good salary. If you want good people to work on a pittance then its your fault. Employees are not married to a company.

Another point is when an employer wants to terminate some one they do it a day or two. NO 3 month waiting period for the employees in such cases. One sided policies.

I wonder if employees can make their own one sided terms and conditions while joining a company and ask the company to sign it if they want the employee to work there.

Not taking either side, but here is why

When a person wants to leave, he needs to handover the role to someone else. Plus, he would want to exhaust his leaves as well, hence the 3 months rule is kept. This is true in IT companies.

In my office - not IT really, we have a 15-30 day handover. Firing someone - if you know someone is screwing around, causing problems, you will fire him as quickly as possible. However, if you are letting people go due to some other reason, they are given one month's compensation at least.
 

Even more annoying is the top order got salary in crores a month (Infosys in news currently). Bean counters get annoyed when even 1 crore could give out a 50k bonus to 200 employees.

Wonder what goes in their heads. Probably something like - I'm equal to a thousand employees bonus. Ha ha ha. Everybody kneel before me you lowly slaves.
 
HR does not say anything about giving incentives to the hardworking people though. If a company does not want to lose good resources then give the good resources a good bonus or a good salary. If you want good people to work on a pittance then its your fault. Employees are not married to a company.

I totally agree. At present, a significant chunk of the workforce in our IT services sector doesn't even deserve to be holding a job and are just there for head count. I say fire them all and pay better salaries to the people who are doing the work.

Another point is when an employer wants to terminate some one they do it a day or two. NO 3 month waiting period for the employees in such cases. One sided policies.

They are however liable to pay the salary in lieu of the notice period. What is weird to me is that a lot of people want to be able to leave instantly whenever they get a better offer elsewhere, but don't want the companies to be able to fire them instantly whenever they are no longer deemed necessary.

I wonder if employees can make their own one sided terms and conditions while joining a company and ask the company to sign it if they want the employee to work there.

Employees can definitely do that. Its a question of whether the employer agrees to sign or not. The point is just like an employee is free to refuse an offer that is not to their liking, employers can do that too.
 
I totally agree. At present, a significant chunk of the workforce in our IT services sector doesn't even deserve to be holding a job and are just there for head count. I say fire them all and pay better salaries to the people who are doing the work
Well, then they wouldn't be able to generate their revenues. Their whole business model depends on headcount X hourly rate charged to clients. They don't give a single damn for quality of work. The whole idea is to hire thousands so that they can charge the clients a lot expecting a very small % of the recruits completing the work.
 
There is another side to it, companies spend so much time and energy training people, bringing them up to speed with their workflow, tools and culture. If everyone starts leaving left n right, I am afraid that will also mean fewer jobs for freshers and tech crowd in general.
 
There is another side to it, companies spend so much time and energy training people, bringing them up to speed with their workflow, tools and culture. If everyone starts leaving left n right, I am afraid that will also mean fewer jobs for freshers and tech crowd in general.
If the companies manage to keep the employee happy, they wont leave.

And trust me, I've seen entire business units laid off overnight. if companies can do that, employees should be able to do that to the company too.
 
If the companies manage to keep the employee happy, they wont leave.

And trust me, I've seen entire business units laid off overnight. if companies can do that, employees should be able to do that to the company too.

So in your mind, providing/creating jobs is similar act as working for a company on salary?
 
Companies are not doing anybody a favor by providing jobs. They hire people because their business needs certain work to be done and they pay for it. Employees are not doing a favor by working at a company either. They need the job to earn a living. Nobody is doing the other party a favor. It is a professional give and take relationship.

I am totally in favor of the "At will" employment system. People should be able to join and leave a company at will and companies should be able to hire and fire at will. The notice period is just meant to be a mechanism to help both parties transition when one of the parties decides to terminate the contract. Ideally, it should be possible for either party to decide either to serve the notice period or pay in lieu of the notice period which ever is mutually agreeable. However there are certain problems.

When a employee decides to leave, often, they don't want to keep up their end of the bargain. i.e. they don't want to serve the notice period and they don't want to pay money in lieu of the notice period. Also, a lot of employees don't like sharing their domain/project/technical knowledge with others before hand and make themselves easily replaceable as they want to keep the companies dependent on them and reduce the risk of them being made redundant by the company itself. If an employee were easily switchable in a day, companies don't need to force people to adhere to notice periods. In fact neither of the companies I worked for enforce the notice period clauses strictly. All that the company needs is that business continues as usual without you.

The other issue is when the company makes an employee redundant and terminates them. Technically, a company can allow the employee to serve the notice period and leave. But the problem is that employees do not always deal with such decisions in a professional and mature manner. Time and again, employees have tried to sabotage their companies business in some manner when they were allowed to do that. I have personally seen that happen at my last company. For instance, what does a company do if a a terminated employee in notice period uses the opportunity to do something to cause a 50 million loss/damage to the company? How does a company recover that money from that employee? They can surely pursue legal action and get the person punished, but it still will not mend the damage that. People in more responsible positions are often allowed/asked to serve the notice period and they can be trusted to not do anything silly or made liable if they do something like that.
 
the demand is somewhat correct because of the "manhour syndrome" that companies follow to inflate billed hours.
an example - a friend of mine in tcs said that if an employee is not put on any project for 30 days or more they are automatically terminated.
this way they can bill a client heavily and then lay off people once the project is over.

now, i can understand firing someone for a straight up violation of hr policy but to have such a callous policy towards employees is quite obviously done for profit. it is these kinds of policies that i feel need to addressed.
 
an example - a friend of mine in tcs said that if an employee is not put on any project for 30 days or more they are automatically terminated.

That in my opinion is a good thing. There is absolutely no reason to keep employees who are no longer required or no longer working.

I too have a few friends/colleagues who worked at TCS and the one of the problems they tell me about TCS is that there used to be a lot of employees there who just want to be on bench and collect salaries. Apparently, they don't even come to office and refuse to join any project that is assigned. They don't care about promotions, increments and the like. They usually have a separate full time business which they attend to and are on the rolls of TCS just to collect some extra cash while staying on bench like forever. Since TCS didn't terminate employees, it worked out perfect for them. This is sort of like how some govt doctors, teachers and the like retain their govt positions to collect salary while they work privately elsewhere.

One of my colleagues who worked at TCS in Calcutta told me that there are employees there who even their managers didn't see in over an year. These new rules are seemingly put in place in to combat this sort of attitude.
 
Keeping other discussions aside, the petition clearly defines the problem and has merit in my opinion.

Companies, especially large service oriented companies do not give a damn about growth of their employees. The scenario is especially bad for employees who have joined as freshers and see their salaries increasing by a minuscule amount year after year.

This lack of financial growth prompts employees to eventually look outside thereby causing potential disruption to customer operations and damage to the company's reputation with the customer as the employees leave a project.

Instead of addressing the root cause and giving decent salary hikes to existing employees, I am seeing large service companies adopt such strategies for eg: minimum 2 years in a customer project until you can switch to another project(it used to be 1 year) and now a 3 month notice period.

The majority of the desirable (mostly product/web app/mobile app) companies to work in do not have such a policy and many are not willing to wait 3 months just to hire a certain employee.

If you look at it from a perspective of an employee trapped in such a company with such an employee unfriendly 3 month notice period policy, you we see that the employee gets screwed from both sides i.e. poor salary and difficulty in finding a new job to improve his/her financial situation. Learning about another employee with equivalent (or even lower) experience getting paid more that you do just because he/she was hired laterally is usually more than one can take.
 
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I left Patni after 6 months. Best career decision I ever made, although I regret taking 6 months before deciding to resign.
 
I wanna dearly leave my current co. just coz of that bc phuk manager and nothing else. Though its a very conjus company in terms of technology as well. But all people advise to hunt for a job first and only then leave this. But I wanna leave asap and take a break for a month, refresh and hit back refreshingly on another opportunity. I might very well kick this plan soon. Its always best to be jobless rather than suffering at hands of assholes like these.
 
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I think that for most people working in a team that is a good fit and having a good rapport with the management is more important that the salary. I've heard many colleagues talk about how the want to leave and some have resigned because me last boss was a bit of a sociopath. My take on that has always been that if your manager didn't hire you then you don't have to resign on their behalf.
 
I wanna dearly.leave.my current.co just coz of that bc phuk manager and nothing else. Though its a very conjus co in terms of technology as well. But all advise to hunt for a job and only leave this. But i wanna leave asap and take a break for a month, refresh and hit back refreshingly on another opportunity. I might very well kick this plan soon. Its always best to be jobless rather than suffering at hands of assholes like these.

Same here. Sometimes, I feel like kicking the bucket as well. Might as well do it next month...
 
Instead of leaving the company, if its a large company with many teams, ask to be shifted to another team instead of resigning and leaving your job over one manager.
If you're asked why, tell the higher up in the chain like AVP or VP that you cannot work to your full potential with the current manager. Tell the truth and if they want to fire you then take it as the company is very short sighted and does not like employees very much. Best to leave such a company soon.
 
The other issue is when the company makes an employee redundant and terminates them. Technically, a company can allow the employee to serve the notice period and leave. But the problem is that employees do not always deal with such decisions in a professional and mature manner. Time and again, employees have tried to sabotage their companies business in some manner when they were allowed to do that. I have personally seen that happen at my last company. For instance, what does a company do if a a terminated employee in notice period uses the opportunity to do something to cause a 50 million loss/damage to the company? How does a company recover that money from that employee? They can surely pursue legal action and get the person punished, but it still will not mend the damage that. People in more responsible positions are often allowed/asked to serve the notice period and they can be trusted to not do anything silly or made liable if they do something like that.
Agreed 100%
I have seen similar behavior in my company. Most cases people just dont bother to work in their notice periods, I had this one girl in my team who resigned and wanted to serve here full notice period. She would be missing from her desk, or surfing or chatting on phone and taking twice the amount of time for small tasks. So I called HR to see if something can be done about it and if her notice period can be shortened, they replied that since she wants to serve her full notice period, if you want to release the employee early you have to pay them for the remaining period in the notice period. So it is not completely one sided as some people like to believe.
 
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