Satyam Computers lays off 400 employees

HYDERABAD: The city-based IT bellwether, Satyam Computers, has shown the door to 400 engineers and associates in Hyderabad, Pune and Visakhapatnam.

The termination came as a rude shock to those thrown out, as they were not rookies at their jobs. Most of them were in ‘S’ band, as the company calls it, denoting their experience in the range of two to five years. An associate, pleading anonymity, said that a head honcho of the company sent an e-mail cautioning the employees against not turning up at offices and preferring to remain on the bench. Sources said there were a large number of associates on the bench as they had no project on hand. Thanks to the global economic slowdown, big projects do not seem to be coming forth resulting in some employees remaining idle.

The Satyam management has been cautioning them either to move out of its rolls to a contractual employment offered by companies that outsource work to it or leave.

When contacted, S.V. Krishnan, Global Head, HR, said giving pink slips to those in the ‘S’ band was “not out of the ordinary and we do this as a matter of routine employee evaluation and development. There is no specific focus on levels during evaluation.”

Satyam had a bench capacity of 3.5-5 per cent and the projects were assigned based on the associates’ skills as and when the company got such a contract.

Courtesy: Hindu