HCL Tech lays off 350 employees working on Microsoft project

HCL Technologies is said to have laid off 350 employees as the country's IT industry braces against strong headwinds amid growing concerns about global inflation.

According to a report by Moneycontrol.com, the tech company has fired employees who were primarily working on its client Microsoft’s news related products, signalling an increasingly tough business environment.

“Microsoft had an issue with the quality of work. We used to monitor, curate and edit content for its news platform MSN from across countries like India, Europe and the US. They had recently automated the process as well for global news monitoring,” one of the employees who was laid off told the news site seeking anonymity.

There are also other functions and products like trending on Bing, Geopolitical news curation, comment moderation, tabloid hit apps, and transformation by Teams which have gotten impacted, it added.

According to the report, the employees who were fired were spread across the globe, including Guatemala, the Philippines, and even India, to name a few. The software company also stated that it will provide severance pay to any employee who is fired over the course of time. According to the company, these employees' last day will be September 30.

This news comes days after HCL Technologies outshone Wipro to become the country's third largest IT company in terms of market capitalisation, only behind Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Infosys. 

HCL Technologies is not the only Indian IT company struggling due to macroeconomic pressures from across the world. The rising concerns of global inflation have also spelled trouble for other Indian IT giants like TCS, Wipro, and Infosys as well.
These companies are facing margin pressures due to the increase in costs. In August, TCS delayed the variable payouts to its employees while Wipro deferred it and Infosys slashed it by 70%, as per recent reports.
Globally too, the Silicon Valley has witnessed a torrent of layoffs primarily triggered by fears of a looming recession, Russian invasion of Ukraine and inflation.

According to data compiled by Crunchbase, tech companies in the US have sacked more than 37,000 employees in mass job cuts until early August.

Apple sacked as many as 100 contract based recruiters in August to control hiring and spending. Chinese tech company Tencent fired 5,500 employees last quarter. Microsoft laid-off 1800 employees in July across different regions as part of its structural adjustments.

Twitter laid-off 30% of its talent acquisition team in July and also laid off 100 employees. More recently, Google warned employees of a potential layoff citing "there will be blood on the streets".

Cryptocurrency exchange platform Coinbase, sacked 1,100 people, which is 18% of its workforce, as well as a slew of other crypto companies who blamed it on an impending recession in the US and an upcoming "crypto winter".