As layoffs in the IT sector make international headlines, tech icon Narayana Murthy said that jobs of junior executives can be protected if bosses take pay cuts. “I have a feeling that it is possible for us to protect the jobs of youngsters if the senior management people were to make some minor adjustments – adjustment of taking salary cuts,” the co-founder of Infosys said.
“Let me give you example of Infosys itself. When the market became very tough and it shrank actually in 2001, we all sat together with senior management and then we said – look let us make some sacrifice and ensure that we protect the jobs of youngsters,” Murthy said.
In recent months, Murthy and other founders of India’s second-largest software exporter have clashed with the company for hike of as much as 60-70 per cent for top bosses and severance packages for others, describing them as “grossly unfair to the majority of the Infosys employees.”
IT outsourcing has long been one of India’s flagship industries but experts say automation, a failure to keep up with new technologies and US President Donald Trump’s clampdown on visas is creating industry-wide upheaval.
The big IT firms are laying of thousands as research has claimed that hundreds of thousands of jobs could disappear in the next four years, although the companies themselves have refused to comment on numbers. The industry employs nearly four million Indians and rakes in revenues of more than $150 billion, according to the trade body National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom).
Murthy said the industry has survived major setbacks in the past and gloomy forecasts are not valid. “Let us remember we have gone through this several times in the past. We went through that in 2008, in 2001. So, this is nothing new.
Therefore, there is no need for us to become extremely anxious. We have had solutions to such problems in the past,” he said.
