HYDERABAD: While the fear of layoffs continues to haunt, techies in the age 38-45 years are at a high risk of losing their jobs. Consequently, middle-aged techies in the role of team leaders, line managers and senior analysts with an experience of 5-15 years are troubled about being shown the doors even in the best of companies. This is evident from the recent layoffs, where most of the experienced persons were given the pink slip. Dr. Chandrasekhar Sripada, professor (OB and strategic human capital), Indian School of Business, said, “Impermanence marks the character of IT jobs now, especially when a person evolves into a managerial position.”
Treating techies like human capital and looking for the return on investment year-on-year basis has become a detrimental factor in retaining employees and giving hikes. A person is given a hike in salary based on the revenue they will fetch for the company. However, there is a role of managers and superiors in determining the performance of the experienced folks. “Managers tend to behave like politicians who fail to tell their peers that their performance is making loss to company. During the performance reviews, managers are trying to manage and fail to tell people to perform,” said Mr Sripada at the third Annual Hysea HR summit in Hyderabad on Friday.
It may be mentioned that many victims who were thrown out by companies claimed that they were told that they performed exceedingly well. “Managers tend to make HRs the scapegoat by lying to the employee that they exceeded expectations during performance review period. They say that they wanted to give a good rating, but the HR denied it”, said Mr Anand Pillai, managing director of Leadership Matters, Inc.
Experts suggest that managers shouldn’t make a layoff a surprise act but continuously track the employees’ performance. Consequently, there is a huge onus on the managers to grade people correctly. Experts suggest techies to self-introspect if their projects will be impacted if they don’t go to work for a day. Mr Utkarsh Palnitkar, partner at KPMG India, said, “Ask yourself, will people at office miss me if I don’t go”.
