KOLKATA: This may literally be a bolt from Big Blue! IBM is learnt to have delivered the pink slip to a sizeable chunk of its entry-level trainee programmers (ELTPs) across major offices in India.
Most of these ELTPs, who were engineering graduates, had put in nearly a year and were working in numerous technology practice groups under IBM India’s global delivery business.
Though IBM is silent on the actual number of ELTPs dismissed, the total is likely to be in excess of 700 across company locations nationally, including 180-odd in Kolkata alone.
ELTPs, who were essentially freshers, were asked to go based on their performance in aptitude tests that were recently conducted in undisclosed IBM India locations. It is learnt that action on the ELTP front in major IBM locations was an ultra hush-hush exercise about which many senior IBM managers were in the dark.
At present, the IBM India management is reluctant to go into the details of its latest HR exercise. But in a written response to ET’s email query, an IBM spokesperson said, “IBM is driven by a high-performance culture, a place where employees are able to contribute at the upper limits of their potential and continually build market-valued skills and capabilities in both formal training and experiential learning. In support of that expectation on the part of our workforce, we are pioneering new ways for our people to certify their skill levels as both a validation of their value to clients and to reinforce the quality of our employees’ personal skill sets.”
IBM has strongly refuted any possible link in the latest action on the ELTP front, with industry speculation about IBM’s global services business suffering a cash loss in India in 2007.
–Kalyan Parbat & Sutanuka Ghosal, TNN
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Well written article, good piece of information. The IBM management really need to look into the matter. It’s not only the matter of business but also the career of the 700 graduates. I am looking forward for the updates. Thanks for writing an eye opening blog.
Sanjana,
Thanks for your Comment on IBM’s. There are times when business moves do go wrong. If you read the article carefully, IBM detained trainees who weren’t able to clear their Test…I guess that was fair enough for taking the step, i just feel that the move was publicised alot & came at a wrong time as IT industry ios facing a Slow down.
Keep writing to us.
Hi, good informative article. But I see that the number 700 to layman reader could the raise eyebrow.
Well one should think about the total number the Big Blue recruits in India i.e. to say the denominator being huge 700 is seemingly paltry…Although I would definitely sympathize with those at the receiving end.
Looking at the bigger picture I find that given the US recession and global credit crunches it is only obvious that such large organizations are likely to hold back their cards.
Also, if you look at the Silicon valley(from where it all started) and perhaps the pilgrimage of every techie anywhere in the world has suffered similar circumstances in the past from which it has emerged every time with the advent of new paradigms in the software sphere (a subtle reference to play down of the dot com boom vs. advent of the enterprise software boom)
The bottom line is, as India grows its a part and parcel of the bigger growth story that we all are a part.