The Beat Report: The human story behind the once-in-a-decade TCS layoffs—and how I covered it

Mint

a day ago

In our new newsletter 'The Beat Report", Mint's journalists bring you unique perspectives on their beats, breaking down new trends and developments, and sharing behind-the-scenes stories from their fieldwork. This week's report is by Jas Bardia, who covers the IT sector for Mint. Subscribe here to get the newsletter in your inbox.
Off days for journalists are rare. Mostly, we are on the move, and on the chance day we do take an off for a swig or two, the merriment lasts only until some fresh earth-shattering news emerges. Last Sunday (27 July) was one such day.
Despite Bengaluru traffic, my trip home from the downtown diner didn't take me much longer than it'd take to gulp half a pint. Yes, it was quick; very quick. Why, you ask. Because Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) had just announced—through another media outlet—that it was going to lay off 2% of its global workforce, or about 12,200 people.
This was the story of layoffs at the country's largest information technology services company, an event many thought was impossible. We had to talk to experts—and the real humans in the firing line—to piece together what happened, and what lay ahead. And we had to be quick if a story was to see the light of day for Monday's edition.
This newsletter is the story of the human face of a looming layoff. (Here's what I wrote with my colleague, Varun Sood.)
***
Soon, the phone calls started. The mandate was clear: get a complete picture of the events leading up to 27 July and dig up notes on companies that have dropped the slightest hints of layoffs. We reached out to everyone, from middle and senior employee levels who stood affected, to those likely tasked with formulating and pushing across the marching orders.
(In a media statement that afternoon, TCS said this was part of its 'reskilling and redeployment initiatives" as it was on a journey to become a 'future-ready" organization. It said it would be releasing those staff 'whose deployment may not be feasible".)
The mood at TCS in the six days since then has been that of uncertainty, stress and anxiety. Analysts and fearful employees across the rank and file of TCS are coming to terms with the gravity of this announcement; just weeks ago, they had heard of deferred wage hikes and a new bench policy that essentially restricts staff from staying without a project for more than 35 days.
'Layoffs' is a dirty word. Rarely do companies announce layoffs publicly, that too through the media. Did something change for a company that had stayed away from culling roles for the longest time? Observers feel so. The 613,000-strong TCS workforce thought job stability was guaranteed, even at the cost of low salaries. For them, Sunday was a rude awakening.
One employee told me he had EMIs and loans to repay; another was anxious about how he'd sustain his family of four.
Another said, 'We first settle for lower pay, then they forcibly move us to the bench where we can't remain for 35 days, and now this. It seems like the company is now directly asking us to move out rather than just moving us to the bench."
Yet another employee, a project manager with about 13 years of experience, said the school fees of his two children hinged on his job at TCS.
A 43-year-old said he had to now start hunting for new jobs in case he was let go. This was a view many others echoed. 'I never thought I'd be hunting for jobs at the age of 43, that too when I'm at TCS," he said.
***
TCS's tough call also set off uncertainty into the minds of the scores of IT professionals working in other companies. This is partly because of a herd mentality that companies follow. When the leader of the pack does something, the rest tend to follow suit.
'We are now scared of losing our jobs. What happened with TCS might now happen with us," an employee at a rival firm told us. Another said TCS had lost its allure as an employer:
'We all think of joining TCS eventually when we become a little senior because it is a source of pride to work for the largest outsourcer and also we are guaranteed stability. But not any longer."
Covering something like this for the first time, I was faced with a dilemma. Dispensing my duties and at the same time broaching the topic of layoffs in my conversations was tough. Delivery and project managers who had spent years in the company could now lose their job. Those in their 40s and above were even more anxious about finding a new job, as they compete with digitally agile freshers.
Sifting through emotion was a challenge that we had to overcome as employees started drawing all sorts of inferences. While some said they would be in the firing line because of a tiff with their managers, others felt they would lose their roles for not abiding by the company's five-days-a-week work-from-office policy.
While existing employees had a sword over their heads, fresh talent also started to get concerned. 'We might not get onboarded even though we received offer letters," said one graduate. A second graduate started doubting TCS's plans to hire about 42,000 freshers, which led me to do this second story with my colleague, Devina Sengupta.
For any of the country's millions of graduates, bagging a job in a Tata Group company would imply a guaranteed job, even at a time when automation tools might replace the tasks they would be hired to do. That doesn't seem to be the case any more.
***
By the end of the day, we had enough to file a story—from the background to the details of what may have transpired.
Truth be told, this was my first time covering layoffs of this scale, and boy, was it intense! Industry executives say the last time TCS did such an exercise was in 2014-15, when Ajoy Mukherjee, then HR head, announced plans to let go of 25,000 people. I was in the 10th grade back then, and had no clue about what a 'layoff' meant. And here I was, trying to keep a calm head while segregating the news from the noise, and while listening to heartbreaking stories of anxiety about livelihoods.
While the impact of the current layoffs is not known yet, time will determine the outcome. For now, do keep an eye out for more such insightful, sharp and timely stories from Mint that answer your burning questions on a daily basis—sometimes even before you know you have them!