India is feeling the cutbacks in America and elsewhere, as high-tech companies and outsourcing firms tighten their belts by freezing salaries and laying off workers. Jeremy Kahn in the New York Times:
Bangalore – After years of being blamed for job losses in America and elsewhere, India’s high-tech companies and outsourcing firms are going through a downturn of their own. The global slowdown is forcing them to reduce hiring, freeze salaries, postpone new investments and lay off thousands of software programmers and call center operators.
While some industry insiders insist the global crisis will actually benefit companies here, as Western businesses seek to cut costs by moving jobs overseas, right now the sector is suddenly gripped by an unfamiliar sense of uncertainty.
“It’s certainly not irrational exuberance,” said Nandan Nilekani, co-chairman of Infosys, one of India’s best-known technology outsourcing firms. “There is a lot of introspection about what does this mean and when does it end.”
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Even in our US based call center, new starts and companies beginning call center outsourcing projects have gone drastically down. It has not forced us to make major cutbacks yet but it proves that even the outsourcing industry is not recession proof.