Passing the buck?

N. Nagaraj

WHEN 3,000 software engineers are fired from a company, and other companies lay off between 10 and 30 per cent of their workforce, those who have been shown the door are bound to ask the question, ``why me?'' Several questions arise here.

Is injustice being done here? Injustice, in terms of the responsibility taken by the company? Companies that were saying only a year ago that their employees are like their customers, and they need to be taken care of and pampered, are today just sending their flock to the real world, behaving like a magnanimous big bad wolf. Who really is to blame for someone getting fired? The affected employee can ask a few questions.

By far the most damaging question is, ``Has the guy who made a decision to hire me been asked to put in his papers?'' Fair enough. If managers have to take responsibility for the decisions they take, such a big mistake -- as misjudging future market performance or as a mismatch between manpower demand and supply -- definitely deserves to be punished by dismissal?

A manager's forecast of what jobs he has and expects, and his estimates of manpower required are key responsibilities, and if he falters on that, he is not a good manager, is he? And how about the promoters/board of directors? In a way, may be these people should take the ultimate responsibility for the running of the company. Will the CEO and the board quit, and let a new management take over and do a better job of it this time around? Many such questions abound. And a lot of them may remain unanswered.

But, by far the worst injustice is that people are sent out and the public is told that they were not sent out because the company wanted to lay off people, but because they were non-performers or under-performers. This is adding insult to injury. Most companies follow a policy of firing people who were hired last. In crude terms, it is a matter of last in, first out. Some companies also use this as an excuse to fire people who are not ``tractable,'' and quite a few managers settle old ``scores.''

And how about the HR department here? Will the HR team quit because it hired so many under-performers and non-performers? It is their job to hire the right kind of people, people who will ``fit in'' and be productive.

While these questions remain, and unanswered at that, imagine the plight of the people who have been fired for no fault of theirs and also told that they were useless because their performance wasn't up to the standard, and the whole farce of an appraisal-based system enacted publicly, ruining the poor man's chances of landing a good job within a reasonable time-frame.

How about the larger responsibility of a company towards its employees? In an earlier era of machines and industry, people were retrained and equipped with new skills to take care of new jobs when their earlier jobs were automated and they became redundant.

In the new information and knowledge era, new skills are soft skills, and the worker's individuality and what that particular person brings to the workplace is unique. This uniqueness is what made some of the offending companies what they are today. One of the major reasons for people finding the new era companies attractive was the opportunity these companies provided for displaying their individuality.

Now, the fabric that made different people come together with their ideas and work at something profitable has been torn. In the new environment where job security is suddenly a big issue, companies that have fired people will face problems when they try to hire people again when the economy starts to recover and they start doing better. Word-of-mouth is an important factor among software people, and these companies may find that if they did an injustice to a few in firing them, they will now discover that getting good guys on board again is going to be a tough job.

Do you have an opinion on this issue? Do you feel you have faced the wrong end of the stick unnecessarily? Or, if you feel that things in the Indian software industry are not so bad yet as in Silicon Valley, US, do you think there are steps companies and employees should take to make matters smoother?

Write in to nagaraj@thehindu.co.in