HCL Technologies Fires 350 Employees Globally Working on Microsoft Project: Report

New Delhi: HCL Technologies has laid off 350 employees globally who were working on its client Microsoft’s news-related products, as per a report. The employees were informed about this during a town hall last week. The last day of work for the employees will be September 30 and they will be offered severance pay. As per a report in Moneycontrol, these employees were laid off from geographies including India, Guatemala and the Philippines, among others.Also Read – Will Amazon END Work From Home For Employees? CEO Replies

“Microsoft had an issue with the quality of work. We used to monitor, curate and edit content for its news platform MSN from across countries like India, Europe and the US. They had recently automated the process as well for global news monitoring. Prior to this, two years ago, Burda Media was managing this site,” one of the employees who was laid off told Moneycontrol seeking anonymity. Also Read – This Feature On Microsoft Teams Will Be Updated For Better User Experience. Check Details Here

According to the report in the publication, the contact with HCL Technologies has ended and is likely to be passed on to some other vendor and Accenture might be one of them. Also Read – Bengaluru Rains: Companies Announce Work From Home, Several Schools Switch to Online Mode

This comes at a time when Indian IT companies are already seeing margin pressure due to inflation and impending recession in markets like the US and Europe, the biggest markets for the sector.

This comes at a time when Indian IT companies are already seeing margin pressure due to inflation and impending recession in markets like the US and Europe, the biggest markets for the sector. Some of them are also cutting down hiring.

Among other IT companies, Microsoft was among the first big company to lay off about one percent of its total staff strength of 1.8 lakh in July, followed by 200 more in August.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai also hinted at layoffs to make the company 20 per cent more efficient recently after an internal warning to employees to improve performance. Meta too had slowed down investment pace into newer projects amid a revenue drop.