HCL Technologies lays off 350 employees working on Microsoft project: Report

HCL Technologies has reportedly laid off 350 employees who were part of its client Microsoft’s news-related products. The employees, who were informed about the development in a town hall last week, were working in several countries including Guatemala, India and the Philippines. The workers will be given severance pay and their last working day is 30 September. According to a Moneycontrol report, people familiar with the development have stated that the company’s contract with HCL Technologies, India’s third-largest software exporter, is over and is likely to be passed on to another vendor, with companies like Accenture in the running. One of the employees who was laid off revealed details to Moneycontrol on condition of anonymity. “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, the employee said. Furthermore, functions and products like comment moderation, tabloid hits apps, trending on Bing, Geopolitical news curation and transformation by teams have also been impacted. It is to be noted that Burda Media had also laid off around 200 employees when its contract finished. The news of the layoffs signals a tough time in the IT industry. Due to inflationary pressures and the threat of impending recession in the United State and Europe, Indian IT firms have been facing a slew of problems. Many companies have been forced to either delay or make partial cuts in the variable pay of employees, like Infosys and Wipro. Furthermore, the pressure by Big Tech companies on increasing productivity and target readjustment is also likely to impact their Indian partners. Read all the Latest News , Trending News , Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.