Why Infosys employees are unhappy

Even as Infosys, the poster boy of Indian information technology services, maintains it will review later this year on whether to raise pay, quite a few of its staffers have begun to look for greener pastures.

Job portal Naukri.com says there's been a 10 per cent rise in resumes from Infosys staffers in the past month. "There has been a steady trend over the last one year but this influx was seen in the last one month. Whereas in the case of Wipro, we witnessed a minor two per cent increase in CVs over the past month," it said.

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As of now, Infosys has put a freeze on salary rises, while its competitors have not. Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) announced a salary rise of eight per cent on an average for India-based employees and two to four per cent for on-site employees.

Wipro, too, has said it will be announcing pay rises in June.

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When asked, the company, in an e-mailed response, said: "Given the volatility in the environment, we have postponed salary hikes for our employees. We will revisit our decision if things improve during the course of the year, just as we did during earlier years. As is the practice, we will announce our attrition data during our quarterly results."

Recruiters and personnel consultants doing business with Infosys said the highest impact has been at Job Level-4 at Infosys. Their JL-4 band has employees with work experience of five to six years.

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"Nobody would want to leave a brand like Infosys. But the internal work model has led to a lot of frustration among employees. Our experience has been that the maximum fallout has been at the JL-4 technology level," said the executive director of a recruiting firm, on the condition of anonymity.

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The national head of IT practice at a personnel agency says executives are leaving Infosys for two reasons - one, Infosys on the whole has cut out (meaning, down) on remuneration and, two, the work culture has not been encouraging.

"This is not to say that attrition is not taking place at the JL-7 level. Over the last six months, we have had a couple of vice-presidents who have moved out, too," he said.

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At the leadership or JL-7 which includes assistant VPs and VPs, Infosys pays executives Rs 40-60 lakh per annum.

There are, however, variances in terms of cost-to-company between various divisions. Infosys has, in the recent past, battled such personnel issues.

In 2009, it saw an exodus of employees with a programme called iRace, that aimed to re-map the technology skills of its software professionals and offer them roles based on their experience.

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"Management changes in the past year and also Infy not being able to catch up with the growth rate (in the sector) may be the trigger for people to look out for jobs. There might be a 10-20 per cent increase in the number of people looking out. Overall, in the last one year, people in the middle and senior level have been looking for jobs," said the CEO of a recruiting firm specialising in IT hiring.