Big U.S firms to faster hiring in India
Wednesday, 04 February 2004, 20:30 IST
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WASHINGTON: Oracle, one of the big giants in the IT industry, said it was hiring faster in India than anywhere else, while Intel president Paul Otellini recently said Intel planned to do most new hiring in India and other Asian countries. Information technology companies in the US have started hiring again as the economy rebounds, but many of the new jobs are in India. Indian classified ads carry job listings from nearly every big US tech firm, from Hewlett-Packard to Dell to Microsoft, according to the USA Today. The shifting of jobs from the US is boosting India's growing tech industry and helping US firms save money. But it's squeezing the already tight US tech job market. More than 200,000 Silicon Valley jobs have been lost since 2001, says Joint Venture, a San Jose, California-based civic group. Salaries fell an average 24 percent from 2000. The economic recovery will help job seekers but not as much as usual, said a report in the Joint Venture. The competition will force some US tech workers to seek jobs elsewhere, it said. A tech engineer from India, Laxmikant Mandal, 27, moved to Silicon Valley during the internet boom, holding jobs at Nortel Networks, Cisco Systems and Cypress Semiconductor. When he was laid off in March, he returned to Bangalore and received two job offers in three months. Ultimately, Mandal decided to pursue an MBA in Canada. But when he graduates, he would like to go back to India to start a company. "Bangalore is thriving the way Silicon Valley was in 1999," he was quoted as saying in the USA Today report. US firms have been moving tech jobs out of the country for years. Tech companies have been especially partial to moving software programming jobs to India. Forrester Research estimates that 3.3 million jobs will move out of the US by 2015. Adding jobs in other countries avoids controversial layoffs in the US while shifting a greater percentage of a firm's workforce out of this country. Sunnyvale, California-based Network Appliance, which makes storage gear, expects to increase its staff in India to 300 by 2005. That would mean about five percent of its workforce would be in India, up from three percent today. The firm is also hiring in the US. The move allows it to hire top-notch engineers while saving money, said a company spokesman. India's strong education system and English-speaking workers are part of the appeal for Dallas software and services firm i2, with 47 percent of its staff in India. Adaptec, another storage-gear maker, plans to double its Indian staff to 150 from 75 over the next several years. One benefit: Indian workers are sleeping when US workers are working and vice versa, allowing for a 24-hour workday, said vice president Ram Jayam. India's tech industry is about one-fifth the size of the US tech industry, according to AMR Research analyst Lance Travis. And although the shifting of jobs might hurt some US job seekers, it benefits the industry because it lowers the price of tech goods, said Stephanie Moore of Forrester Research. US tech workers must adjust to a new reality. Silicon Valley used to be the centre of the tech world, but it's not so anymore, the news report said.
Source: IANS
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