EPAM sacks 100 in India, revokes offers

Sources said the number of people forced to resign across both companies — EPAM Systems and EPAM Anywhere —could be at least 100 employees. ET couldn’t independently verify the number.

The resignations are across testing, .Net, DevOps and Java domains.

The human resource managers had told the affected employees the company had over-hired, misjudging the demand forecast and they can’t fund any projects for onboarding in the near future. ET has reviewed the

recordings of the conversations.

The employees were communicated on Microsoft Teams and forced to resign — giving them options of either with three months’ pay with immediate exit or serving two months’ notice where their resignation may be revoked on the condition that they land project during the notice period.

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EPAM did not respond to mails seeking comments despite multiple reminders.

ET spoke to two people impacted by the moves. The layoffs have been done in a staggered manner for the last few weeks with most hailing from EPAM Anywhere while there were a few from EPAM Systems too.

Under EPAM Anywhere, candidates globally in over 20 countries, are offered IT jobs that are remote by design.

By joining its team, one can work from anywhere in the country of the candidate’s permanent residence.

According to EPAM Systems 2021 annual report, it had 4,349 professionals in India totally largest after Ukraine, Belarus and Russia.

One of the impacted employees said there could be a fall in demand for resources as the company could have rehired some of its impacted Ukrainian employees who are now working out of nearby countries like Poland and Romania.

Last month, news reports said HCL Tech had laid off nearly 350 employees working on a Microsoft project,

suggesting the project has gone to Accenture.

This comes as IT companies are facing macro headwinds as US banks are expected to cut tech spending while the world’s largest economy is seen slipping into an impending recession.

Last month ET reported that big tech firms like Google, Microsoft and Meta are slowing down hiring while clients are holding back on smaller contracts to IT services firms.

According to a PwC survey: Pulse – Managing business risks in 2022- released in August, 50% of the respondents in the United States have said they were reducing overall headcount even as business leaders remained concerned about hiring and retaining talent.