According to WSJ: “Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. said Monday its fiscal fourth-quarter net profit rose 4.7% from a year earlier but painted a gloomy picture for the current fiscal year due to the global economic meltdown.
TCS, India’s largest software exporter by revenue said it expects a fall in its billing rates in the current fiscal year which began April 1. “
Update 1 (4-20-2009)
According to Reuters: “Oracle Corp plans to enter the computer hardware market by buying Sun Microsystems Inc for more than $7 billion, swooping in after Sun’s talks with IBM fell apart.”
Update 2 (4-20-2009)
According to Reuters: “Microsoft’s chief executive said on Monday he was ‘very surprised‘ by Oracle Corp’s plans to buy Sun Microsystems Inc.”
According to WSJ: “Given Sun’s relatively low operating margins, there’s no doubt plenty of fat to cut in areas like sales and marketing.”
According to ComputerWorld: “More layoffs are expected at Sun Microsystems Inc. as a result of Oracle Corp.’s planned $7.4 billion acquisition, with one Wall Street analyst predicting today that as many as 10,000 people could lose their jobs at the Silicon Valley icon.”
Cisco Systems, Ins, Location: San Jose, CA, Layoff date: 4/17/09 Employees affected: 22
Cisco Systems, Ins, Location: San Jose, CA, Layoff date: 4/24/09 Employees affected: 233
Source: California EDD WARN (PDF document), SFGate
With sales still in steep decline and no sign of recovery on the horizon, Cisco is expected to make a massive staff cut.
Analysts expect Cisco to guide fiscal fourth quarter revenue down 17%-22% year-over-year, as demand continues to deteriorate.
Cisco could also announce a 10% headcount reduction, which could save $900M annually, according to JPMorgan analysts.
Source: Yahoo Finance, TheStreet.com
Update 1 (04-14-2009): Cisco dismisses ‘hefty’ layoffs rumor. According to a Cisco spokesperson: “On our fiscal second quarter 2009 earnings call in February we discussed a limited restructuring where we could in the near term see a total reduction of between 1,500 and 2,000 jobs company wide. This does not represent a broad-scale layoff in our workforce”.
Source: The Register
Update 2 (04-16-2009): According to WARN listing, Cisco Systems cuts 255 jobs in San Jose, California in April 2009
Update 3 (04-30-2009): According to rumors, Cisco “will delay the 10% layoff planned in May. But we will get 1 week shutdown in August”.
~ LayOffBlog.com: Please feel free to add comments and/or send us your updates regarding Cisco layoffs. ~
Satyam Computer Services Ltd., the software exporter at the center of India’s biggest fraud inquiry, fell the most in six weeks in New York after Tech Mahindra Ltd. won the bidding for control of the company.
Tech Mahindra will get control of about 50,000 employees servicing customers including Cisco Systems Inc. and Nestle SA.
“It’s one of the worst outcomes. Tech Mahindra is not a very well-known name.”, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Source: Bloomberg
The department’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) agency said they had so far received slightly more than half the applications it needs to fill the 85,000 spots for so-called H1B visas for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1.
A year ago, the agency had received about 163,000 total applications.
Source: Reuters
~News submitted by upthecreek
Wells Fargo & Co., one of the largest U.S. lenders, told employees this month that it’s considering cutting foreign workers, citing political pressure stemming from the government’s bailout of the banking industry.
When the stimulus bill became law in February, it included rules that made it more difficult for TARP recipients to hire foreign workers on so-called H-1B visas.
The legislation doesn’t apply to current employees of Wells and other TARP recipients who need to have their existing H-1B visas renewed. However, Wells Fargo is letting those visas expire anyway.
12 biggest banks that took TARP money requested visas for more than 21,800 foreign workers in the past six years, according to the Associated Press.
Source: MarketWatch
~News submitted by upthecreek
The Wall Street Journal today has an interesting article regarding the number of H-1B workers in the US.
There’s also a list of companies who had 100 or more H-1B petitions approved in fiscal year 2008. Indian consulting companies appear to get most of the visas.
An article in the Wall Street Journal suggests that, “The Obama administration should seriously consider granting resident status to foreigners who buy surplus houses in this country.”
In order to reduce the excess inventory of houses, it is suggested to “offer permanent residence status to the many foreigners who are clamoring to get into the U.S. — if they buy houses of minimal values (not shacks). They wouldn’t need to live in those houses, but in order to remove the unit from the total housing market, they couldn’t rent them.”
According to the article, “Each year, 85,000 H-1B visas are granted for foreigners with advanced skills and education, and last year, 163,000 petitions were filed in the first five days after applications were accepted. The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation estimates that as of Sept. 30, 2006, 500,040 residents of the U.S. and 59,915 individuals living abroad were waiting for employment-based visas. Many would buy homes if their immigration conditions were settled.
These people tend to be highly productive. In 2006, foreign nationals residing in the U.S. were listed as inventors on 25.6% of the patent applications filed in the U.S., up from 7.6% in 1998. A Council of Graduate Schools survey found that in the fall of 2007, 241,095 non-U.S. citizens were enrolled in graduate programs. Some 55% were in engineering and the biological and physical sciences, compared with only 16% of U.S. citizens. In 2007, more people on temporary visas received doctorates in physical sciences and engineering than U.S. citizens.
“
Indian outsourcers, along with Microsoft and Google, again lead the list of companies bringing foreign workers to the U.S. on the H-1B visa program.
According to U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Service (USCIS), Four India-based companies topped the list:
Infosys Technologies (INFY, India): 4,559 H-1B visas approved in 2008, 4,559 in 2007
Wipro (WIT, India): 2,678 H-1B visas approved in 2008; 2,567 in 2007
Satyam (SAY, India): 1,917 H-1B visas approved in 2008; 1,396 in 2007
Tata (TCS.BO, India): 1,539 H-1B visas approved in 2008; 797 in 2007
Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT): 1,018 H-1B visas approved in 2008; 959 in 2007
Google (NASDAQ:GOOG): 248 H-1B visas approved in 2008
Lehman Brothers: 130 H-1B visas approved in 2008
In fiscal year 2007, six of the top 10 visa recipients were based in India; two others among the top 10, Cognizant Technology Solutions (CTSH) and UST Global, are headquartered in the U.S. but have most of their operations in India, according to BusinessWeek
USCIS will begin taking H-1B applications for the next fiscal year on April 1 and will distribute the new visas on Oct. 1.
Source: U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Service (USCIS)
According to AP, CNBC: “Microsoft Corp. is slashing overtime, hours and pay for U.S. temporary workers as part of an overall push to curb expenses during the recession.
Microsoft will cut what it pays the staffing agencies by 10 percent for current projects and won’t raise the rate it pays for temporary workers who return after a mandatory annual 100-day break. The company also plans to reduce overtime and the total number of hours clocked by temporary workers.”
~News submitted by upthecreek
According to BusinessWeek: “New Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz just announced in a detail-free blog post the much-anticipated shakeup of Yahoo’s management ranks. Although she didn’t say what the reorganization would involve beyond making the setup simpler, some current executives clearly won’t be part of it. This morning, Yahoo said Chief Financial Officer Blake Jorgensen will be leaving, only a day after he made a presentation at a tech conference.”
Yahoo structure changes in breif:
According to Channel Web: “Cisco Systems (NSDQ:CSCO) confirmed to Channelweb.com that it has eliminated a number of positions in the U.S. and abroad as part of its realignment and restructuring initiative that will chop $1 billion out of its operating budget throughout fiscal year 2009.
Cisco would not confirm on Wednesday how many positions were cut. Sources, however, said employees started receiving notifications on Tuesday, and roughly 250 of the positions eliminated were based in San Jose, Calif. Overall, sources said, the number of employees affected was fewer than the 1,500 to 2,000 that Cisco CEO John Chambers hinted at on the company’s earnings call for the second fiscal quarter.”
A provision requiring banks receiving federal bailout funds to give hiring priority to U.S. workers over foreigners with H-1B visas made it into the final version of the economic stimulus bill that President Barack Obama signed last week.
But House and Senate negotiators dropped a separate proposal that would have forced all employers benefiting from stimulus money to use the government’s Web-based E-Verify system to vet the employment status of their workers.
Source: ComputerWorld
Federal investigators discovered fraud in more than 20 percent of applications they examined in which employers were requesting H-1B visas to hire foreign professionals in the U.S., a finding they called a “significant vulnerability.”
In a report released late last year, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service cited one especially egregious case in which an employer petitioned for a business-development analyst position but later told investigators the worker would be doing laundry and maintaining washing machines.
Source: The Seattle Times
According to ComputerWorld: ” Federal agents on Thursday said they arrested 11 people in six states in a crackdown on H-1B visa fraud and unsealed documents that detail how the visa process was used to undercut the salaries of U.S. workers.”
“The arrests were carried out by federal, state and local agents working in Iowa, California, Massachusetts, Texas, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and New Jersey. The government’s action “is the result of an extensive, ongoing investigation into suspected H-1B visa fraud, mail fraud and conspiracy,” said Matthew Whitaker, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Iowa, in a statement.”
ComputerWorld worte on October, 2008: “An internal report by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) examining the H-1B visa program has found evidence of forged documents and fake degrees, and even “shell” companies giving addresses of fake locations.”
Official Source (Case Details): U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
Roseville, CA (February 10, 2009) Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE:HPQ) has announced today it’s plans to lay off all network engineers-contractors from it’s ProCurve project in Roseville, CA (Sacramento area). Dozens of engineers are affected, according to leaks from different anonymous sources from inside.
Update (2-18-2009): HP cuts full year outlook, quarterly revenue missed expectations, according to Reuters
~Please feel free to submit your comments and updates regarding HP’s layoff
According to FoxNews: “Satyam Computer Services Ltd., the Indian tech giant at the center of a $1 billion executive fraud and a World Bank ethics scandal, is involved in yet another kind of debacle — this time at the United Nations’ public health arm, the World Health Organization (WHO).
At issue is Satyam’s role in the development of a $55.5 million global business management system for WHO, which was slated to become the master control for staffing, financial payments and procurement by the organization by an initial deadline of September 2007.
That deadline has long since passed, and instead, according to documents obtained by FOX News, the project is far behind schedule, wallowing in glitches that have deeply affected WHO operations, and, despite management claims to the contrary, likely to end up far exceeding its budget.
Moreover, according to the documents, in the push to get at least part of the system up and running by last summer, Satyam ignored the instructions of the software’s manufacturer, Oracle, for implementing the complex system; ran user tests that validated the system without “being able to replicate a real-life situation,” provided little or no training to WHO employees; and failed to adequately involve health care professionals who see the system as a vital tool, among a host of other failings.”
According to ComputerWorld: “Financial services firms that receive federal bailout money will be prohibited from hiring H-1B workers if legislation introduced last night in the U.S. Senate wins adoption. The bill would bar any recipient of the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), the program being used by the government to purchase some $700 billion of bad mortgage assets, from hiring anyone on an H-1B visa.”
~ News submitted by Kirk R.
According to CNNMoney: “The global economic downturn will continue to hammer computer networking giant Cisco Systems Inc., chief executive John Chambers said Wednesday.
In its current quarter, Cisco expects to see revenue decline between 15% and 20%, he said in a conference call with analysts.”
“We are not going to consider (layoffs) at this time,” chief executive John Chambers said. But he added, that if Cisco was forced to cut jobs, it would likely be a large cut of about 10% of its workforce.
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