Whenever I see news about Indian IT industry, I just have one question in mind - Where is it heading towards? Is this a slow down? Will this recover? Will my company be a victim of this? Will all my career plans hold good? What happens to my family and financial security? What about those EMIs for house loan? I am sure many of us are in the same boat.

Today's flash news is a Hyderabad based Testing Services comapny has layed off 500 employees on this monday. IT industry had a tough time during 2000 when we saw the dot com burst. Now after 8 years, the bad days have come again. Have you heard of TCS giving pink slips to 1500 employees few months ago? Do you know that Wipro already fired around 1000 giving some lame reasons? Satyam fired 400 employees recently and Virtusa fired 300. Is this all? Sources say, worst is yet to come. Biggies like TCS, IBM and Wipro have plans to get rid of more employees in near future. Satyam is targeting to downsize their workforce by 4500. It put 1500 in PIP and didn't give any hikes to 3000 - first steps to prepare them to show the door..

Rumors are floating that UBS and Satyam BPO are preparing ground for some similar figures. Every one is showing American slowdown as the reason. They say that major earning vertical is BFS (Banking and Financial Services). As US is under the sub-prime crisis, huge chunk of revenue is missing from that sector. Analysts say that this trend will hit even European markets. It means more layoffs for us. With Lehman and Borther's filing for bankruptcy, it is no more a secret. Biggies like AIG, Merill Lynch who has huge stakes in several Indian companies are not doing good. These are only some of the bad news that we are able to get to. Analysts feel that time will show more such news and industry is heading towards a major crash...

Now, what do you and I do? I don't see any ray of hope.. may be its time to Pack our bags!!

-Ranjan