Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) announced that it will fire 2% of its workforce in fiscal year 2025-26 (FY26), affecting over 12,000 employees.
The news has become a centre of discussion among the working professionals in India. Combined with TCS’ new benching policy, which bars employees from being on the bench for more than 35 days in a year, it is evident that the IT company is gearing towards efficiency.
As unions and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) observe and comment on the situation, netizens have started to draw a contrast between the massive number of layoffs and the salary of TCS’ Chief Executive Officer (CEO), K Krithivasan, in FY25, which amounted to jst over ₹26 crore.
For FY25, K Krithivasan earned ₹26.52 crore, including a base salary of ₹1.39 crore, ₹2.12 crore in benefits, perquisites and allowances, and ₹23 crore in commission. Some netizens have suggested that perhaps the CEO and the company’s top leadership should take small pay cuts instead of cutting jobs.
“Their lives wont be terrible at ₹2.5 crore pay vs ₹3 crore. For 12000 families, lives will be miserable at 0 pay vs ₹15 lacs,” an X (formerly Twitter) user wrote.
“Deeply concerning to see a profitable TCS layoff 12K+, while framing as a move to be ‘future-ready.’ This sets a worrying precedent for IT industry. The human cost for these families is far too high for TCS with a 6% rise in profits. Should find a more humane solution for this,” another X user stated.
However, other social media users have labelled such comparison as unrealistic. They have pointed out that TCS did not state that they were cutting jobs to save costs. Instead, the Krithivasan has stated that TCS wants to build a more efficient, future-ready workforce, and is hence restructuring as per upcoming skill needs.
“This is one of the stupidest comparisons…They are cutting jobs because there is an over supply…Not to save money..A CEO gets paid because he has a job…the employee lost the job .. because there is no work to be done,” Joyal K Joseph wrote on X.