Infosys to hire 6,000 engineers annually over next 2 years

The country's second largest software services firm has also ramped up its hiring process in the US and European markets as it looks to tap opportunities and tide over visa- related issues.

"...we continue to recruit. This year that just concluded we had a net addition of 6,000 and we expect similar kind of additions over the next 1 or 2 years, depending on the kind of growth you see in the market," Infosys interim-CEO and MD U B Pravin Rao said at an investor meet last week. The Bengaluru-based firm has been in the eye of a storm over the past few months, with the founders and former board members clashing over alleged corporate governance lapses and irregularities in Infosys' $200-million Panaya acquisition.

The spat, which often spilled over into the public domain, led to the then CEO Vishal Sikka as well as former Chairman R Seshasayee and three other board members quitting. Co-founder Nandan Nilekani was named the non-executive Chairman in a move that was seen as the company bowing to the demands of co-founders and large institutional investors. After Sikka's exit, Rao assumed the additional charge as interim CEO and MD.

Rao said over one million graduates pass out each year, which may look like a large number but only 20-30 per cent of that is quality talent.

"(This is the number that) we and our competitors focus on...It is a question of doing more with less, how can one be more productive," he said while answering a query on whether increasing automation would result in job losses.

At the end of June 2017, Infosys had a total of 1,98,553 employees on its payroll. The company does not provide country-specific headcount.

During the said quarter, Infosys hired 8,645 people at a gross level but its overall headcount was lower by 1,811 people on a net level (which factors in attrition numbers).

Earlier this year, there were reports of layoffs across the IT sector. With Infosys stating that it was stepping up hiring in international markets like the US, there were concerns that it could impact the company's recruitment plans in India.

Infosys had, at that time, stated it planned to hire 20,000 people (gross) this year. Infosys has stated that it is in favour of a healthy mix of local and global personnel, even though hiring locals in overseas markets often pushes up operational costs for IT outsourcing companies.

During the investor meeting, Rao said Infosys is also looking at increasing localisation of its workforce and is recruiting about 10,000 people in the next few years and setting up development and innovation hubs in the US.

New York: Chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), which is working on next generation processors, plans to recruit more engineers in India for its two R&D centres.

At present, around 13,000 are working in two centres located in Bengaluru and Hyderabad.

"We should be continuing to grow at the existing centres.

We have many open jobs at each site," AMD Senior Vice President Jim Anderson said.

He, however, declined to give specific number of open jobs to be filled. Asked if more Research and Development (R&D) centres will be opened in India, he said there are no plans announced yet. The company will strengthen the existing centres because a lot of advanced engineering work is being done in India.

"For our Ryzen Mobo processor, lot of engineering work was done in Hyderabad," he said. Stating that India is an important market for California- based AMD, Anderson said there is a huge market for business PCs and the company aims to increase its share with aggressive marketing of its new products.

So far this year, the company has launched high- performance chips Ryzen 3, 5 and 7 for consumer PCs, a chip named Epyc for corporate servers and also a revamped graphics chip called Vega. Last week, it had launched a new line of microprocessor chips called 'Ryzen Pro' for commercial PCs.