After Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) announced plans to lay off 12,000 employees globally, reports are emerging that fresh graduates are also being asked to resign. This comes just weeks after the company revised its bench policy, making young techies more vulnerable to exits.
A day before TCS announced salary hikes for 80% of its employees, a Reddit user claimed he was forced to resign unceremoniously.
Under a post titled “TCS firing freshers?”, the user alleged that several trainees from Ahmedabad and Pune were let go after being on the bench for barely four to five weeks. The change in bench policy, reducing the permissible period without an active client project to 35 days, placed the onus on employees and allowed the company to keep layoffs under wraps, the post alleged.
‘I was forced to resign a few days back’
The Redditor alleged that freshers too were under the job-cut radar.
“I was forced to resign a few days back,” the TCS fresher wrote.
He claimed that HR called him in for a meeting, asked him to switch off his phone, and then gave him two options: resign immediately or face termination with a negative release letter and no pay.
“I would get three months’ pay on resignation and no negativity in the release letter,” he added.
The employee further alleged that HR insisted he cite “personal reasons” for the sudden resignation, despite being assigned to an active project.
Shocked at the urgency of the action, the fresher recalled thinking: “Why did they even hire me?”
According to the post, four other freshers also resigned under similar circumstances and were in tears. “The HR did not even let him leave the room with those tears,” it claimed.
‘He didn’t even let me call my father’
The fresher alleged he was given only 15 minutes to decide between resignation and termination, and was not allowed to call his family. “I chose the safer option,” he said, adding that he eventually resigned under pressure.
He also cast doubt on TCS’s official layoff numbers, claiming the actual figure could be closer to 80,000—much higher than the reported 2% of the global workforce—since forced resignations were not being counted.
In the end, the fresher remarked that the episode might have been a “blessing in disguise.”