Microsoft-owned open source developer GitHub has fired over 140 engineers, reportedly its entire engineering team, across the company's India operations, a move the company called "difficult but necessary."
The company has around 3,000 employees across the globe. GitHub had earlier announced its plans to slash 10 per cent of its workforce and freeze hiring in an attempt to cut costs.
According to media reports, the lay-off was not performance-based as the entire team has been laid off.
"A total of 142 engineers were let go at GitHub India yesterday (Monday). Laid-off employees have been given two months' pay as severance," Business Today quoted a source as saying.
GitHub reportedly said the decision to fire the employees was taken to protect the health of its business in the short term and grant the company the capacity to invest in our long-term strategy moving forward.
"What I am hearing: GitHub’s India engineering team is no more," tech writer Gergely Orosz said in a series of tweets, adding, "Yesterday, the complete dev team was let go at once. We’re talking of ~100 engineers. Engineers speculate this was done as teams were smaller than other locations, owning fewer & lower priority stuff. My thoughts: This layoff comes amidst the February layoffs announced. The strange thing is: why India, when cost of labor is much cheaper than eg US, and likely cheaper than EU? Perhaps the India team *was* not at the critical size, like it was the case w Uber and Lithuania?"
"That these cuts would not have as much impact on the org vs other ones would - given India teams did not own core things - could be part of the explanation on why they were chosen. It does go against the notion that lower cost of labor places are safer from cuts, though," he wrote.
