Commenting on people taking up side projects alongside their regular jobs, Wipro executive chairman Rishad Premji on Saturday tweeted that employees who moonlight in the tech industry were “cheating”.
The reference might have been to foodtech start-up Swiggy allowing its employees to take on other jobs in their free time for an “economic consideration”. Subject to internal approvals, staff at the SoftBank-backed company could take up work outside of office hours or on weekends, but have to ensure that their projects do not conflict with Swiggy’s business.
Experts had said unless Swiggy is able to prove that a certain number of employees earned a particular amount, it is going to look like a public relations stunt and a talent retention attempt.
“There is a lot of chatter about people moonlighting in the tech industry. This is cheating – plain and simple,” Premji tweeted.
Incidentally, Wipro has held back variable pay of employees, above a certain threshold, mainly due to pressure on margins, inefficiency in its talent supply chain and its investment in technology. Moonlighting is not a new phenomenon. A recent Kotak Institutional Equities survey of 400 people across the IT and ITeS space, revealed that a staggering 65 percent knew of people pursuing part-time opportunities or moonlighting while working from home.
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