Weeks after Wipro fired its employees for moonlighting, another Indian multinational information technology company, Infosys, laid off a few employees in recent months for moonlighting, confirmed CEO Salil Parekh. However, the exact numbers have not been disclosed.

“If we have found employees doing work in two different companies, where there are confidentiality issues, we have let them go in the last 12 months,” CEO Salil Parekh said. 

The IT major supports employees taking up external gig opportunities, but clarified that it doesn’t allow dual employment. “For gig opportunities in the external environment, we support the aspirations of our employees to learn beyond work. We will support them to work on certain gig projects after the prior approval of the managers. We are also developing more comprehensive policies for that while also ensuring contractual and confidentiality commitments are fully respected. However, to be clear, we do not support dual employment,” added Parekh.

Explaining further about the policies of Infosys to support their employees, the CEO of IT major said, “Infosys’s internal platform called Accelerate has anyway been enabling employees to take up internal projects and gig for several years now. We’ve always encouraged our employees to have that mindset within the company.” 

About 4,000 employees of Infosys apply for the company’s internal projects in an average quarter, while 600 get selected. Not only this, Infosys also introduced a program called Bridge, an initiative designed to enable employees to shift careers into adjacent or new career tracks.

Before Infosys decided to lay off its employees, Wipro fired 300 employees who were found working with its competitor companies at the same time employed with Wipro.

Wipro’s MD and CEO Thierry Delaporte clarified the company’s stance on moonlighting on Wednesday and said that while little side jobs were fine, working for a competitor is a "question of ethics".

During a press conference for the company’s Q2 result announcement, Delaporte explained. “There are contracts which have to be respected. In particular, when people are going for another job that has a conflict of interest with Wipro, how can we accept that?  So, yes we don’t accept that.” 

On August 20, Wipro Chairman Rishad Premji’s tweet about moonlighting being cheating snowballed into a fierce debate in India, and later, 300 employees were fired, stating that the IT services company has no place for any employee who chooses to work directly with rivals while being on Wipro payrolls.

Following the same, on September 12, Infosys warned its employees moonlighting could lead to termination, echoing Wipro chairman Rishad Premji.

Image credit: Archello