Dell Inc. is about to shut down its hardware R&D unit in Bengaluru, India, and will move the work being done here to its centers in the U.S. state of Texas and in Taiwan. Anywhere between two dozen to 170 staff will lose their jobs as a result; they have been given 45 days to find new employment.
The Times of India this week reported that a Dell spokesperson confirmed the shifting of the unit, but said the company plans to leverage India’s strengths in software and solutions development, and will be hiring more people in those disciplines.
The R&D unit had already been seeing staff numbers decreasing, as no work was coming its way in the last few months. An undisclosed ex-staffer was quoted as saying that Dell had initially hired engineers to conduct high-end work in the enterprise-hardware and -software space. But such high-end work was not carried out in the unit, the report said. In fact, a platform-engineering group set up to design a new server to be launched next year has already been shut down.
A Dell executive blamed rising costs in the city for shifting the R&D unit out of the country, but current and previous staffers have pointed out that employing similar engineers in Austin, Texas, or Taiwan would likely be more expensive, not less.
This is the second time the company has shifted work out of India. Citing customer complaints about quality about four years ago, Dell moved part of its high-end technical support out of India.
- K.C. Krishnadas
EE Times (52RD.com) |
