Today in Tech: What Linkedin says about Lateral Hires; White Label ATMs & European Business

After a long time, I looked up Linkedin Insights for what it had to say about top Indian IT Services companies - and two things struck me. One, Linkedin no longer gives those graphs of employee additions over time, break up of positions etc it used to earlier. It's sad. But then, some of the numbers they continue to provide make for an interesting read. What I found most interesting was 'before and after' section. It gives a good sense of how IT employees are moving around.

I made a chart of the employee flows in the top four companies - TCS, Infosys, Cognizant and Wipro. Here it is.

Since the sample size is more than good, (Infosys has 84,308 employees on LinkedIn; Cognizant - 82,595; TCS - 131,092 and Wipro - 69,214) we can be sure it's pretty representative of what's happening in these companies. The limitation is I have taken only four. Here's the data for the rest.

If you make a good infographic from this data, please send it across, and I will publish it here. Just drop me a mail (my email-id in sidebar).

For customers, ATMs are the first and the most visible sign of the use of technology in banking. For long, it was more than a piece of technology. Even a few years back, most banks restricted their ATMs only to their customers. You couldn't have used an HDFC Bank card in an ICICI Bank ATM. An ICICI Bank official then told me that it saw its ATM network as a key differentiator, something exclusive for its customers. Things changed fast. ATM prices crashed. Even small banks were setting up ATM networks. Banks opened their ATMs for their rivals, and even stopped charging (to an extent) their non-customers for the use.

Now, Business Standard reports that non-banking companies can now set up, own and operate ATMs . India has close to 90,000 ATMs at present, and RBI wants to increase this number. We can now expect two things to happen in the near future: One, some of the big retailers will get into this segment - they have the space, and synergy. Two, there will be a lot of hole-in-the-wall ATMs. An ATM dealer told me, even today, there is really no need for all the paraphernalia that surrounds an ATM machine. Banks started spending on that to make their customers feel comfortable, and as a way to build their brands. And it stayed. With WLAs - operated by companies that will presumably focus on cost and efficiency - that will go.

Contract value of outsourcing deals in Europe, Middle East and Africa dropped by half quarter on quarter, and by a third year on year, according to TPI data reports Times of India , adding it will force the companies to rethink their strategies in these regions. However, people seem to be more optimistic, when they talk long term.

I was reminded of what Vijay Mahajan said about micro finance sector not long back. "The road ahead for microfinance is good, but before we get to that highway, we need to jump the big hole right in front of us." He was referring to crisis in Andhra Pradesh. For IT companies, that big hole could well be Europe.