Rishad Premji, Chairman of IT firm, Wipro, on Wednesday said that the company has fired 300 employees who were found to be working for one of its competitors at the same time as working for Wipro. Premji, a vocal critic of moonlighting, believes that the practice is in "complete violation of integrity in its deepest form". Speaking at the 46th edition of the All India Management Association convention, Wipro’s top boss made it clear that the company had no place for such employees. He stood firm on his ground and decided to let go of employees wherein specific instances of violation were found, he said. "The reality is that there are people today working for Wipro and working directly for one of our competitors and we have actually discovered 300 people in the last few months who are doing exactly that," he said.
In August this year, Premji posted a tweet on social media platform, Twitter, saying that there is a lot of "chatter about people moonlighting in the tech industry.” Later, he went on to write that it is “it is cheating- plain and simple.” While Premji is a strong opponent of moonlighting, the industry, however, remains divided on the whole debate. N Ganapathy Subramaniam, the Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Executive Director at Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) recently told Business Today at India@100 Summit that employees might lose out in the long term if they chase short-term gains via moonlighting. Even Infosys, India's second largest IT services company, had said in a strong and firm message to employees last week that moonlighting is not allowed. Ex-Infosys director, Mohandas Pai, had a different take. “No, moonlighting is not cheating," he had told BT. He further explained: “I would look at it from a different perspective. Employment is a contract between an employer who pays me for working for them for 'n' number of hours a day. During that time, I have to abide by their conditions, including client confidentiality, and I'm paid for that. At that time, I can't work for anybody else. Now what I do after that time is my freedom, I can do what I want."