Wipro Chairman Rishad Premji on Wednesday said that the company had fired 300 employees who were found to be working for one of its competitors at the same time as working for Wipro. Mr Premji, a vocal critic of moonlighting, believes that the practice is in “complete violation of integrity in its deepest form”.  

Speaking at the 46^th edition of the convention of All India Management Association, 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, Mr Premji had posted a tweet on social media platform, Twitter, saying that there was a lot “chatter about people moonlighting in the tech industry”. Later, he had written: “It is cheating – plain and simple.” 

While Mr Premji is a strong opponent of moonlighting, the industry, however, remains divided on the whole debate. N Ganapathy Subramaniam, the chief operating officer and executive director of Tata Consultancy Services had recently said that employees might lose out in the long term if they chased short-term gains via moonlighting.  

Ex-Infosys Director Mohandas Pai had a different take on the subject. “No, moonlighting is not cheating,” he had said. He further had 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.”