What’s on the agenda today?

Hey {{First Name| there}},

Alibaba. Microsoft. Goldman Sachs. Amazon. Uber. All banned Claude Code recently. And if you think this is a global tech story and your employees are probably using the same tools right now.

In This Edition We Cover

  • Who banned Claude Code and why

  • Why Indian HR teams should care

  • What HR needs to do right now

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1️⃣ What Happened

Five companies. Five different reasons.

  • 🔴 Alibaba — Security. Claude Code allegedly inspected user time-zones and proxies to identify China-linked users. Employees moved to in-house tool Qoder.

  • 🔵 Microsoft — Cost. Moved engineers to GitHub Copilot. Why pay for two tools?

  • 🟡 Goldman Sachs — Compliance. Banned all Claude models for Hong Kong employees to align with US regional restrictions.

  • 🟠 Uber — Budget. Developers burned through the entire 2026 AI coding budget in four months after gamifying adoption with leaderboards.

  • 🟤 Amazon — Quality. Banned junior engineers from pushing AI-assisted code to production after a surge in bugs and technical debt.

Five companies. Five completely different risks. Most HR teams are not thinking about any of them.

🔖HR Playbook 8.0. August 12 (Wednesday). Virtual.

The TSOW HR Playbook is back for its 8th edition, brought to you by India’s 350,000+ strong HR community. This time, we’re going underground, into the boardroom, and into a debate nobody’s settled yet.

What’s on the table: 

  • A panel decoding the quiet stuff (job hugging, task masking, and quiet cracking, and what they’re actually telling leaders)

  • A live debate on whether employees should get to say no to AI at work

  • A hard look at whether splitting HR into specialist verticals actually works, or just adds bureaucracy

  • A session built around Dr. Udai Pareek’s legacy in organisational psychology

  • A workshop on employer branding. 

More sessions and speakers to be revealed soon!

No framework for framework’s sake; The Playbook is simply a full day of the conversations HR is already having in private, brought into the open.

Register here

2️⃣ Why Indian HR Should Care

This is not someone else's problem.

  • 🏢 GCC engineers across Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Pune use these tools daily — often with no policy governing what data gets shared

  • 🔐 IT and BFSI companies handle sensitive client data under strict contracts — if that data is going into external AI models, it is a legal exposure

  • 💰 Shadow AI spend is already happening — employees expensing subscriptions, teams buying licenses without IT approval

  • 📋 Less than 30% of Indian organisations have a formal AI usage policy in place

3️⃣ What HR Should Do Now

  • 📋 Build an AI tool policy — approved, restricted, and why

  • 🔐 Classify your data — what can and cannot go into external AI tools

  • 💰 Track AI spend — visibility before the blowout, not after

  • 🤝 Get in the room with IT and Legal — before the announcement

  • 🧠 Educate, don't just restrict — smart policies beat blanket bans

  • 🌍 Check your geopolitical exposure — AI tool access may differ by country

  • 🔍 Audit what's already in use — survey your teams. You will be surprised

  • 📊 Set usage guardrails — define what responsible use looks like before it becomes a crisis

  • 🔁 Review vendor contracts — check what the vendor's data usage policy actually says

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TSOW Live: How Enterprises Use AI to Hire at Scale Without Slowing Down

📅 July 15 | 🕛 12 PM

Hiring 100 people is hard. Hiring 10,000 is a different game entirely, and most pipelines weren't built for it.

Join Prateek Arora (Associate Director, AI Transformation & Strategy, SpringVerify) as he breaks down where high-volume hiring actually slows down, and how enterprises like Infosys and IDFC are using AI to fix it without cutting corners.

We'll cover real bottlenecks, real client stories, and a live look at how AI is changing hiring at enterprise scale.

Reserve your spot →

🎉 What’s Coming Up!

💬 Does your organization have an AI tool policy? Drop your questions in #general-q&a — our leaders are ready to answer. 🙌

The TSOW HR Newsletter lands every Tuesday. Got something to share? You know where to find us.

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