It seems like the heydays of tech jobs in India may be getting over sooner than what many will have you believe.
Nearly all large IT employers in India such as Infosys, Wipro, Tech Mahindra and Cognizant, are in the process of laying off hundreds of employees, according to media reports. And several more have plans to retrench as many as 58,000 engineers , or over four per cent of their combined workforce in the next few months, Mint reported.
Recent job cuts include Cognizant laying off over 6,000 staff; Infosys letting go of 1,000; Tech Mahindra cutting 1,500 jobs, and Wipro slashing 600 positions, according to reports.
While many IT companies are attributing the recent cuts to routine annual culls, several long-term and irreversible industry trends seem to at play that don’t bode well for techies, even those with experience to boot.
And it isn’t just nationalist agendas and visa crackdowns that are a cause for worry. Rapid adoption of automation — such as the use of artificial intelligence (AI) bots — that can replace even advanced tech jobs are pushing Indian techies towards a dangerously uncertain future.
Jobless growth
After years of steady, consistent growth, Indian IT companies, in the past few years, have faced massive competitive pressures, pushing many of them to cut costs.
They have done so in part by deploying automation to provide faster and more efficient services to their overseas customers. Many of them — including Wipro and Infosys — have already deployed AI tools that can do jobs that have been traditionally been done by engineers.
