ITeS not so simple any more

The Hindu

2 days ago

From being a sure-fire path to upward financial and social mobility, tech graduates are finding that the information technology enabled services industry may no longer be able to offer them what it could, even just a couple of years ago, finds Aroon Deep
In Solapur, Maharashtra, Zuha Jagirdar, 18, has a good feeling about her chances in the job market when she graduates. 'As an electronics and telecommunications student, I was targeting jobs in my core fields: electronics, telecom, and information technology (IT). But my biggest goal, the one I'm still aiming for, was to get into electronics research. I've always been fascinated by how things work at a fundamental level and the idea of being part of that discovery process has always been my main driver,' she says.
Jagirdar is speaking on the sidelines of the Discord group of /r/Btechtards, a meme-filled subreddit's boisterous and noisy discussion board, where IT students and graduates from across the country bond over light-hearted takes on what is shaping up to be a grave situation: the rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and a shrinking job market that threaten to undermine the years of effort they are putting in. On the top of the subreddit is a meme released after ChatGPT's latest model was announced this month. It features a dog on the phone saying, 'Dad, those web development students are really done for', with slightly more unprintable language.
Jagirdar is unfazed. 'The landscape has changed a lot, but the need for skilled people in electronics and telecom hasn't gone away,' she says. 'It's just a matter of standing out. I'm confident that with the right skills and dedication, I can still find my place.' But a generation of young tech graduates is finding that the funnel that once allowed millions like them all over India to enter the middle class is narrowing.
Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), the IT services giant that is somewhat of a bellwether for the industry as a whole, announced in July that it would lay off over 12,000 employees around the world; the majority of the firm's employees are in India. Many of those impacted are entry-level employees or trainees handed a pink slip as the company acted to cull its junior workforce.
Worldwide, newspaper reports say, Microsoft has laid off 15,000 employees so far this year. IBM, Amazon Web Services, and Google have all reportedly asked their staff to leave, though not all roles were part of core IT.
The constricting of job opportunities in IT is worrying students — the biggest firms aim to collectively hire 30% less this year than the last, according to reports based on top executives' statements during quarterly earnings calls.
'Accenture was the first company to visit [my college] for placements and I got selected during their on-campus drive,' says Tejas, 22, a B.Tech graduate from a 'tier-3 engineering college', as he describes it, asking to be identified only by his first name. 'I received the LOI (letter of intent, a precursor to the appointment letter) in September 2024, but now it has been almost a year since I've graduated and there's still no update. No offer letter, no onboarding, nothing,' he says, adding that there are many students facing the same situation.
They are mostly from colleges set up in the past five years or so, which haven't been able to establish an academic and placement reputation yet. 'Most of us don't get the same opportunities as those from tier-1 or tier-2 colleges. Now, even the limited options we had are fading,' he says.
More than AI
At the most reputed colleges though, things aren't as good as he imagines. Ayush Anand, 18, a native of Patna, is a second-year student at the Indian Institute of Technology in his hometown. He is studying computer science and data analytics at the institute, which has immense value in the job market. 'The market is super saturated.'
'It is really difficult to get a job for the average person and it is getting tougher every day. The giants are not hiring as much as they used to because of the AI boom, and of course we can all see the lay-offs. So, now we are left with the choice of joining a smaller company or a start-up,' he says.
Anand confronted this saturation when he started looking for internships during a semester break. While there have been loud warnings on the impact that AI could have on the IT job market (and every other job market), as of mid-2025, the slowdown is not fully a result of automation.
'The seeds were sown some three years ago, even before there was a big thing around AI,' says Vishal Sharma, chief technology officer of CoHyre, a firm that uses AI to help companies sift through job applications.
In the IT industry, he says, 'global economic uncertainties' have led to a slowdown across the board in hiring, with factors like the U.S.-China and U.S.-everyone else trade wars spooking large firms into tightening their spending in the medium-term. This has had consequences for the kind of person that the typical IT company is willing to hire, he says.
'The reality is that not just for entry-level jobs, even for mid-level roles, there has been a change in hiring,' says Sharma. 'The roles are no longer designed for people who need months of hand-holding before they can contribute,' he says.
A few years ago, the learning curve of a new recruit would include interacting professionally with clients, writing production-ready code, and making presentations that may end up being seen by the top-level leadership of a company. Now, these 'usable deliverables', as Sharma calls them, are needed from the get-go.
It is a tall order and those who cannot stand out have few choices. While some freshly minted tech workers hang on to offer letters that see no follow-ups, or finesse their way into roles that may be beyond their training, others are forced to find ways to make money that have nothing to do with their education, he says.
Upskilling and reskilling
Dharamveer, 22, underwent a three-year diploma course at an IT skills programme held by the Delhi Skill and Entrepreneurship University, where he was in the top decile of the class.
After he graduated, the best job he could find was a data entry position, where the hours were long and the pay was pitiable, at ₹18,000, less than a fifth of what he paid in tuition fees. In two months, he left. Two years on, he is still on the hunt for a job in the IT sector while helping his father out lugging and installing air-conditioning units across the city.
Priyank Kharge, IT Minister of Karnataka, visited Delhi this month to promote an event being held later this year in Bengaluru, the undisputable IT capital of India. After talking about the event, Kharge spoke about the job crisis, which he completely attributed to AI. 'Whenever a new technology comes in, there is going to be a lot of disruption,' he said, echoing the stock tech industry response to AI's impact on jobs. 'It has been happening ever since man learned to light a fire or invented the wheel. It's always been a constant thing. Jobs are taken, new jobs are created.'
But Kharge also had one programme in the works that he said would concretely tackle the challenge. He spoke of 'Nipuna Karnataka' to 'upskill and reskill' members of the State's workforce, hoping to make them more employable. 'No other State is spending ₹300-₹400 crore on such an effort,' the Minister said.
Upskilling and reskilling have been the solutions typically offered by both the government and industry players. It is a simple solution to a job crunch that may yet get more serious: make people more skilled, and companies will want to hire them.
Nagesh Singh, founder of the non-profit EduNet Foundation, which helps enhance employability, insists that when done right, upskilling can be affordable and with transformative results. Singh concedes that while there are real macroeconomic reasons of concern, there are other problems that are within reach of solutions.
'Most colleges and institutions offer curricula that are not entirely in sync with what the market requires,' Singh says, adding that firms want staff who can be ready within a few months to start delivering, while many students are ill-prepared.
The solution, he says, is a bit of pragmatism. 'When we partner with an institute to upskill their students, we look at the gap areas and work on those, while also teaching web development and web marketing.' Online marketing isn't technically an IT job, but 'our focus is on the jobs that are actually there in the market, rather than what the hype is about,' he says. 'We do have a very strong focus on AI, but also focus on the other elements that go into creating careers. So, we end up spending a fair amount of time on softer employability-related skills, like collaboration, communication, and teamwork.'
The company ran a programme last year for students who had completed Class 10 but dropped out of the education system. Since this was a part-time, three-year-long format, some students dropped out due to family or economic pressure to earn. 'But of those who stayed, '90% of them found a job,' Singh says.
Thanks to a sponsor, the non-profit was able to entice most students to see the programme through with a small stipend, he says. The only way to stay relevant now is to be a 'lifelong learner', he says. Even pursuing a specialisation at university or at work may be of limited use.
The need for generalists
Sharma says firms are now looking for 'generalists' who can quickly get up to speed no matter what tech job they are asked to do. 'Specialisation still matters, but it is not good enough,' he says. 'Just being good at one thing' is no longer a guarantee of survival in the job market, he adds.
This is a problem as people age while sharpening skills and growing in their jobs.
Hitesh (name changed on request) has been a software developer in the IT industry for 18 years. The 40-year-old was hired after stints at three different IT majors, moving each time with a pay hike. In July, his firm summoned him to deliver an ultimatum: resign now, and you'll get three months' pay; refuse, and you will be terminated.
The father of a seven-year-old, Hitesh was forced to move back to his hometown, where his wife and child were already living.
'Once you're 40, that's it in IT,' he says, even as he tries to find a job at a new firm. 'At TCS, we would often hear that this is like a government job, and nobody gets fired. All of a sudden, 12,000 people are being told to leave,' he says.
Getting workers ready for this ever-changing world is something that the government is best placed to do, Sharma says. 'In the early 2000s, when computers came in, there were similar worries about job losses, but the government came in and ensured that Indians quickly adopted IT to be on top of the world,' he says. That strategy worked because while computers cost the same everywhere, Indian employees were and remain lower paid than American or European developers.
Aside from upskilling, Sharma suggests incentivising more AI education and non-IT firms to spend more on leveraging AI, hoovering up the IT talent working on this new technology.
In all this though, the promise of IT jobs has strayed far from where it used to be. As an industry that hires only around 1% of India's population but accounts for 7% of its GDP, according to the IT sector industry association Nasscom, it has, since the 1990s, been an attainable and promising way to break into the middle class — or higher. That may no longer be the case.
'One of the bigger myths, and this was true when I was growing up and I'm sure that's true in most households, is the belief that if you can get an engineering degree or a technology degree, any kind of professional degree, your life is made,' Singh says. 'The world has changed.'
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Edited by Sunalini Mathew