TCS layoffs mark end of one IT era, and the start of another
Till now, most of the layoffs were happening in far-off places like the US and Europe, but the TCS announcement that it was letting go 2% of the workforce brought this phenomenon closer home. Companies like TCS have traditionally been seen as a safe harbour, the closest to a 'govt job' in terms of stability and tenure. It had remained so through the dotcom bust, the financial crisis and others. But now, with the advent of AI, the myth seems to be busted. While TCS is the most prominent example, it is not alone. Big consulting firms are 'streamlining' their workforce, other big IT services firms are making disturbing noises, and job portals are teeming with tech workers' resumes.
TCS has gone to great lengths to not pin the blame on AI. But the subtext of terms like 'a skill mismatch' and 'future-ready' is hard to ignore. In many ways, this has been a long time coming. The IT services model of cost-arbitrage, deploying vast armies of coders and consultants at lower cost, has been in its twilight era for a while. AI just accelerated the trend, disrupting the existing linear model where more projects meant hiring more people. Now, a human analyst and a few AI agents working together can potentially do what ten analysts once did.
In its place, a new kind of IT services firm is emerging — leaner, AI-native, and outcome-focused. These firms will not hire a thousand freshers to handle client reports or debug software, but deploy a small team of AI-literate experts and a suite of autonomous agents to do the job faster, cheaper, and often better. We are seeing early glimpses already, with new services startups using agents like Cursor or Devin, legal firms operating with Harvey, and research teams powered by Perplexity and NotebookLM.
The societal impact of this transition in India will be immense. The whole education model of training young people in STEM skills to then place them in some IT company ensuring a stable career with a decent salary is under threat. However, this tectonic shift presents as great an opportunity as the magnitude of the threat. This is especially true for younger, entry-level employees, since 'breaking first is the bottom rung of the career ladder' as Aneesh Raman, the chief economic opportunity officer at LinkedIn, wrote.
However, with every crisis, including this one, comes great opportunity. These are five things I believe young people should do in this inevitable age of AI:
Leapfrog with AI: The definition of literacy now includes the ability to work fluently and naturally with AI tools and agents. If you know how to, you can take AI's help to do jobs the seniors traditionally did and jump straight to the second or third rung of the job ladder. In a recent post, for example, a tech founder offered a programmer with 2-5 years of experience a Rs 1 crore salary — qualifications and experience were not important, just the use of AI to code.
Study humanities with STEM: Prompting is about knowledge, creativity, critical thinking, literature and grammar — core humanities skills. As answers become a commodity with AI, questions or 'prompts' will become the differentiator.
Don't just join a company, build one: There has been no better time to create a company with AI tools, agents, and 'vibe coding' available to everyone. It is the age of one-person unicorns — one human and a thousand AI agents building billion-dollar startups.
Build a career portfolio: Don't do just one thing. Be a product designer who also writes; a digital marketer who teaches music; a coder who also runs a pet shop. With AI, one company, many employees will give way to one employee with many companies.
Build your personal brand: Do not depend on where you work for your identity; leverage AI to build your own through the talents you have or learn. You will never be out of paying work.
As Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella put it: 'AI is not here to replace humans. It is here to remove the barriers that prevent humans from doing their best work.' This crisis gives us the opportunity to do precisely that.
(Jaspreet Bindra is the founder of AI&Beyond. His latest book is 'Winning With AI: Your Guide to AI Literacy')
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