Indian techies failed to reskill when times were good

On August 9 the Twitter handle @AZConservative1 (a digital lifeform that claims to be an "American citizen who will not allow this country to spend itself to death") tweeted: "The #H1B visa is perfectly built for legal indentured servitude which eliminates jobs for American citizens, and artificially lowers pay".
The comment heralded a pro-US-worker trend that has run through the social media platform over the last few days. Just a few days earlier, the tremors that have rippled through the $150 billion Indian information technology sector for a few years now, became a full-blown cataclysm.
First Wipro announced that it would be laying-off 600 employees - a number expected to go past 2,000. It was followed by Cognizant, who offered its top rung of leadership a "voluntary separation package," signalling a hammer fall that could claim over 6,000 jobs.
Then it was the turn of Infosys, where, according to the Times of India, "nearly 1,000 employees in job level 6 and above" may be asked to leave.
The mood on the ground in the IT sector in India has been one of shock, panic, and no small amount of outrage.
Josy James, the joint secretary of the IT and ITeS Employees' Centre (ITEC), is as angry as the people the centre aims to represent.
"Employees at tech firms are being forced to resign in a manner that goes against industry and ethical standards. It's simply illegal," he told Khaleej Times.
Over the last few years ITEC has been at the vanguard - from Hyderabad, to Chennai and Bengaluru - of the fight against alleged injustices committed by IT firms against their employees, especially when it comes to lay-offs. "One of the biggest problems is that these companies operate under the Shops and Establishments Act (in Karnataka state), rather than the more regulated Standing Order Act," James told KT. "Under the SEA, they get away with things like illegal forced resignations."
James equates the current round of lay-offs in the sector to a stripping of one's right to equality, and stresses that employees stand a chance in court if, and only if, they refuse to resign when asked. "If you don't resign you can fight it, but if you do there's very little that can be done in the courts," he said.
But many experts believe the malaise that currently afflicts the Indian IT industry has been creeping through its bones for a while now.
The increasing digitisation and automation in the sector, across the globe, means that the skill-set currently deployed in Indian tech companies can no longer produce the results their clients want. It is a situation foretold, but not foreseen.
An Aspiring Minds survey of over 50,000 CS/IT engineers in India, found that 30% of engineers could not answer even the most basic questions on the theoretical concepts of computer programming, while more than 80% could not apply programming concepts to real-world situations.
What's perhaps the most shocking revelation from the study is it found that less than 5% of those surveyed for employability in software development could write code that compiled.
Priya Chetty-Rajagopal, Executive Director, RGF Executive Search, recently visited a renowned engineering college in Bengaluru, to give a lecture on leadership, and found that simply getting into an engineering college is regarded as a feat, and the rest is just a case of getting by.
"The question is, how employable are you after you graduate? There seems to be a sense of disconnect here," she says.
Sumit Chakraberty, a senior editor with Tech in Asia, told the Khaleej Times that it's highly unlikely that the current workforce can be retrained to meet the changing parameters of a digitised, automated, AI-driven IT sector, and there has to be an inherent change in the way IT engineers are taught and mentored, right from the collegiate level.
"This current crisis is very different from the bursting dotcom bubble, or the global financial crisis of 2008-9," says Chakraberty.
According to Neeti Sharma, Senior VP with the Bengaluru-based elite recruitment firm, TeamLease Services, "The Indian IT industry has been used to growing at 30 to 40% YOY; that will surely change. A growth rate of 12-15% seems possible and viable and IT companies need to make peace with the fact that the growth they have seen over the past two decades may not be realistic anymore."
"This is an existential crisis for the industry. Earlier crises in the sector were business cycle events; this requires a change in its very DNA. The new digitised enterprise requires a higher value of work, which a lot of the current Indian IT workforce isn't equipped to deliver," says Chakraberty.
Neeti echoes that sentiment: "While automation is reducing the number of jobs at a certain level, this does not mean that jobs are disappearing. Greater automation is expected to help IT companies shed repetitive and mundane jobs for far more creative ones. The need-of-the-hour is to upskill, reskill and survive with newer technology innovations."
Neeti also warns that while thus far IT companies have been measured by the number of people they deploy and not by new skills learned, this has irrevocably shifted, and IT firms must act on this change "as of yesterday".
Priya compares the change currently coursing through the industry as an evolution from carpenters to interior designers, and says that a lot of the decisions being made at the Big 6 are based on hard economics: "This is not even contract season when it's traditionally far more competitive, it's a consolidation period."
"Let's not forget the bread and butter projects still exist, but there is a move of focus away from them, and the companies have now realised a critical need for diversification," she says, adding that it's not necessarily all doom and gloom for the sector.
"The start-up infrastructure has created a sense of confidence, and it is in that sphere that we will see the benefits of this current crisis. Churn is a fact of life and people are learning to adapt to emergent situations.
"Productising services and delivering higher quality is key. The big players, who are well aware of market dynamics, will now pay closer attention to clients' needs, and move from maintenance to products," says Priya.
Some industry veterans, however, believe that many tech firms may simply be using the current brouhaha surrounding the H1B visa and digitization to do some much-needed spring cleaning of upper management.
"Back in 2006-7 firms like TCS and Wipro made their appraisal system extremely stringent to weed out what they considered deadwood," a former senior executive of a top Indian tech firm, told Khaleej Times on condition of anonymity.
"These companies are often top-heavy and many senior-level employees tend to know how to game the system. These companies often look for smokescreens behind which they can get rid of the bloat, without attracting too much attention to the real reason behind the lay-offs," the source added.
For many tech professionals currently working in the growing Indian tech start-up sector, however, the forced changes - if not evolution - on the horizon for the Indian IT industry is simply a dark lining to a silver cloud.
"The need-gaps that exist in India are a real opportunity for would-be entrepreneurs, developers, engineers, designers, etc, who want to make an impact and create or be a part of building transformative companies. It's a fabulous time to be here, so I really hope those adversely affected by the H1B changes, and the current churn in the IT industry, will see the silver lining," says digital nomad, Suvarchala Narayanan, emphasising that the current crises may not be the end of a dream for employees, but rather the beginning of a new one.
 

• India