Truth about “A techie and above 35? You are most likely to be fired “story in Economic Times & Times of India

Many people were shocked yesterday to read “A techie and above 35? You are most likely to be fired “in Economic times and this was followed by another story “Mid-level employees in Indian IT sector facing an uncertain future”. Similar stories were published in Times of India. I work in IT sector and I am above 30 and part of so called mid-level employees. So let’s review these articles.  

Indian IT sector has changed dramatically in last few years. The era of bumper growth is over and IT companies has stopped mass recruitment now. The industry is attaining maturity now. Earlier managers used to boosts about their team head-counts but now they talk about reduction in manpower & increase in productivity. The competition has increased and average hike has come down & promotions are becoming difficult. We can say that era of “Demographic Dividend” may be over soon. Now we will have less freshers and more experienced guys soon. Automation & new digital technologies are the new buzz words now.  And all major companies are focusing on Automation & other disruptive technologies. But where does these changes leave mid-level employees.  

TCS reportedly fired thousands of mid-level employees in 2014 and the pink slips are now common in Indian IT space. Even these articles says that these employees needs to be cross-trained as the existing technologies are becoming obsolete. It’s a no brainer. Anyone who works in Software Industry know this trend. You can’t be restricted to one technology. Generally a Technology become obsolete in a decade or less time. Just look at SAP’s ERP system. SAP’s new S/4 Hana ERP system is drastically different from the SAP’s ECC or earlier ERP system.  The correspondent should have looked into the Linked In profiles of a few mid-level managers. You will hardly find a few employees who have worked for a single technology or tool for more than a decade. Yes, training an older person is a challenging work and it takes time & money to train them. But this is a natural trend. I have seen many managers working on the tool/technology more than me. They have learnt many new technologies and then they train us in many cases. But there are a large group of employees who have moved to managerial role from technical role and they may not be adding incremental vales. So when the next recession or bad time will come, they will be threatened. But we must remember that necessity is the mother of all invention. I think most of the guys will be happy in getting cross-training when they know that their jobs are no longer secure and they have to pay for rent, EMIs, children fees etc. 

TOI & ET should not have generalized everyone. A few of mid-level employees will lose the job but a few of them will attain a greater height in their career. And I would request newspapers to write article with some research. When a non-techie will get the impression that the job security in Software industry is under severe threat. Our job security doesn’t only depend on our age or our level in the organization. There are many more factors involved in this. I think that the fundamentals of Software industry (despite facing many sever challenges like – Trump administration protectionist policy, automation etc.) is strong and it may emerge stronger after the current crisis.