Amid IT Layoff Fears, Techies Urged To 'Go Back To The Drawing Board'
IT outsourcing has long been one of India's flagship industries but experts say automation, new technologies and US President Donald Trump's clampdown on visas is creating an industry-wide upheaval. Some big IT firms are laying off thousands of staff while research has claimed that hundreds of thousands of jobs could disappear in the the future. Automation has put to risk nearly 5 lakh jobs from India's IT sector in next five years, a report from US research firm HfS Research noted.
R Chandrashekhar, president of Nasscom - the premier trade body of India's $150 billion IT industry, has said that "jobs that are repetitive and predictive will be first to be automated”. But “newer technologies driving the change - such as Big Data, artificial intelligence and Internet of Things (IOT) - will also create jobs."
Urging laid-off IT employees to “go back to drawing board” instead of despairing, Gaurav Vohra of Jigsaw Academy said in a blogpost “analytics and Big Data will need hundreds of thousands of people in the coming years. Similarly, IOT, virtual reality, artificial intelligence and robotics will also need trained professionals."
According to report by Analyticsvidhya, an online platform for data scientists, machine learning is the best paying skill beating Big Data to the top spot. However, a combination of Big Data and Machine Learning skills ensures being recruited with a sizeable pay package, the report added.
Open source tools dominate the analytics landscape, with Python and R commanding more pay than SAS now, the report said, adding that companies like Google are open sourcing tools like TensorFlow and they will go on to define the new landscape.
“The job you have been trained for no longer exists and the skills you possess are no longer sought after. You need to go back to the drawing board – re-start your learning, up-skill yourself,” Mr Vohra urged.
-
Talking Points This Week: Tech Nerves, FII Buying, And A Faraway Banking Shock
The global markets are not shining this Diwali. The exception in the large markets is, India.
-
Midterm Rally Lasted A Day. The Hard Reality Of A Divided US May Last Two Years | Opinion
Between a contested AI boom, a debt ceiling that arrives in 2027 and a president with every incentive to act alone, the next two years may prove more volatile than the first day's rally suggests.
-
Blue Wave Will Derail the AI Trade but Won't Dismantle the AI Era | Unhedged Position
The Democrats' sweep of the US Congress will see politics collide with economic forces both over the long and short term.
-
It's Time To Take The GST Council's Bet On Trust Global
Payment records can prove India's services exports, and clear, proportionate rules can bring foreign digital sellers into the tax net.
-
Opinion | India at 38: From Innovation Overperformer to Innovation Powerhouse
India now has 453 VC-backed deep science startups, 18 of them late-stage, after 117 percent growth since 2020. Laurus Labs, at USD 9.3 billion, is the most valuable deep science company in any middle-income economy outside China.
-
Navigating Energy Crossroads: S Jaishankar's Call For Diversified Supply Chains At G20 Ministerial Meeting
As geopolitical fault lines continue to test maritime trade routes and commodity flows, Jaishankar's message remains pertinent: true economic resilience requires open markets, protected transit lines, and a genuine commitment to multilateral cooperation rather than coercion.
-
Indians Are Travelling, But Not Every Journey Is A Holiday | The Week In Whys
Pilgrims, patients and working women are the real travellers, and the system hasn't quite caught up with them.
-
Getting To Work Costs Women More | The Reason Why
It is not just about women paying more than men. It is about women paying much more in cities than in villages.
-
AI Bias In Investing Cannot Be Eliminated, But It Can Be Governed
Framing is a particularly important example as identical financial information presented in terms of gains rather than losses can lead an LLM to reach a different assessment.
