Automation impact: It’s back to school for mid-level techies

As job losses mount because of automation, mid-level IT professionals are coming together to launch re-skilling programmes to tide over the looming crisis.

For Bikram Choudhury, an IT professional, who worked for one of India’s top software exporters for six years, he found himself under the gun. “Being a network engineer, certified on Cisco and Microsoft technologies, with satisfactory appraisals, I was unceremoniously asked to leave due to cost pressures from the client,” he said. After hunting for a job over 8 months and with no success, he decided to re-skill himself on MongoDB, an open database technology, which is being used to develop Aadhaar-like databases.

Like Choudhury, other techies have also realised the importance of re-skilling after finding themselves out of favour amongst employers and came together to figure out ways to address this mid-career problem.

Anees Kodiyathur, an accounting graduate, has reskilled with UX design capabilities and Riju Siddique took a sabbatical and moved to a pre-sales role in a multinational company. “I am re-skilling myself by getting certifications in Enterprise Architecture and Project Management,” he said.

Changing job scenario

These developments should be seen in the backdrop of a metamorphosis happening in the $155-billion IT sector, which employs around 3.8 million people. While the formula of engineering colleges spewing out thousands of graduates every year, who were absorbed in IT companies, who in turn billed them in manhours, worked in the past, the advent of cloud computing along with maturing of technologies, fuelled by macroeconomic changes has changed the rules of the game.

Clients no longer are interested in billing based on hours worked but instead seek a different kind of talent pool that can innovate and bring in technology to grow in a non-linear way, according to Arjun Pratap, Founder, EdGE Networks, an HR solutions provider.

As clients demand this change, many companies have been caught flat-footed and have large swathes of their workforce unskilled in newer areas such as data sciences, Artificial Intelligence, UX design, Analytics and Big Data, which renders them unemployable. Meanwhile, companies have resorted to trimming their workforce and resorted to a drastic reduction in hiring.

Techies, who have taken loans, have found themselves in a fix due to their inability to find similar jobs. This, in turn, has given rise to institutions such as Forum for IT Employees and Karnataka State IT Employees Union. While there are no official numbers on layoffs, FITE estimates that 60,000 workers have lost their jobs last year.

With automation expected to gain further steam in 2018, many are looking to stay relevant and large companies such as TCS, Infosys and Wipro are taking efforts to re-skill their employees.

New opportunities

While automation will make routine tasks irrelevant. Bobby Patrick, Chief Marketing Officer of UiPath, believes that it will open up opportunities in the future, as there are billions of applications that are not yet automated.

Safeer Mohammed, head HR, Stanley Black & Decker, says that techies are finding themselves in a cricket-like situation where the wicket is turning but batsmen are clueless about playing spin.

According to Siddarth Bharwani, Director at Jetking, employees are struggling to figure the way forward as there is very less guidance from peers and parents as they themselves haven’t gone through these kinds of changes.

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