Chatter over layoffs in IT industry highly exaggerated: TCS President

Talks of employee layoff in IT industry are highly exaggerated. The industry does not have a concept of layoff, said Ravi Viswanathan, President, Growth Markets, Tata Consultancy Services.

“When you lay off people, you don’t go and hire people. However, the IT industry keeps hiring a large number of people every year. Where is real job loss. Sending out people may be performance-based and it could be company specific,” he said in an interaction with media persons.

The industry will be a net hirer at the end of the year as there is growing demand for IT with infusion of new technologies, including digital. The IT industry is very big with TCS having around 3,80,000 employees, the next biggest company will have around 2,50,000 employees and others have substantial numbers.

Globally, IT spend will be around $3.5 trillion and it will annually increase by nearly 3 per cent. Opportunities will come in new technologies such as digital, he said.

Viswanathan said every company has a very systematic programme to re skill, re-evaluate and put poor performers through many interventions. Very few people fall off after all thatinterventions.If re-skilling is not done then that particular person or group is on a sticky wicket, he said.

Quoting TCS chairman, Viswanathan said, “in our life span, we will not see a decrease in technology spend. There will be year-on-year increase in technology spend, which will directly translate in increased spending on IT and IT-related work. The market is expanding, and the pie will continue to increase.”

Sectors such as Internet of Things, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence and analytics are huge opportunities for the IT industry. “It is crowded in the technology space, and so much needs to be done. There is a lot of disruptions and innovations are happening,” he said.

Today, IT is not supporting anything but it is in the middle of everything.

There is no business that does not have technology in its heart. In a hardcore manufacturing company, an IT system will tell which machine is doing what and how to optimise machines. Most of these machines are automated, he said.