Senior IT employees find it difficult to get jobs

Gachibowli/Madhapur: The IT hub might have given a new lease of life for many a professional but for the retrenched employees (read senior IT professionals) it is becoming difficult to get back to work of their choice and salary. For instance, Himashu Sharma was asked to resign from Cognizant after serving for five years and the reason given was ‘under performance’. Speaking to The Hans India, Himanshu shared, “IT professionals have become victims of mass layoffs. I hadn't expected that I'll be fired after completing my projects in spite of sticking to deadlines".

India's service industry is expected to suffer the largest negative impact with a 14% decline in its workforce by 2021. Surprisingly, it is the seniors who are finding it difficult to get jobs. According to Kiran Chandra, founder member, Forum IT professionals “Majority who lost their jobs from the IT industry were with experience of 7-10 years or more.”  

According to Kiran Chandra “Wage restrictions has been happening in the IT industry for long. Companies nowadays are throwing out experienced professionals of a particular skill set and then are appointing new or fresher employ with the same skill set at less wage.” Mahesh Agarwal after losing his job in Cognizant with a 15 year experience is finding it difficult to find a job “For Indian companies not quality but delivery in short time is the main philosophy behind their business model.

Newer technologies are developing in the market the companies are revamping themselves and moving more towards automation rather than engineers. In this race of revamping senior professionals are finding it hard to sustain in an environment where there old skills are “supposedly becoming irrelevant”.

Similarly, Priyanka Tiwari who recently got married and shifted from Bangalore to Hyderabad is finding it difficult to get a job despite of having an experience of about 7 years in the in the field “When you work for a company for many years then you are inclined to work with technologies that are actually needed for the project so the chances for exploring are less, which makes it difficult during interviews because the set of questions and expectations are different,” she added.

Apart from this the way of IT industry has commercialized itself is also shocking. “Companies are hiring high skilled people to get not as employees but as consultants to get clients from abroad, and are immediately firing then when their need is fulfilled” Kiran Chandra , forum of IT professionals  “Future opportunities aren’t in maintaining programmer languages instead they are in robotics manufacturing plants, analysis using Artificial Intelligence and creating apps that will revolutionize the society and fields like finance, healthcare etc. says Prateek Pandey, a student in IIITB under Computer Science.

BY Nishtha Pandey