Amid Layoffs, Techies Looking For Ways To Get More 'secure' Jobs: Report

With global tech companies announcing layoffs, employees are increasingly looking for stable career options instead of high pay hikes, a report in the Economic Times (ET) said. Moreover, they are also betting on upskilling to protect their jobs.

According to recruitment services firms, the inflow of resumes from IT employees who have not been laid off has doubled in the last one month alone. These include employees from Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft.

"Employees in the tech industry are choosing stability over insane hikes. Gone are the days of 100 per cent pay hikes," Aditya Mishra, chief executive at CIEL HR Services told ET. Another expert, quoted in the report, said that the companies went overboard in hiring in 2021 and 2022.

Moreover, hirings were at higher packages. An employees with an experience of five years, who earlier got a package of Rs 20 lakh per annum, was given Rs 50 lakh in the last two years, the report added.

The tech companies have laid off around 70,000 employees in the last one year. This has prompted employees to upskill and get updated with the latest technology.

According to reports, the relevant skillsets were data analytics, data engineering, AI, Web 3.0, metaverse, 5G, etc. Also, the employees are also taking up multiple courses along with their current job role in their free time.

Along with layoffs, the companies have also slowed down hiring. Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, Infosys and HCL Tech— reported a combined net addition of 1,940 employees in the quarter ended December 2022.

These big four IT firms recorded a net addition of 61,137 employees in the third quarter of FY22. In contrast, with the present circumstances, these companies fiercely competed with each other in hiring to meet the increased demand for digitisation due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The decline is a sharp drop of nearly 97 per cent from Q3FY22 and a 94 per cent drop from the net addition of 28,836 in the Q2FY23.