An Indian techie's layoff survival guide

By Devashish Chakravarty

It began with start-ups dying out. Then the biggest e-commerce names started freezing hirings, reneged on campus offers and finally began
letting people go. Now the lay-offs have started in your organisation.

Multi-billion-dollar Indian IT services companies are cutting costs, hit by a double whammy of US politics and the fast-changing digital landscape.

Recruiters have taken the NASSCOM-McKinsey report to indicate that IT majors will lay off around 6 lakh people in the next 3 years. What should you do as a techie hit by the lay-offs?

Inhouse reskilling
The largest customers of Indian IT companies were in international banking and healthcare. With uncertainty in the US and customers building in-house capabilities, these lucrative contracts are drying up.

Your employer is currently considering newer technologies like cloud-based services and investing in reskilling its existing bench. Find out the new focus areas and existing reskilling programmes and projects to be amongst the first to make the challenging transition.

Moonlighting
Have you thought about being self-employed someday? Do you want a backup income plan? Try moonlighting. While you still have a job, create the foundation for an alternate source of money. Work with fledgling startups that cannot afford the tech talent they need and are willing to let you help even if you have no prior relevant exposure.

By chipping in after office hours or on weekends you can learn and deliver outcomes on the go, while the start-up benefits from an extra pair of hands. You can also try online freelancing sites like Upwork.

Technical education
If you are clear that your current skillset will not help you advance your career over the next 5 to 10 years then acquire a new skill set. Consider spending a couple of years to get an MTech or an MS in a new domain like robotics AI, natural language processing etc.

If you can afford the time and money, then the learning, exposure, network and certification will give you the credibility and runway for steep career growth. Alternatively, educate yourself through online learning platforms in your spare time and keep bolstering your knowledge by doing projects for others.

Change of industry or function
Your current employer is in the business of servicing clients from different industries like financial services, manufacturing and hardware. These industries hire in-house IT teams to either work with solution providers or manage in-house IT development and implementation. Hence there are always opportunities relevant to your current skill set in other industries that you can explore.

Similarly, if it excites you, you can change function by leveraging your IT skills to find options in a tech sales and service team or in IT purchase. If you want to make a complete switch of career and enter a non-IT domain, either sell your non-IT skill sets like team management, delivery and people skills, or sign up for an MBA programme to reskill as a generalist.

During the global financial meltdown of 2008-09, many banking professionals found themselves in similar or worse situations. Through a combination of education, domain change and entrepreneurship, most of them bounced back from the setback of having been laid off.

Responsibility
'I alone am responsible for my career'- adopt this attitude to be successful in a structurally grim environment. If you do not empower yourself and remain dependant on circumstances, you will be at the mercy of market forces and luck like the rest of your colleagues. This means that you must revisit all your existing assumptions regarding your career, and pick the ones that give you a fighting chance.

Which cities are you willing to work in? What will be the initial salary? Are you open to entrepreneurship? Create a new vision and stick to it, but be flexible about the path.

Professional relationships
If you haven't invested in building professional relationships beyond your own team, start immediately. Research shows that most new jobs come through weak links in your network. Someone who knows someone close to you could point you to hidden opportunities.

Start reaching out to people in your immediate circle and extend your web of interaction. Don't be too shy to ask for favours, connections and job opportunities.

Runway
Think like a start-up founder who is running out of cash but needs to keep the engine running. Be open to taking a pay cut or even a change in designation in your current organisation to remain employed. Understand that your employer is dealing with reduced revenues, and to survive it must find a way to cut costs. When you offer to take a salary cut, your employer finds a clear benefit in retaining you for your institutional knowledge over the risk of hiring a potential misfit at the same reduced salary.

Simultaneously increase your runway by reworking your personal expenses, material goals like buying a house or car, and personal goals like starting a family. For emotional support, make sure that you involve your family and dependants in the decision-making process.

Campus choices for engineers

Core muscle
Take a fresh look at your core engineering stream. Combine your core knowledge and your coding chops to find new opportunities for yourself. For instance, manufacturing involves automation and hence needs both software and hardware specialists.

New tech
Maybe your engineering syllabus is ancient and you are still learning C++ with some exposure to the web. Choose the right courses or educate yourself on relevant languages and systems. Join a student club, participate in competitions and stay up to speed on new technology.

Endless learning
If lifelong learning is not your thing, then consider alternate career paths because a career in the constantly evolving IT space is not for you. New technology developments create new jobs and kill old ones. So, you will need to reskill every few years or end up jobless.

Non-tech company
Unlike your seniors, your batch may not be hired in their hundreds by a few large IT services companies. So, consider alternatives like a tech role in a traditional company. Every business from FMCG to manufacturing requires an in-house technology team.

(The writer is Director, Executive Search at QuezX.com)