HYDERABAD: Among the IT crowd in the city, there appears to be a trend to go towards product-based companies, as it is considered to be the way forward as opposed to service-based companies.
With the growing demand, techies want to be technically skilled and updated with the latest advancements in software tools and products.Owing to the transactional shift that companies are adopting into automation and machine learning, techies are least drawn to service-based companies, as jobs are predicted to decline, especially in the support section domain.
Product based companies like Oracle Corp., Microsoft Corp., and ADP LLC, which deal with more of creation and execution of software or applications are more sort to be than other services based companies like TCS Ltd., CGI Inc., and Capgemini SE, which give after sales services support.“The retrenchment rate is the least in such companies because products have to be constantly updated to reach the market masses. The companies are best to get a hands on and learn the nuances of software development,” said a techie from Virtusa Polaris. He added, “Initially I worked with a small scale product-based company before switching to this as the job was getting more demanding, he said.
Another techie said that it is the support-based jobs that will be cleared out because automation takes its first position there. “Automation will first come into support jobs as tasks are more routine and the technology can pretty well do it without them as well,” said a Prasad (name changed), a software debugger at Cognizant Technology Services.
Interestingly, Srikanth Srinivasan, Regional Director of National Association of Software and Services Company (NASSCOM) said that the startup trend since the past four years is reducing the dominance of services companies in the industry paving way for technical job creation. “IT sector in India for the past 25 years has taken the services route and now it is the younger companies that are creating new technologies and products,” he said. Product-based companies are not replicable and ideas with intellectual property rights form its crux that adds an advantage, he added.
However, some employers feel that jobs are evergreen in the services sector. “Services goes into a products sale and is more a chain movement in the IT sector. If the talent pool is well known then jobs are never at scarce,” said Mahendra Prasad, Co-founder, Smartsoft India Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
Awareness walk on labour laws held
Bursting the bubble of a common misconception that labour laws do not pertain to IT professionals, an awareness walk on the labour laws safeguarding IT professionals interests was held at Hi-Tech city by Forum for IT professionals (ForIT). With close to 20,000 tech employees retrenched since over the last few months, several tech employees from the ITES (Information Technology Enabled Services) have approached the labour department for justice.
Majority of the employees in Hyderabad filed petitions under Shops and Establishments Act, Section 47 “No employer shall, without a reasonable cause, terminate the service of an employee ...without giving such employee at least one month’s notice in writing...” “The employers are being blind to the labour laws and are acting upon their wish. They are also giving false remarks on the employees making their future job hunt difficult,” said Kiran Chandra, Founding member, ForIT.