Future of Indian tech talent
Future of Indian tech talent: A quick summary
While the pandemic forced many startups to freeze their hiring in 2020, now that the world has come to terms with the new normal, we see companies hiring with a vengeance.
Match that with India’s funding boom and the result is skyrocketing demand. There is only so much that a company can spend on marketing — the best way to use capital in a meaningful way is to hire a large tech team. The high-velocity funding environment has led to high-velocity hiring.
The pandemic, accelerated digitalisation and a funding spree have all contributed to the surge in the demand for high-quality engineering talent in India. From being called the “back office”, India’s role in the global tech economy has finally come full circle.
Furthermore, the secular shift to remote work, triggered by the pandemic meant that for tech startups, their hiring footprint now spans the entire globe.
The tech boom
What most companies have now realised is that the decades-long shift towards digitisation in the tech space has accelerated manifold. Every business is now adopting digital technologies and going online, making the market for technology solutions explode. While this is great news for a lot of startups offering B2B and SaaS solutions, it brings a raft of new competitors like legacy IT service players, all competing for the same tech talent pool.
Adding to that, for many global investors, hiring tech talent in India has become an attractive and irresistible proposition, considering how deals in the USA and Europe are overheated by several strong legacy players.
The rumbles of approaching global recession
With the escalating fears of the global economic recession, an important question that remains to be answered is, “Would web developers, programmers and software engineers be affected?” While there are many factors at play, we would suggest that certain skills and traits that developers obtain and build upon would give them a distinct advantage.
Techies with diverse skill sets will be invaluable to companies in all sectors. For example, a techie comfortable in a variety of platforms and coding languages has an advantage over others. Embrace new technologies to make yourself recession-resistant.
The long-lasting impact
India has long been seen as possessing the unique strength of a deep tech talent pool. However, it is transforming into a market with abundant capital but a limited talent pool. Going forward, many startups will shut shops due to the lack of talent availability. Others will innovate, hire technology development partners and learn from the experience.
Companies are experimenting with AI-based offerings and replacing large top-down engineering teams with modular API-driven microservice architecture for the distributed workforces.
The market will find a way to stabilize the tech talent. What is likely to be long-lasting is the fundamental outlook toward Indian tech talent that is already being changed.
