Here Comes the Tsunami of 2015

The recent layoffs in the Indian IT industry are a catalyst that is accelerating our entry into a new world, where unexpected opportunities will open up for tech workers who are prepared for it

A Tsunami is  sweeping across the IT services industry, with its epicenter in Bangalore. The Tsunami of technology-driven change that’s affecting society at large, and more specifically the tech sector.

The media has been buzzing with reports of layoffs by a big IT firm. By itself, this may be news to some and business as usual to the IT firm in question. It’s certainly devastating to impacted workers, at least on the face of it.

I argued in a recent column that the world is becoming Singular, one in which individuals chart their own destinies by creating strong personal brands and promote themselves, working in fluid collaborations with like-minded people.

These recent “layoffs” are a catalyst that is accelerating our entry into the Singular world, where new and unexpected opportunities will now open up for tech workers who are prepared for it. Before we get there, let’s start with structural changes the economy and society that’s unleashing the Tsunami upon us:

– Technological Change crushes everyone in its path: All industries go through structural changes from time to time. When “new” technologies like Java came up in the late nineties, they quickly became the standard in information technology. People who were mainframe COBOL specialists suddenly felt neglected and unwanted. In all likelihood, robotic process automation is going to sweep across IT and eliminate a large number of jobs in the labor-intensive IT outsourcing business in the coming years. No one can resist this tsunami.

– Tides rise AND fall: During the last decade, an entire generation came into the workforce at a time of unprecedented economic boom in India, specifically in the tech sector. They have gotten used to high starting salaries, a rapid debt-fueled accumulation of wealth, and reckless job-hopping. Guess what – there is something called an economic cycle. Watch what’s happened to highly-paid employees in Wall Street firms since 2008, and what’s unfolding in the oil & gas industry as oil prices collapse.

– There may be no more demographic dividends: In India in particular, the “demographic dividend” that has been spoken about much as the country’s source of economic advantage, may well be turning out to be a serious barrier to progress, at least in the tech sector. Large IT services firms in India are in a struggle to get more productivity from workers in a labor-intensive business model while battling labor-killing technological innovation (e.g. cloud computing).

For the men and women who are being handed the so-called “pink slips”, this is good and bad news.

First, the bad news:

– It’s time to start paying rent: I refer specifically to millennials, a group that came of age in the 2000’s when opportunities were plenty, growth was unlimited, and expectations were minimal. As Indian tech firms prepare for a difficult transition to a future state that’s driven by automation and extreme technological innovation, it’s time for people to demonstrate their economic value to the enterprise. That may not feel comfortable if you’re not used to being held accountable.

Now the good news:

– Your employer just handed you a ticket to freedom: Let’s face it, what exactly were you doing in the job that you just lost? Were you spending 8 hours a day watching a large flat screen in a remote ops center to make sure that some large corporation’s data center was up and running – and if so, how long have you been doing that and what new skill have you learned in the past 3 years ? Or, alternately, were you doing exciting, innovative work that you couldn’t wait to get to every morning – in which case if your employer is letting you go, it’s surely their loss. Thank them for get-out-of-jail card and move on.

This is not idealistic navel-gazing. I can assure the young men and women in the middle of this change that if they plan to spend a long time in a corporate job, “pink slips” will come in a thousand different forms, not all of which may be as dramatic as an abrupt termination of employment.  These could take the shape of a sexy project that your manager overlooked you for, the promotion that went to your colleague who joined the company the same day you did, and a sudden obsolescence of skills imposed by a technology shift.

Be prepared. Be very prepared.

History teaches us that those who resist change will be overcome and left behind. In a highly interconnected world where events in one corner of the globe can have repercussions in an entirely different corner, individual workers have no choice but to work hard at remaining relevant as a technology-driven tsunami of changes sweeps across society at large. Indian tech workers are better placed than most people in the world to seize these new opportunities. It would be shame if they didn’t do so.