Team-BHP (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/)

-   Shifting gears (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/shifting-gears/)

-   -   The plight of IT professionals in their 40s (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/shifting-gears/198522-plight-professionals-their-40s-10.html)

agree:
Most certainly it can. One of the two things that can be looked in to, which are quite in demand, are dairy or/and shrimp farming.

Both require less land comparatively and also the product is sold on cash and carry basis.

One of my close friends has already started with it and the returns are decent enough for him to reinvest and grow the business.

Let's discuss this when we meet next time.

Exactly my thoughts. Though being sort of facebook addict, I was looking for a reaction button here. stupid:

Ha ha..indeed a valid concern. It is actually already in the beta stage (in the USA, not in India yet), but then, being in the profession, I can see many areas where AI would find it difficult to make headway. For instance, legal negotiations. It is an exercise completely steeped in human interactions between opposing legal counsel with its share of complexities within such interactions, and I don't think AI can make much headway there.

One never knows though- any profession that requires application of mind may well be taken over by AI bots in the future. Till then, make money while the sun shines I say!!:)

Just stumbled on this thread, great discussion all around on this topic and all of it is straight from the heart.

The first 11 years of my career were in IT and for the past 9 years I am on the Business side.

During IT career, as it has been described before in this thread, we were literally pushed to become managers even before learning the technical ropes. I started handling a team of 4 at 3 years experience and by the time I was at 11 years mark, my team size had swelled to 80+. Did take long to realize this is just a number game - we used to joke "kitne jane tere paas" amongst the peer group. We had ample onsite opportunities and I literally had to fight to come back to India each time.

Simple math - people are mostly billed for the first 10-12 years of their experience, later they all move to cushy title roles and become a cost for the organization. Till the time your company grows at breakneck speed it is sustainable, even with 20% growth this model is not sustainable.

So it was all about the pyramid and I got tired of not learning anything substantial just more and more people management!

Consciously decided to move over to business side and mostly individual contributor role. As a lot of the esteemed BHPians have described, it is a combination of Domain + Techical but primarily applying your experience to solving business problems of the organization. While in IT, I used to think we were at the center of the universe, but here I only see the IT guys at the fag end of the User story during implementation.

Businesses in Western world have milked the offshore model (Yes, we think we milked but actually they milked) and now they are looking for the next dramatic model to reduce cost substantially, which most probably will be provided by Automation / AI. For Indian IT, there is a lot of opportunity in local Indian and APAC/Africa market, but it may not appeal to the people who are used to working with western companies / countries, primarily because of the culture and demanding attitude.

Sorry for repeating what has been said earlier, but while our IT companies were riding the boom in early 2000, there should have been a conscious investment in building the start up / innovation / product story but no one cared while leveraging the cost arbitrage, our 1 trick pony! Stories like Flipkart are too few and far between. China is really upping the ante on innovation and taking the fight to the western world, our future and the future of generations to come will be decided on how we compete in this reality!

It is unfair to say that the It sector has only caused hardships to non IT people. Due to the employment provided by the IT sector other ancillary sectors have only grown. In fact many non IT people make a killing in the IT sector by providing cafetaria/ transport/ housekeeping/ administration/ maintenance services. This is even before we consider all those non IT people who converted their houses into PG accomodation and earned quite a bit. Then there are other sectors like automobile or electronic appliances or banking & finance which have multiplied due to higher number of people with disposable income. Just think of how many people buy electronic goods with cash downpayments before and after the IT sector. And then further you have high end restaurants, hotels, cafes & coffee shops, airlines where business has grown, if not due to then at least with IT sector being a major contributor. People in these sectors who cater to the IT sector employees actually make a lot more than those struggling now within the IT sector.

Despite all these dependent sectors growing in terms of turnover and employment opportunities, if someone could not make it due to high competition, blaming the IT sector for hardships is a little too far fetched. And a soft target, as with most tax payers here.

Edit: This may be offtopic for this thread. If local infrastructure cannot be designed properly, then the town planners (if there is such a department) or local authorities are to be blamed. I don't see them shying away when asking for taxes. As for so called 'outsiders', any Indian is legally allowed to make a living across the country in a place of their choice. It is up to the local authorities to design and maintain infrastructure to cater to the industries that they give permits for. Be it Bangalore or Bombay or anywhere else. What do they think when giving permits for establishment of new businesses; that they will only get money and no additional people?

If anyone's serious about farming, they should throw in a cement tank which is 10'x5'x1.5', fill it with water and try Spirulina farming on the side.

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper...cle2267488.ece

Ferruccio Sir - your posts are some of the few I lap up eagerly for the way you write and your perspective (laced with humor). I wish you write more.

Those thousands of farmers are committing suicide mostly because they have been following traditional farming in a marginal way. There are some cases where some enterprising farmers have astronomical incomes from rare herbs and plants. It is a different game altogether compared with the traditional farming.

Wanted to post something on this thread but couldn't get time, so I will keep it short this time. Since this thread only focuses on IT professionals in their 40s I will focus only on that, as such, there is a lot going through IT sector and employees across all age groups are going through a radical change and there is a lot to write about.

The plight of a 40 year IT guy can be compared to a security guard in our society when I was a kid. In the early days the watchman had 3 tasks primarily.
1. Guard the premises
2. Register entry/exit manually
3. Switch on/off electrical equipment (water pump/ lights etc)

He was doing this job for the last 10-15 years happily and earning well, he used to get increment as well for the same job he had been doing for a long time. Over the years, he also hired some juniors to share his workload. Then technology happened. Premises were guarded by CCTV cameras, register was updated automatically using finger-prints or IR cards. Electrical equipment was fully automated using electronic devices and timers.
The watchman who had been doing these job was caught off-guard. He had not learnt anything new besides these three tasks. One fine day the management asked him why we should keep you on-board paying you a hefty salary as most of the work is getting done by technology ? He had no
answer and had to leave.

Then the society hired another young watchman, he had additional skills of monitoring the CCTV cameras, fixing any electrical faults, he had knowledge of technology so could co-ordinate with people who would fix the elevators etc without any involvement of higher management.

Like this analogy of a housing society, IT industry is going through the same churn right now, its not like there is no work, in fact there is more work than one would expect. How one manages to stay updated with newer technology and mindset is up to the individual.

Many people who are in IT since 90s got promoted to managerial jobs very quickly, while they lost a track of their technology or core skills of coding. Many failed to keep themselves updated with new tech, they were paid fat salaries compared to today, so they were able to make lot of investments too. Now when IT industry is automating or radically changing most things to keep costs down, management is the first thing that has taken a hit. Many people who did not realize this coming faced the heat. People who read the dynamics correctly sailed through it. People who have taken hefty loans and other things are going to find it difficult going forward. IT industry is not the same as it was before 2008 slowdown.

I will take an example of my own. I was working in Cognizant last year, and many people around me (myself included) were on radar. 'Utilization' was the only metric based on which people were going to be retained, it didn't matter if the resource was good or bad. Three of us (other two were seniors with 15+ years of exp) were assigned a project which was not associated with our core skills. I took up the challenge saying I will learn something new. The other one was a manager, he hesitated first saying 'am I supposed to write code with 2 year old chaps now ?' and the third one refused right away with a straight face and waited for another project. Three months later, the third guy was asked to leave, the second one stopped complaining and I got a better appraisal (I still left the company though :P)

The fact is, people in their 40s have a lot going with them, they can do some amazing things with their knowledge, but many of them don't want to fall back to what they actually are : coders and developers. In automobile parlance, its like IC engines getting upgraded with turbocharging or hybrid tech, the core function of automobile remains the same. New technology is mostly built on older tech, so core knowledge can always come handy.
Keeping updated with new tech is not difficult for ones who have lot of experience and companies do give enough opportunities before asking to leave.

At this point, I will also blame the biggies like Infosys and Wipro which inculcated this habit in Indian IT folks of climbing the ladder quickly without actually getting the right skills (in 2000s). It might also have to do something with human urge to control people as much as possible, I dont know. People used to become Senior managers and managers in less than 10 years in India. In order to retain resources 'promotions' were fast-tracked. Compare that to the folks working in US. I am having 9 years of experience, my college friends in US are working at the position of Senior Software Engineer/ Senior Consultant in companies like Uber and Amazon. While those in Infy and others are Managers/ Team leaders, but they are doing the same job as people in US. In my consulting career, I have seen database administrators and System engineers in US and South America, in their 40s happily learning new things aligned with their core skill set. This trend is slowly changing now in India thankfully, it is all boiling down to how useful you are to your company, your designation and experience matters only at the time of negotiating salary.

I wanted to share a very sad but somehow related story coming out of Mysore, of course this tragedy has a lot of background to it which is specific to that family.
I personally think, organizations are responsible to help employees who are in the radar of being laid off and sometimes people slip into depression, take some very hasty and drastic decisions as a result. Even though I dont work in services company I feel that HR as a function is totally out of sync on whats happening on the ground in an organization especially in tech sector where every day there is a new method to optimize , reduce manual work.

https://starofmysore.com/man-kills-w...empts-suicide/

Everyone's dealing with the same problems; Rejections, job insecurities and misaligned career goals. I think that the problem is: No one wants to create jobs. I acknowledge that experience is necessary to be able to work with the market and industry demands, but when individuals decide to sit over their laurels instead of making room for new ideas, we arrive at a supply-demand problem. There's only just enough room for a certain amount of individuals.

I am facing a similar, but early-life career crisis. Although I am a competent engineer in the automotive domain, I and most of my colleagues failed to score core jobs because of the market saturation in our country. I do have 3 offers, none of which are related to each other (operations, sales, and the third is IT). On the contrary, I have a friend who is in the hotel industry and is doing great. The hotel and hospitality industry is begging for sincere professionals right now. This demand makes available the best of resources for training and employment of professionals. It is high time we re-think our economic strategies as a nation and mentor our juniors to be more independent so they can make informed career choices.

Was just reading the Infosys annual report - head count grew by just 1.9% last year. I suspect that TCS and others are also growing head count at a similar rate. This does not mean that intake at the bottom of the pyramid has stopped - that would probably still at about 10-15% of total head count. What it means that between 8-13% of employees must leave each year, through voluntary or involuntary attrition (the actual number would be higher due to the need for skilled lateral hires which never goes away). With 20-25k people per year losing jobs in just one large company, it’s obvious why mid level employees come under pressure.

I was also talking to someone else who is very senior in the industry a few days ago. His assessment was that while the industry has managed to keep head count flat over the last few years, with increased automation and deployment of AI, they will probably start shrinking their workforce going forward.

Not good news for India - an industry which employs over 3 mm people moving from 8-10% pa job growth to negative growth. Unless we find a new growth engine, India is probably a big short.

Slightly off topic to the industry being discussed in this thread but relevant all the same due to Age factor.

On Wednesday, an "Official" document bearing all the right markings of a circular supposedly issued by the Merchantile Marine Department (MMD) titled - Age Limitations in Merchant Ships - was circulating among my seafaring friends.

The document asked Marine Manning Companies based in India to not hire any seafarer above 50 years of age and that all seafarers above 50 years would be deemed medically unfit to perform duties onboard ship.

This caused a lot of drama among the marine fraternity here in Mumbai and it must have reached the relevant people in MMD Mumbai who had to issue a clarification on Thursday saying that the document floating on Whatsapp is fake and that no such circular has been issued.

Unfortunately I do not have to original document. I do have to clarification that I am attaching below.


Some friends also received the above clarification from their respective manning offices in Mumbai regarding the fake news.

Really interesting thread and insights! I came in here for some advice actually. I’m in my late twenties and currently in a Business IT Consulting role for a captive. Work is good and has given me great exposure to the way many business operations are done on the ground and how do we go about digitising them.

Now, I’ve been thinking of moving back to my home location sometime this year/next year. Here’s my confusion - I’m currently looking at a possible opportunity in the RFP/Bid Management space. This is at a decent pay and at the location of my choice.

However, I’d like to know from the veterans of the industry - what is the ground reality of the Big Management role and the learnings/long term scope? Please help!

Reading this thread, I am forced to think about what will happen to the Real Estate and Automobiles boom?

It is the IT industry that brought in the monies at "non-hindu" rate of growth. Primarily because the Indians workers in these industries were being paid much higher than what other workers in Indian industries were being paid.

The country, on its own, in other sectors, has not grown at such a pace to support these higher "wages". In fact a big trickle down effect of growing salaries in other sectors has been due to the IT's raises and pay packets.

If all this slows down ... what will happen to our country individual's biggest spend: house and cars? And what will happen to the banking sector that catalyzes the loan based spending.

Real estate will take a bigger hit than auto sector. Automotive manufacturers have more other customers (commercial and Govt.) unlike real estate.

Both will take a hit to certain extent, that is for sure.

Last month, we were checking 2BHK apartment prices in a particular part of Pune and the prices quoted now and in 2014 are almost the same with +/-5% difference and developer calling back multiple times.

This is the area which was in super demand around 2009-10.