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-   -   The plight of IT professionals in their 40s (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/shifting-gears/198522-plight-professionals-their-40s-15.html)

For sure, which is why I was specifically referring to non-client facing managerial roles.

Not sure it's a good analogy- what if there's another conductor (super-conductor? :)) sitting in the US giving directions to the conductor of the orchestra? In which case, do we really need a local conductor? :) Especially when 85% of the target audience for the music (and the associated revenue) is also in the US.

Jokes apart, of course there are good IT managers who add value to the org. But the majority I've seen throughout my career, across service and product orgs, and mainly in large companies primarily play this 'go-between' role.

Many reasons some totally stupid. Age factor, resistance to change, salary level, instability due to personal esteem, seen as less dynamic, risk averse nature..... The list goes on. Bottom line is they don't feel comfortable offering or trusting a senior person on a junior level thinking he will not be a good fit due to the above reasons.

India atleast is not mature enough to accept that anyone can do any job and that ups and downs are a part and parcel of life.

Abroad you may be a VP for many years but when things go south you will not hesitate to drive a cab to tide over difficult times.

Here it's opposite, you will subconsciously always want a similar level job and the worst part is that the people here also expect the same. So even if you were to take a low level job for some time it will stick to you like a leech for the rest of your career. People will take it negatively rather than appreciating that you did what you did to survive.

Just my two cents.

Another concern this will bring about in the medium term would be the real estate sector. Most investments in flats around the tech parks are driven by the rentals/ tech job sector. If this revenue source itself is impacted, this would have a big domino effect on domestic spending. The unsold inventory will increase further. this would have an impact on existing buyers with second/ fifth flats purchased for rental income/ appreciation of investment. I am already seeing colleagues struggling to sell apartments at the cost of purchase from a couple of years ago. Of course there could be other factors involved.

If even a fraction of us end up reducing our spends due to uncertain winds around, this will eventually affect the hospitality sector too. Which will also impact commercial real estate. Other sectors such as catering, automobile, ancillary automobile suppliers down to our local mithai and samosa walas have also thrived in the last few decades due to sustained demand. In fact they probably make more than any average IT joe.

I am not saying this is the next recession, but if there is a fire in the village all businesses are impacted. Now I am definitely going offtopic.

True. The example could have been better.
Maybe the overall organisational structure needs to be reviewed at both the client and service provider level. I am sure there are redundancies.


I completely agree with this. I had an interview recently where I was asked if I had any gaps in my work experience. The next question was why I moved from handling a near 3 digit department to a low 2 digit team. And then eventually became an individual contributor.
Most of the interview did not check about my suitability for the role. Heaven knows what would happen if I end up changing my line of work.

Most annoyingly, the recent job cuts have only emboldened people in the industry to treat existing employees as dispensable. Also stepping away from development or growth plans, just with the idea that if someone leaves, we can always find someone cheaper. Maybe expecting some respect or dignity has become old fashioned.

Interestingly, one of my colleagues did just that for about 4 months after he lost his job at our organization. He's working in a different org now, finally got a job, but a real survivor.

I guess it'll take time for this sort of culture and mentality to spread. Right now it certainly is hard to convince a recruiter that you're ok with taking a role that's more entry-level and a pay cut even. They assume it'll never work out and you don't even get interview calls. I know from personal experience, after my company shifted to the chaos of the outer-ring road, I tried very hard to shift jobs to a company close to a metro station. I was even upfront at the initial contact from companies, saying I didn't care about designation and was even willing to take a x% pay-cut. HR always assumed I was either lying or that something was wrong with me!

(Finally, I ended up negotiating a work-from-home option at my present place.) To be fair to Hr folk, I guess they don't see too many cases like this. That'll probably change in the years to come.

I've witnessed layoffs at every company I've been at over my 16-year career in IT. And no company has handled them well. (touch-wood I've never been affected by one...yet) But I also never expected not to be affected by one ever. Perhaps it's because my first job itself was in the midst of the 00-01 dot com boom-bust and our company was a dot com company. Within a year there I saw our team halved literally one afternoon out of the blue. And this was a day after the HR head stood up in front of 120-odd employees and gave a great 'have faith in us speech' literally! After that, I've never taken it for granted that I'll have a job next year and that the company will have a good reason to retain me. I saw pretty early on that we're all just numbers on a spreadsheet to someone high up enough to not know or care about your financial commitments or you as a person. Again, that's not a bad thing, it's business. But in my mind, that's always been the reality of this sector.

I am glad somebody is thinking just like me. Its written on the wall. I believe re-skilling cannot make you survive. Its the salary-seniority that is hurting.

This real estate business is akin to Tulip mania. No company ever told its employees to purchase multiple flats promising them everything would be kosher and their "investments" will appreciate.

Let it affect. Otherwise how will people learn and become knowledgeable about the bubbles? :)

This is not a recession. Just the industry getting correcting itself. There is constant replacement happening at lower levels for every senior position being downsized.
Now, whose making is this? With a career span of 20 years in IT you can lead a comfortable life, acquire a house, a car bring up one or two kids. But if someone who is 40-45 drawing a salary of 3L per month feels that the salary will last till 60 and buy a second property of 2Cr, which he can easily afford with his salary and got laid off. He is going to be in a very precarious situation. Your entire assets are blocked in non-liquid assets and have a huge emi to pay every month. Taking for granted your job or salary can lead to a huge crisis in your life. People are slowly learning this hard fact.

Gentlemen, I am not trying to judge who is correct or not. I brought out the possible impact of spending behaviours on other sectors by the real estate example.

Newer employees/ younger people are anyway not so interested in investments as we are beginning to see. Rentals/ leases seem to be the new order of the day for houses and cars. However, if the purchasing potential of people decreases, this will hit other people hard too.

I have a query. Slightly OT, but didn't find relevant thread. Please help!
I have around 10 yrs of work ex into IT BFSI. I am an engineer and MBA Finance grad. Currently working as a BA into risk and regulatory domain.

Data analytics, machine learning is new IT now and, I strongly feel I should acquire these skills before getting the pink slip from my employer! Albeit there is no indication as such but I feel it is high time to learn these skills.
I don't have any experience as such into data analytics tools like Python, R, SAS etc.

I am planning to take up executive program into this space. I have shortlisted Great Lakes, ISB and Upgrad IIITB. While Great Lakes and ISB are blended (online + weekend class); IIITB Upgrad is online. Duration is 11 months to 18 months. ISB being the most expensive of the lot.

The motive to learn data science is I see wide application of these into every industry. In BFSI, it is widely used for credit risk modeling, demand forecasting, default prediction etc. I want to be fairly good at these after finishing the course.

Does anyone have any feedback/idea on these programs? Like which one is the best in market? Pros, cons.

Your feedback is highly appreciated!

It is IIIT-B, that is 3 Is. Easy to confuse with IIT.:)

I'm in a similar boat here in terms of educational background & work experience. I've read enough personal experiences on Quora.com and Medium.com about how complete Data Science noobs have become top-ranked data scientists just by using MOOCs, freely available e-books (e.g., check out the pdf on google by searching for 'ISLR pdf'). And yes, there is a global ranking of top data scientists!

This is the route that seems best to me, given my past track record of sticking to (or not sticking to) a rigid course of some sort. Given our demanding work lives, I don't see how I can stick to a rigid course.

And finally - yes - you're right that BAs are dying out these days. I've been looking to switch jobs but haven't received a single callback in 1 year. But you won't believe the number of job postings I see for Data Scientists who also have the kind of domain knowledge that BAs typically have. So this is a bridge that you and I need to cross to remain relevant.

Are you saying just because people in IT do not spend, other sectors will take a hit? If you look at the salaries outside of IT industry, say of lecturers/bank employees/Govt staff, they have risen much faster and the purchasing power of these people is well comparable to those in IT industry. So I do not see IT as a messiah to save our economy. On the contrary, it created real estate bubble riding on the naivety of IT folks.

Oops! Didn't notice. Duly corrected! Thank you!

Well, I agree on BA part. The 'BA' post as such is dying. Either you go full technical, acquire domain knowledge with the experience or you go full SME / domain specialist. At this juncture, both look impossible to me. 'The bridge' as they call, is losing it's relevance.

I am not into searching online and learning on my own. May be I am lazy. What I like is interactive, classroom experience and learn through real life examples, illustrations, peer experiences. No offence meant as that's completely me! In addition ISB or Great Lakes on CV looks nice :)
Though it is very expensive - 8.5 lakh for ISB with 5-6 days campus residing every alternate months. So including travel costs, it goes to 10+ lakhs :Frustrati

What I want to be sure beforehand is, after spending that much amount of money and putting in my time, at the end it should be worth it.

What you call naivete is a basic trend of animals to feather their own nest. I am sure non IT people have also contributed to this mess directly or indirectly. If one pillar falls, it will increase the pressure on others; plain and simple. Lets not jump to assumptions or anointing anyone as messiahs.
If that real estate bubble will burst, what will happen next? That is the answer I tried to focus on.

A lot of educational expenses here are also increasing due to remittances or expenditure by associated sectors (admin/ catering/ security/ suppliers/ land sellers/ property renters for the IT sector). I do not see a bulk of the remittances coming from lecturers/ bank/ government officials. I would rather focus on the topic of the thread; which is about what people caught in this situation can do next. I hope other people don't get dragged into the same mess.

If these few posts of mine were not sufficient to explain what I wanted to say, it is no use trying further. So I am out of this conversation.

Speaking on whether these courses are worth the money and effort or not - on LinkedIn I saw ths comments thread on an ad by an IIM which was advertising its course on Analytics in conjunction with Kelley School of Business, Univ of Illinois. The comments were a revelation - while their certification costs 3.5 lacs, it seems the quality of the course isn't worth it. People were saying how they were able to learn better on their own.

And I haven't seen any of the top data scientists learn from such a structured course. They all grow up from the weeds, by spending time in Kaggle and various MOOCs...

Your call, your skin in the game! All the best.