IT cos may cold-shoulder BTech-only techies in future: Pai

Hyderabad: Jobs would be hard to come by in the IT sector in future for youngsters who have only B Tech degree, and companies would prefer to hire post-graduates with specialised expertise, says an industry veteran. In future, a B Tech is not adequate to get a good job, one must have an M Tech and specialisation, says T V Mohandas Pai, former HR head and ex-Chief Financial Officer of IT major Infosys. "My advice to all the people in colleges: please do M Tech and specialise, and learn coding on your own by taking extra classes, because in future most companies will hire you based on your coding knowledge.

"They are not going to catch you raw and give you training for six months and pay for it. Why should they waste their time? They will test you on your coding skills and if you know very good coding, they will hire you," Pai told PTI. "In future if you want to have a job, you must have M Tech, you must know coding and you must be an expert. You must have some level of expertise," he said. When asked about salary of freshers not growing in the Information Technology (IT) industry in the past two decades, Pai termed it as a "great tragedy". This is because the whole industry is not growing at a fast pace, he said.

"Supply (the number of software engineers) has gone up, (but commensurate) demand is not there," said Pai, who is currently chairman of Manipal Global Education Services. Global spending in IT is projected to grow only two per cent this year, a figure which was 3-4 per cent earlier. "That is also having an impact," he said. IT industry is expected to hire 1.5 lakh to 1.6 lakh people this year, he said. "No economy in the world can absorb one million engineers (who come out of colleges in India every year)... nowhere in the world, not even China can absorb.

It's too much," he said. Some reports indicate that as against offers of Rs 2.25 lakh per annum that used to go out for freshers two decades ago, they have risen only to Rs 3.5 lakh now, which suggests a decrease in real wages from an inflation-adjusted perspective. Pai had said earlier this year that big IT services companies in India have "come together and talking to each other not to increase" the salary of freshers taking advantage of oversupply of software engineers at the entry level.

Pai, a member of the Board of Directors of National Stock Exchange of India Limited, rubbished reports indicating widespread job losses in the slowdown-hit IT industry. "All these news are exaggerated. All these fears of job losses, people going away are exaggerated. There is no crisis. It's part of normal attrition. Yes, every year the bottom 1-2 per cent (non-performers) are asked to go. "If you look at data, there is nothing extraordinary happening about job losses. Why should anybody have sympathy for person (non-performers who are laid off) who is not working?" Pai, Chairman of Aarin Capital Partners, said.

He also accused people, who are making efforts to forge a union in IT industry, of trying to "create a hype, fear-mongering". "Nobody is supporting them. People who go with them will never get jobs," he added.