Thousands of tech employees are being laid off every day, but Govt intervention is not needed

These are bad days for tech employees. A layoffs tracking site reported last week that, on an average, over 1,600 tech employees were being given the pink slip every day this month. On Monday, the website came up with something even worse: the number had gone up to 3,000. The situation got exacerbated because Big Tech icons like Microsoft and Google also began retrenching employees. In the last calendar year, more than 1,000 companies reportedly laid off 154,336 workers. There is turmoil among tech workers. It is also evident from the increasing popularity of LinkedIn, a business and employment-focused social media platform. In 2022, it was downloaded 58.4 million times all over the world. Unsurprisingly, LinkedIn is brimming with job searches, help and counsel from friends to their retrenched friends, etc. Thankfully, the Government has not shown any intention of coercing or coaxing tech majors to go slow on layoffs. In November, of course, Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw had slammed Elon Musk’s decision to sack Twitter employees in India: “We condemn the way Twitter has sacked employees in India,” said Vaishnaw, adding that the employees “should have given the employees a fair time for transition.” But then liberals and the mainstream media love to criticise Musk for his unforgivable ‘crime’ of being a free speech “absolutist.” The Honourable Minister might have been trying to be fashionable when he condemned Musk.

Over a month later, Minister of State for Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar also talked about retrenchment in the IT sector, but his views were rational and balanced. He said that while the Government “probably cannot” intervene to stop layoffs in the IT sector, it was working to ensure these job losses are “soft landings.” He rightly pointed out that there are enough jobs for talented people. He also talked about a Rs 460-crore “reskilling” plan. That’s the correct approach; the Government can help the sector, and employees in it, by providing indirect support, one of which is reskilling. It should avoid a ham-handed approach, involving diktats to the top brass of IT majors. That may win the Government brownie points in the political arena, but would do no good to either the sector or, in the long run, to the people working there. So far, the Government has avoided such a populist stance. Hopefully, it will stay the course.