Ask HN: How is ageism in Indian IT industry?

This is an extremely interesting topic and I hope someone replies with data/studies to show what happens to the people who gain experience in the Indian IT industry by doing lower cognitive tasks.

From my personal experience, I see people either shifting tracks and getting out of the IT Industry completely (either getting an MBA and getting out or starting/ inheriting a business) or them being laid off in the hundreds/thousands whenever the IT companies do their cleaning (see newspaper articles on layoffs).

There is ageism as a side-effect of how unnaturally the supply side of talent is skewed with a huge amount of fresh engineers being churned out ready to work low paying jobs every year( probably why entry level salaries have been Rs 3.5L for the past 15 years)

I think up until now we have been at a point where industry has been growing (big companies getting bigger, lots more startups) enough that there's enough jobs for experienced folks (more managers, ICs, VPs)

But I wonder what happens if (when?) this growth stalls. Because is experience valuable - undoubtedly yes. But how valuable? Most companies today (startups, big companies alike) have fetishised shipping so much that as long as underpaid college grad gets the job done without asking too many questions, they'll prefer him over experienced person.

It is getting tougher and tougher.

There are routine layoffs and the company offers "voluntary" retirement, but I am not sure how "voluntary" the process is. Lot of politics is involved too I am sure.

If you are laid off then you are screwed. I know of people who found it extremely difficult to land jobs because they have too much experience but if you have experience in hot tech like Salesfoce, clound, niche areas of SAP etc then you might survive. Nobody cares if a person can solve problems or not. :-)

Everyone around me is pretty sure that their time will come. :-) We look at our annual appraisal and sigh out in relief when its not bad because that would mean a minimum of another 2 years. :-) But many of us have not really prepared for it. I am absolutely worried about it too. But the count of people is so huge and no matter what skills you have you will be just another face.

I am thinking of doing certs in cloud in hope to keep me relevant in my company and long term thinking is to do something not related to IT at all.

I have been keeping myself updated for years - taught myself Android, nodejs, golang etc etc but those do not matter in outsourcing shops.

My theory is that a lot of software engineering (I'm assuming this is what you're referring to by "IT"?) really comes down to basic CRUD operations between a front-end UI and a database. The real challenge is to architect software systems so that they are maintainable and flexible enough to develop features later on so you don't end up with spaghetti code mess. The issue is, however, that the "architect" skills that come with experience (i.e. 10+ years in development) are much less visible to management.

So management will only see a developer with 3 years experience and one with 15 years doing pretty much exactly the same job - this has the effect of making the less experienced developer look much more talented i.e. "Wow hes only been doing this for 3 years but is pushing out features at the same rate as a far more experienced dev!".

The best way around this is to specialise - for example in IT security, cloud computing, computer graphics, computer vision, machine learning, data science etc. Otherwise if you have been a developer for say 20 years but you are still making the same basic CRUD apps that 22 years old are coding - it looks like you have no drive or motivation - which is fine if you just want a 9-5 job but be aware that you may not be very impressive when it comes to find a new job.

EDIT: Sorry this is not about the Indian IT industry in specific since I don't have any experience working there but I think the pattern is pretty common in all countries.

I have been working as a dev from 7 years now. recently I decided to take some time off (for obvious reasons). after I left they added few 0-5's but they have a senior dev with 15 years of experience to deal with new devs.

after 7 years I am not going back. Now stress is zero (as I don't have a family to feed). I see lots of opportunities in the public domain. as most of the devs are busy working for the corporation in India.

Even in the local area, there will be lots of people who want to fix their issues. As a programmer, we should be looking to solve people's problems, not just algorithmic problems.

Seth Godin has written really good books on value and experience. its worth the read.

Being in the industry for sufficient time and having worked various countries both in India and abroad. I've observed few things that might provide some insight as to how -

There is a clear distinction between what Software Engineering means in India and other countries e.g USA etc. The entire IT industry in India is built on top of services market, here, commodities are cheaper and thus Software is cheaper to build compared to other countries. Thus to fulfill this necessity startups, MNC's hire cheap inexperienced resources to do their work with one or more senior devs just to manage them. This makes sense as I would do the same if I was leading a company as well.

Now coming to a different problem, what should the senior devs do in order to cope up with the Indian market (business model). There are following ways to approach this problem - Specialization, Research, Management, or Business? One can look at this as a possible destination to reach -

1. Specialization - Choose a domain and become a master at it.

2. Research - Choose a field and become a master at it.

3. Management - Choose an industry and learn all the ins and outs

4. Business - Invest the money earned do something that you love and hopefully make money out of it!

I'd recommend not to get bogged down thinking about these things if you have < 10 years of experience. The industry is going great and there are lot of opportunities in the world.

The only people suffering are the ones that haven't improved their learning and stuck doing the same thing over and over again.