IT party is over. Now' time to reinvent or die

Copyright@kamleshsujata1

IT party is over. Now’s the time to reinvent or die

India requires 12 million jobs a year. But very few know where it’ll come from. This article “IT party is over. Now’s time to reinvent or die” by Ravi Venkatesan makes some valid points such as:

-         -  Automation can displace a third of all jobs within three years.

-        -  Infosys CEO aims at increasing revenue per employee by 50%.

-        -  New technologies are destroying old jobs but creating many new ones.

-         - Whatever skills we have will largely be irrelevant in a decade and all qualifications have a shelf          life.

-       -   The future will not be kind to people who are not curious and no interest in  reading and learning.

-         - Indian youth largely needs to move into an entrepreneurial drive when jobs  are scarce.

IT party is over. Now’s the time to reinvent or die

By invitation- Ravi Venkatesan

Former chairman- Microsoft India

TOI 31.5.15

India’s IT industry is unlikely to remain the amazing job engine that it has been. For the past two decades, the fastest way to increase your income has been to land a job with an IT company. The industry has provided a ticket to prosperity for millions of young Indians; children of security guards, drivers, peons and cooks catapulted themselves and their families firmly into the middle class in a single generation by landing a job in a BPO. Hundreds of engineering colleges mushroomed overnight churning out over a million graduates a year to feed the insatiable demand of India’s IT factories.

    This party is coming to an end. A combination of slowing demand, rising competition and technological change means that companies will hire far fewer people. And this is not a temporary blip—this is the new normal. Wipro’s CEO has bravely admitted that automation can displace a third of all jobs within three years while Infosys CEO Sikka aims to increase revenue per employee by 50%. Even Nasscom, the chronically optimistic industry association, admits that companies will hire far fewer people. Not only will the lines of new graduates waiting for job offers grow rapidly longer every year, but so too will the lines of the newly unemployed as all companies focus more on utilization, employee productivity and performance. Employees doing tasks that can be automated, the armies of middle managers who supervise them and all those with mediocre performance reviews and without hot skills are living on borrowed time.

    So what do you do if you are a member of these endangered species? What constitutes good career advice in these times? I’d say that the first thing is to embrace reality and recognize that the same has changed for good. The worst thing to do is be wishful and wait for the good times to return. They won’t. But there are still lots of opportunities. What’s happening in the industry is ‘creative destruction.’ New technologies are destroying old jobs but creating many new ones. There is an insatiable demand for developers of mobile and web applications. For data engineers and scientists. For cyber security expertise. So for anyone who is quick learner, anyone with real expertise, there will be abundant opportunities.

    There has also never been a better time for anyone with an iota of entrepreneurial instinct. India is still a supply constrained economy and so there is room to start every kind of business: beauty parlour, bakery, catering, car-washing, mobile/ electronics repair, laundry, housekeeping, tailoring. For entrepreneurs with a social conscience, there is a massive need for social enterprises that deliver affordable healthcare, education and financial services. Not only are there abundant opportunities but startups are “in” and there is no shame at all in failure. The ranks of angel investors are swelling and it has never been so easy to get funded. There is even a website, www.deasra.in that provides step-by-step instructions to would-be entrepreneurs.

    For those who prefer a good old fashioned job, there are abundant jobs in old economy companies which are struggling to find every kind of talent—accountants, manufacturing and service engineers, sales reps. Technology is enabling the emergence of a new sharing ‘sharing services’ such as Uber or Ola that enable lucrative self-employment; it is not uncommon to find cab drivers who make Rs 30,000-40,000 a month.

    My main point should be clear. While India may have a big challenge overall in creating enough jobs for its youthful population, at the individual level there is no shortage of opportunities. The most important thing is a positive attitude. The IT boom was a tide that lifted all boats—even the most mediocre ones. However, this has bred an entitlement mentality and a lot of mediocrity. To prosper in the new world, two things will really matter. The first is the right attitude. This means a hunger to succeed. Being proactive in seeking opportunities, not waiting either till you are fired or for something to drop into your lap. A willingness to take risk and the tenacity to work hard and make something a success. Humility. Frugality. The second is the ability to try and learn new things. The rate of change in our world is astonishing; whatever skills we have will largely be irrelevant in a decade. People are also living much longer. So the ability to learn new things, develop new competencies and periodically reinvent ourselves is a crucial one. Sadly, too many of us have no curiosity and no interest and no interest in reading and learning. The future will not be kind to such people.

    “The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die.” –Friedrich Nietzsche.

THE FEAR CHEER MAGIC OF SMALL #FEEDBACKS

Copyright@kamleshsujata1

By Kamlesh Tripathi


We all know the meaning of feedback. But just to refresh our minds – it is an advice, criticism or information about how good or useful something or somebody’s work is. Thus, many may consider feedback to be a frightful happening, and miss the cheer and magic behind it.

I was once working on a rural project in Miryalguda, a small sleepy town near Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh. Since, there were no decent hotels in the town then, and the project was for a long duration, we had rented a small furnished house as our guesthouse.
There we had a cook-cum-caretaker 24×7. We were just the three of us staying there, and all from North India. Although, our cook claimed, he knew how to cook North Indian cuisine well, but the reality was quite the other way around. We normally used to land in Miryalguda for a fortnight at a stretch and then hit Head Office at Mumbai for a couple of days to report the progress of the project and be with our families, and then return again for a fortnight, and this continued for months. And, we had planned it in such a manner at Miryalguda, that we used to have all are meals in the guesthouse, and even preferred to carry tiffin prepared in the guesthouse, just in case we were going out on a farmer-field visit locally.


Our cook out there was reasonably smart, hospitable, and a sensible young fellow, who normally used to serve Andhra dishes for breakfast and lunch; while he used to attempt some North Indian dishes every day for dinner, realising we must be missing home food; which unfortunately used to be worse in taste than even the Andhra meal, he used to prepare for us. And, gradually we had two issues at hand, relating to food. One, with the continuous hot Andhra food, some of us started getting bouts of acidity. Two, after a couple of days of landing, we genuinely used to miss home food. And so, we were desperately looking for a solution.

One day in the evening while we all were having a cup of tea, we all gave the cook some positive feedbacks about his culinary prowess and that charged him a wee bit. And, then the next day I gave him some tips on how to cook simple Dal, Chawal and Sabzi in North Indian style based on the home recipe that I carried from home.

And, to my surprise next day’s dinner was a delight, and quite close to home food; and it only improved, over the next few days. But, even more surprising was the fact that a simple pep talk had created a world of a change in the cook in less than 24 hours. And, this small episode changed my persona to a great extent. I realised, how very important it is to keep cheering every human being on a regular basis and not wait for milestone moments, without which they start operating like mere zombies.

The episode also got me thinking to a point of no return in life; where I would willfully compliment a cook for preparing a dish well and one could see the broad smile on his otherwise long face. Those days I used to travel a lot and often by cabs, and I made it a point to compliment the driver each time, on safe driving; and I could fathom the power of such small compliments as they generated tremendous positive energies, which is unimaginable and could even race the progress of our country by leaps and bounds.

I then had many field executives and managers reporting to me and I never missed an opportunity of complimenting them on the spot for having done a good job. This definitely increased their morale and performance exponentially and that reflected on their annual appraisals too.

For let us not forget life is all about small building blocks that makes the façade look grand. So whenever you get a chance don’t let go the opportunity of passing small positive feedbacks to people around you.