Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Filled Under: ,

IT cos hire non-techies to cut costs

When Ishwar Prasad graduated from a Mysore college two years ago with specialisation in commerce, a career with one of India’s top three technology firms was nowhere on the agenda.

However, Prasad went on to do a six-month diploma in computer hardware management last year and is now helping some of the leading telecom companies in the world manage their computer desktops and other infrastructure, from a remote infrastructure management centre at the tech firm.

As tech firms automate their commoditised service offerings, they do not necessarily need engineers to perform all tasks. Instead, they are increasingly hiring non-engineering graduates such as Prasad for testing software applications and managing computer infrastructure of their clients in order to do more with fewer staff and at lower wages than computer engineers.

From nearly 10% of their current workforce, non-engineering graduates could account for nearly 20-25% of the staff at companies such as TCS, Wipro and HCL, over the next one to two years. Multinational rival Cognizant already has almost 20% of its global workforce who are non-engineering graduates.

Prasad is among thousands of non-engineering graduates being hired by companies such as Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Wipro, HCL and Infosys for performing highly automated tasks of software testing and computer infrastructure management with the help of user-friendly, readymade platforms that can serve multiple customers.

“In my hometown, working for Infosys or Wipro makes parents proud. I could have never got into such companies with a commerce degree, but now many of my relatives think I have made it big and become a software engineer,” says the 27-year-old.

Companies such as Wipro are already readying their strategies for shifting nearly 40% of software services to readymade templates that can serve additional customers without having to hire incremental staff.

“The prime impact of these delivery models is the asset-based view as opposed to a labour-based one, that is, less number of people for the same work and an increase in operating margins per employee, while simultaneously reducing capital expenditure for their clients. The impact on employee mix (those with a BE degree vis-a-vis non-BEs) will be there but will not be applicable for all technologies and domain areas,” said Saurabh Govil, senior vice president HR, Wipro Technologies.

For years, India’s $50-billion software exports industry has been hiring thousands of engineering graduates every year for writing software codes and processing back office tasks for top customers such as General Electric, Citibank and JP Morgan Chase. However, increasing wage inflation and rising attrition has forced them to seek ways to arrest linear growth.

1 comments:

  1. Although there are many awesome things to say about Cartoon HD, the only downside is that it’s not available on any Playstore, as Cartoon HD supports piracy. The only way to enjoy this app is to download Cartoon HD APK file directly to your android phone and Install it. Download the APK file from next section.
    website

    ReplyDelete