IT jobs are safer than startup jobs but a salary bubble burst awaits them

• TCS, Infosys and Wipro have over 11 lakh IT professionals working for them, out of which 2.3 lakh were hired in FY2022.
• IT will be the biggest employer in 2022 as seven in ten large IT firms ramp up their hiring.
• There may be some correction in the salary structure in IT firms while hiring stays strong, according to experts.

Even as the Indian startup job crisis looms large, the startup-adjacent IT sector might not go the same layoff route, if experts are to be believed. Yet, they are not perfectly in the clear either. While the startups are losing capital with Fed tightening, the IT sector stands to lose revenues and business.

It doesn’t help that IT employees enjoyed spectacular salary hikes last year — most IT majors took margin hits to retain them. According to Indeed India, the demand for IT professionals grew 400% in 2021 and the companies were offering salary hikes in the range of 70-120% to full-stack engineers.

IT sector stocks are being downgraded in the fear of a recession in the US, and this sentiment might not change for the better anytime soon. Therefore, there may be some correction in the salary structure in IT firms while hiring stays strong, Naveen Jangir, co-founder of HRTech firm Incluzon, told Business Insider.

A salary correction is on the way

It could be an easy come and easy go for IT sector employees whose salaries rose so much that it altered the economics.

“With the ongoing challenges between supply and demand of the resource person, the candidates with the experience of 11 months are getting disproportionate salary expectations by startups and are a significant hit to the market. That is not going to be the case in the upcoming 11 months. Because we all knew it was a bubble which was going to burst,” he noted.

The salary hikes and perks that IT professionals enjoyed last year is something that will be replicated every year - indicating that it was a serious blip.

“We ensure that a candidate with a certain amount of experience gets the market standard pay and not above or beyond his range. Because at the other end, it only ruins the market and hence leads to resource crunches,” Jangir added.

IT majors for whom capitalization is not a worry like the startups - will not go for retrenchments as yet. In fact, they could continue hiring. Sarbojit Mallick, co-founder of HRTech firm Instahyre, emphasised that IT will still be the biggest employer in 2022 as seven in ten large IT firms ramp up hiring.

“The IT sector will continue to grow as BFSI [Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance sector] embraces digitalization and the economy is moving to cloud based operations. We have seen a growth in numbers of hires by large banking companies and IT/ITeS companies according to our Instahyre hiring reports,” Mallick told Business Insider India.

TCS, Infosys and Wipro hired over 2.3 lakh IT professionals last year

The reason for last year’s salary hikes was the increasing attrition - which grew steadily last fiscal year. Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys, Wipro are the top three information technology firms in the Indian market with over 11 lakh IT professionals working for the companies.

The three companies cumulatively hired 2.33 lakh employees in fiscal year 2022 to tame the high attrition rate they have been facing.
Source: Company data

The rate of employees leaving the organisation is highest in Infosys, second highest at Wipro and then at TCS.

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