9 Nov 2023
Moneycontrol spoke to multiple techies, especially those in program manager roles, to get a sense of the difficulties they have been facing since being laid off in mass culls.
Avinash, an IIM graduate, joined an edtech unicorn in Bengaluru—the city some refer to as India’s Silicon Valley—in a program manager’s role, with an annual pay package of Rs 35 lakh. Within a year, the startup shut down the business vertical, offering two months’ pay as severance to its laid-off employees. Over the next 8-10 months, Avinash continued searching for jobs before finally taking up an unpaid internship with a manufacturing firm in the energy sector. Two months later, the company offered him a contractual role, but with a pay cut of around 45 percent from his previous job.
“I had an education loan, rentals, and my parents’ health expenses to cover during those months. Luckily, I had friends from whom I borrowed money to sustain,” said Avinash. His name has been changed on request to protect his identity as it could affect his future employment opportunities. Avinash has now moved to his hometown in Kerala, and is working remotely to save on expenses. “I am still repaying the loans I had taken, so I had to cut my cost of living,” he says. The IIM grad continues to scout for better opportunities and plans to move back to Bengaluru when an opportunity arises.
Avinash’s experience epitomises the difficulties many techies, especially those in program manager roles, have been facing. These executives have been finding it tougher to find job opportunities as their functions are getting replaced or transitioning, which requires additional or a different set of skills. This is a part of the wider layoffs in the tech industry. In 2022, over 1,000 tech companies laid off over 150,000 employees. According to Layoffs.fyi, a website that has been tracking reported job cuts globally, in 2023 alone, over 800 tech companies laid off over 200,000 workers.
This comes after tech companies saw a blockbuster year in terms of venture capital in CY 2021 and 2022, which led to inflated salaries, higher attrition, hyper-growth and a battle to hire and retain better talent, which eventually became a jobseeker’s market.