Artificial intelligence watch: Tech middle managers stare at job blues

Being just a software engineer is not good enough, Nina Schick, an expert on artificial intelligence (AI) and founder and chief executive of Tamang Ventures, said last week at a packed conference in Bengaluru. “Level up,” she said while explaining the importance of thinking about the next-generation skills.

 

In the midst of all the upskilling talk in the AI era, middle managers in the tech sector seem to be delicately placed, analysts believe. Quite like the entry-level software roles. “It’s a matter of time before middle-management jobs will come under scrutiny, especially as AI agents get better at supervision and decision-making. A significant number of middle managers in the tech sector would need to be reskilled, repurposed or made redundant,” says Nitin Bhatt, partner and technology sector leader at EY.

 

The fact that not only entry-level roles but also experienced positions can be impacted by automation and AI has sparked off uncertainty, nudging more people to reskill themselves.

 

According to industry executives, jobs of mid-level managers with about 20 years of experience —essentially people managers — are at risk. This cohort, they say, must not remain just a manager but be a techie in the new AI-led universe. The way software is being written, tested, developed, and deployed is changing fast. 

 

“AI is not taking your job but people who use AI will,” points out Praveen Neppalli Naga, chief technology officer, mobility and delivery, Uber. “There is a difference between an engineer using Cursor and one not using it. The scale of this change is big.”

 

Such managers are big in number across India. TeamLease, a leading staffing firm, estimates this segment at 10-15 per cent of the total technology managerial roles that are primarily support functions. According to Xpheno, a specialist staffing firm, there are about 610,000 senior talent in India, with experience between 13 and 17 years.

 

“There was a time not too long ago, maybe five to 10 years ago, when the concept of a manager was supposed to be a people manager. There is no people manager anymore. None of our engineering leaders are people managers because they are hardcore techies. Unless you understand technology, you cannot lead people,” says Rohit Kaila, head of technology and site leader at the India technology centre of Wayfair, a US-based ecommerce company.

 

In line with that thinking, Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu recently cautioned software engineers that better salaries than a mechanical or civil engineer “is not some birthright”. He posted on X: “The productivity revolution I see coming to software development (LLMs + tooling) could destroy a lot of software jobs.”

 

Data from Nasscom, a tech industry association, shows while more than 400,000 engineers in India are trained on AI, just 73,000 have advanced AI skilling knowledge, highlighting the skill gap. The Nasscom data also shows that India will create 2.7 million newer AI jobs by 2028.

 

“The ones facing challenges are those without specialised skills. For example, someone with only basic Java programming skills will struggle. GPT (generative pre-trained transformer) tools and internal LLMs (large language models) are now writing such codes and demand for routine jobs is going down,” says Aditya Narayan Mishra, managing director and CEO of Ciel HR.

 

IT under pressure

 

India’s information technology (IT) sector has long been one of the top employment generators, absorbing thousands of students from engineering colleges every year for maintenance and support of IT systems of multinationals. And yet, that sector is poised for a tectonic shift in the face of AI, analysts say. “Codes are increasingly being churned by machines and software testing, one of the most traditionally structured functions within the software development life cycle (SDLC), is also getting automated.”

 

There will be entry-level roles, but what is L2 and L3 will become L1 because automation is making a lot of entry-level jobs redundant, points out Neeti Sharma, chief executive, TeamLease Digital.

 

That has led to a drop in hiring rates of IT companies. The top-five IT companies hired just 12,718 people in the last financial year, compared to 66,500 for the financial year ended March 31, 2020. “The real change is in IT services,” adds Mishra of Ciel HR. “We now get a lot more requirements in AI, GenAI, Cloud, DevOps, full-stack development, product management, and cybersecurity.”

 

The MNC ripple effect

 

The recent layoffs announced by multinational companies (MNCs) like Microsoft, Google, and Walmart, have cast fresh doubts about the roles and future of engineers at a time when AI, Gen AI and AI agents are changing the technology landscape, perhaps for good.