Developers are Finally Getting Their Jobs Back After Layoffs
Most big-tech companies are hiring developers again, offering thousands of jobs. Similarly, the market beyond big-tech is rebounding with several recruiters calling developers for interviews. This is after the year-long (or more) fear of AI replacing developer jobs, that took place in several cases. The recent resurgence of companies hiring developers started back in June when there were around 117k valid and unique job openings in tech at JobsCopilot.ai. The number has now increased multifold. Even the companies that laid off developers just a year back citing AI as a reason, have learned from and accepted their rushed decisions. They are now rehiring developers for those roles. This includes companies such as Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Meta, NVIDIA, and Tesla, to name a few. Some of them laid off around 20,000 employees just this year. Santiago Valdarrama, the founder of Tedeily, shared that the founder of a company (not revealing the name) that laid off most of its developers a year back, expressed to him, “I think we were too early…things didn’t work out as we were hoping.” Furthermore, this case is especially important for the offices of big-tech companies in India, as around 85,000 techies graduating this year will be looking for jobs. For example, Google laying off its Python programmers team to outsource to cheaper options might be a good chance for Indian developers to finally hop on board. Moreover, after the year-long predictions and the sad state of hiring in Indian IT, it is finally showing signs of growth. This has resulted in a boom of hiring in a battle against, and for, generative AI. Even Indian startups have started hiring back developers after laying off around 30,000 people in 2022 and freezing hiring for around 12-18 months. Thanks to AI, startups’ hiring budgets have increased. Even the Indian IT Following a weak FY24, hiring is expected to increase by 8.5% in FY25, which will continue until March 2025. This means around 150,000 fresher jobs will be open next quarter, which is in line with the fresh graduates who will be looking for jobs after college. This is due to the billion-dollar deals that the IT giants have been making and the increase in demand for the BFSI segment. According to a report from Indeed, the IT sector is actively hiring for roles such as application developer, software engineer, full-stack developer, and senior software engineer. There’s also a growing demand for .NET developers, software architects, DevOps engineers, data engineers, and front-end developers. We will finally see a reduction in the bench size of Indian IT, which has been growing for the last year. This is after TCS announced hiring 35,000 freshers last year, while others, such as Infosys, Wipro, and Accenture, froze hiring of more than 25,000 developers combined. Now, they are looking to hire around 80,000 freshers combined. The goal to focus on automation and the belief that upskilling the existing workforce with generative AI would be able to achieve that clearly did not go according to plan. Hiring is Back, Unlike Some Predicted Slack started to rehire former staff to fuel its generative AI initiative just six months after Salesforce, its parent company, laid off around 8,000 people. Slack back then had said that the developer layoffs were because of generative AI. Just a few weeks ago, Klarna also cut 50% of its workforce, ending partnerships with Salesforce and Workday for what it claims is a generative AI overhaul. It seems like companies haven’t yet realised that laying off people in the name of generative AI doesn’t work in the long run. Cost-cutting was one of the biggest reasons why companies started laying off people last year. This was after they overhired developers during the COVID era only to realise their inability to sustain the jobs later. The blame on AI for these layoffs turned out to not be true since it was mostly because of cost-cutting. “The story ‘we’re so productive now we don’t need employees anymore’ sounds a lot more palatable for investors than ‘we over-hired and we’re struggling,” quipped Francois Chollet, the creator of Keras. When Paytm laid off 10% of its workforce blaming AI, it was later reported that the layoff was mostly due to poor quarters and stagnant growth. It turns out that companies struggle to perform well after laying off their developers, and when things go wrong, they shift the blame on AI. But apparently, Klarna’s case is different. The CEO, Sebastian Siemiatkowski, said that AI will play a crucial role in cutting operational costs, contributing to a 50% planned reduction in the company’s workforce. This move is expected to help the company operate more effectively while maintaining higher quality standards. Regardless, some companies still search for a “generative AI solution” to cut costs. With the market pulling itself back up, companies might learn a lesson or two. We might see more cases where companies are rehiring developers, as AI is definitely not replacing developers anytime soon.
“I think we were too early…things didn’t work out as we were hoping.”
We might see more cases where companies are rehiring developers, as AI is definitely not replacing developers anytime soon.
["AI Developers", "Developers", "Klarna", "Layoffs"]
["Go", "AI Developers", "Keras", "Layoffs", "AI", "automation", "Klarna", "Python", "Aim", "generative AI", "DevOps", "R", "Developers", "startup"]
["AI", "generative AI", "Aim", "Keras", "Python", "R", "Go", "DevOps", "automation", "startup"]
Mohit writes about AI in simple, explainable, and often funny words. He's especially passionate about chatting with those building AI for Bharat, with the occasional detour into AGI.