Tech layoffs ease, but companies go slow on hiring

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Tech layoffs decline in the US since the mass job cuts at the beginning of the year, the worst of the layoffs in India may also be largely behind us, top industry experts told ET. But companies will continue to focus on how best to utilise existing capacity and go slow on hiring, except for niche skills, as demand constraints and lack of visibility continue to weigh on the entire tech cohort of services, products and tech enabled startups, the experts said.

“The good news is that demand for technology still exists but decision-making is slow, and consequently, so is business growth. The environment for layoffs, except those happening because of funding issues in startups, is largely behind us,” said Sangeeta Gupta, senior VP, Nasscom.

Anandorup Ghose, partner, Deloitte India is also of the view that the bulk of layoffs are over. “This is both on account of increasing stability across the world economies and lowering recession risks as well as the fact that most companies have done rightsizing of their workforce as was required,” he said.

Nitin Bhatt, partner & technology sector leader at EY, said that in many organisations, the conversation is around cutting the long tail of accounts – which represents low-revenue clients – to free up resources who can be redeployed and if not then eased out. “Virtually all companies are running reskilling and redeployment initiatives to best utilise existing capacity and align supply with demand,” he added.

Big tech layoffs have steadily declined in the US through the first seven months of the year, from 90,000 or so in January to about 10,000 in July, according to reports. Even Cisco, which had another round of layoffs last month, said this was part of the restructuring plans announced