Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu predicts tough times for software jobs. AI is not the only villain for hiring slump

Sridhar Vembu, the chief scientist and founder of Zoho, believes that the current challenges in the software job market stem not from artificial intelligence replacing jobs—at least not yet—but from a deeper systemic issue. In a lengthy post on X, Vembu, who has been associated with the software industry for 30 years, said over the past few decades, enterprise software has accumulated massive inefficiencies due to an influx of venture capital, private equity, and IPO-driven funding.
This overcapitalization led to an artificial expansion of the software industry, creating a market bloated with duplicated IT systems, excessive hiring, and misplaced incentives, he said.
One of the primary drivers of this inefficiency, Vembu said, has been aggressive marketing by software vendors, adding that cCompanies have long relied on tactics that instill fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) in corporate customers, pushing enterprises to increase their IT spending without necessarily improving efficiency. «Software vendors applied liberal doses of marketing spending to spread Fear (of missing out) and Uncertainty (»tech is changing, you need us") and Doubt («are you confused? trust us») among corporate customers and the result was ever growing IT spending," he said.

Large enterprises, particularly in the West, he said, fell into the cycle of continuously acquiring new software solutions, only to spend even more on integrating and maintaining these complex systems. Instead of streamlining operations, these bloated IT