In August, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) long considered the crown jewel of India’s private sector and the entire IT industry were shaken when the company announced the layoffs of 12,000 employees. Many of these were mid-level professionals with 6 to 10 years of experience, comfortably earning and supporting families. What is even more disturbing is that employees were neither given prior notice nor informed about the impending job cuts. According to insiders, dozens of employees are being summoned daily by managers and pressured to resign “voluntarily,” with threats of salary freezes and blacklisting that would effectively block future employment opportunities.

Industry experts say such coercive resignations are widespread across the IT sector. Companies push employees into resigning to avoid responsibility and bypass labor laws such as industrial disputes and severance regulations. This practice of forcing resignations without notice is illegal, yet large corporations like TCS, Wipro, Infosys, and HCL carry it out under the tacit approval of labor departments and the government. Who dares challenge these “development engines” driving the so-called ‘New India’?

Earlier in June 2025, TCS had already tightened its “bench policy,” limiting bench periods to 35 days. Put simply, if employees remain without assignments for 35 days, they face demotion or dismissal. Employees are expected to find projects on their own; failure results in termination. Many had been living in constant fear of losing their livelihood, only for the CEO’s announcement of mass layoffs to shake them to their core. TCS’s move sent shockwaves through the industry, spreading anxiety among employees across other tech firms.

The reality is that the IT sector has been living under the shadow of job cuts and unemployment for years, especially since 2022. The global recession that began with the 2008 subprime crisis hit the Indian IT industry early in the following decade. By 2015–16, analysts declared the “golden era” of IT over. Hiring slowed, salaries stagnated, and layoffs began trickling in. Yet, the industry had weathered early turbulence by exploiting cheap skilled labor from engineering colleges and leveraging the dot-com boom for massive profits. What we see today is a deeper expression of capitalism’s long-term crisis shrinking profits and declining growth rates.

The COVID-19 pandemic provided temporary relief, as demand for online services surged in 2020 and 2021. IT companies responded with a hiring spree. However, by 2022, demand had dropped, and the bubble burst. The post-pandemic global capitalist crisis deepened further, triggering waves of layoffs in tech, ed-tech, and IT sectors. By 2022, fifty major companies cut 90,000 jobs worldwide. Meta alone fired 13,000 employees in 2022 and another 10,000 in 2023. In India, ed-tech companies Byju’s, Unacademy, and Vedantu cut 2,500, 1,300, and 1,100 jobs respectively. Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter led to the firing of 80% of its workforce within six months. Tesla cut 14,000 jobs in 2024. TCS alone lost 13,200 employees in the fiscal year 2023–24.

In 2025, layoffs have intensified. Microsoft, Meta, Intel, IBM, and Panasonic have cut 17,000, 4,000, 24,000, 8,000, and 10,000 jobs, respectively. Reports suggest that 501 tech jobs are being cut daily one every three minutes. A report in The Hindu notes that multinational companies have eliminated 105,000 positions globally this year, with 20% being in India. Nearly 45% were mid-level roles in HR, content, support, and coding. HCL has announced further cuts, and Infosys has halted hiring for the past year. A Times of India report in March 2025 revealed that 83% of graduating engineers and 46% of MBA students had neither jobs nor internships lined up. Campus placements in private colleges have nearly disappeared, forcing graduates to take up low-paid call center or data entry work after shelling out hefty fees. Others are chasing government exams like Bank PO, SSC, or railway recruitment, wasting their youth in uncertainty. Many graduates are driving for ride-sharing services or delivering food to make ends meet.

The mainstream media often parrots the claim that engineering graduates lack “adequate skills,” which is why they face unemployment. This is a dangerous lie spread by pro-capitalist experts to deflect blame from the system that produces joblessness. Who is responsible for this lack of skill? Private colleges opened solely for profit and complicit governments. Furthermore, companies themselves know that three to four months of training can make any graduate job-ready a practice they have long followed. Finally, has the country reached a level of economic development where production meets every citizen’s needs? Absolutely not! So why not employ these graduates in building infrastructure, hospitals, housing, and more if the goal were human welfare rather than corporate profits?

Some commentators raise alarms about AI, blaming it for job losses in tech sectors. However, technological advancements have always displaced labor at every stage of capitalist development. The real enemy is not AI it is the capitalist system that seeks to maximize profit by exploiting workers, regardless of their skills or needs. Under this system, AI is not a tool to ease labor but a weapon to strip workers of livelihoods.

While companies have previously laid off entry-level staff earning ₹25,000–30,000, today’s crisis has extended to mid-level employees earning ₹70,000–80,000 per month. Companies are slashing the workforce, extracting double the work from lower-paid employees, and discarding mid-level staff once salaries increase like throwing out a fly from milk. The pressure to work 70–90 hours weekly, the mounting fear of layoffs, and rising living costs are pushing employees toward stress and even suicide. A 2023 McKinsey report stated that 60% of Indian workers feel overworked and stressed the highest globally. A March 2025 report from The Hindu revealed that 25% of tech employees work more than 70 hours per week, and 72% work over 48 hours. About 83% suffer from severe mental and physical fatigue.

Rising inflation and declining savings exacerbate this crisis. RBI data shows household savings are at their lowest in 50 years. Skyrocketing prices for education, healthcare, fuel, and housing leave workers scrambling. Unsurprisingly, disgruntled workers often blame themselves, falling prey to extremist narratives instead of understanding the structural roots of their suffering.

This is the moment for revolutionary labor movements to step in. The growing unrest among tech and IT employees presents an opportunity to expose capitalism’s hollow promises and redirect anger toward systemic change. Though challenging especially when many tech workers consider themselves socially superior to manual laborers and identify with the ruling class this is precisely where political clarity and creative organizing can turn despair into solidarity.

Today, only a handful of revisionist unions operate in the sector, steering struggles into dead-end legal reforms. It is imperative to build militant unions, educate workers about capitalist exploitation, and unite them with broader working class movements. In doing so, the revolutionary movement can guide tech employees toward collective action and empower them to fight not just for jobs—but for dignity, security, and a society that values human need over corporate greed.

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