Layoffs in TCS in 2025

Tata Consultancy Services has been rightly seen so far as the bellwether company for the Indian IT industry. Its recent announcement to lay off 2% of its workforce (~ 12K employees) and that too mostly from the middle to senior management levels has come as a shocker to many. It is now a growing indication of perhaps the following:

1. For far too long the Indian IT industry preferred to leverage on its cost arbitrage and not invest in moving up the value chain

2. Automation, artificial intelligence are no longer trends of the future - they are here / present already and having an impact

3. This is a pointer towards increasing span of control for middle and senior management members i.e., manage larger teams with lesser resources

The below article from Business Today magazine dwells on this topic.

TCS layoffs shake Indian IT: Mass exits show even ‘safe’ jobs aren’t untouchable - BusinessToday

My view is that this won't be the first nor the last layoff in the coming weeks and months. As technology shifts eat up jobs, the downstream questions and choices around degree education and career prospects will become increasingly a dinner table conversation across households.