Q3 : again from Charles Assisi
*You noted that TCS historically ran a massive volume-based model, hiring thousands of graduates at lower starting packages (around ₹4.5 LPA).*
Yes it’s a sweat shop. I used to joke with CP Gurnani that he ran a technology-free technology company. He didn’t ever disagree but answered with “your stock broker friends don’t have a problem with what I do”. Ten years ago I tried to push him to enter data centres with high computing capability. The word ai was not in vogue then. I visited every single TechM facility. Attended their award ceremonies. Met hundreds of their so called star performers. I spent tens of hours with the entire leadership team including Jagdish Mitra , Atul Kunwar and even Anish Shah. I met almost everyone who mattered with no personal agenda. I was stone walled with utter nonsense like “we are a public company and our Board is exclusively idiots” to “our promoter is a film maker, not an engineer”. It was not a leadership problem, it was an ownership problem. Tatas have similar issues. And I think Infosys has reached the same place. Roshni Nadar Malhotra may have a superior perspective for two reasons – she is younger and second HCL has a strong ERS business. I have known her dad for forty years and one thing he knew really well was to handle the technical people – whether it was Raman or my close friend Mahendra Pratap who is no more.
*Question* If campus intake permanently drops because half a million bots are absorbing those initial junior roles, where does this massive cohort of aspiring young Indian professionals go? If the entry-level corporate safety net disappears, does the structural destruction you speak of hit the Indian labor market long before it fully registers on the stock market?
The stock markets have the lowest intellectual calibre of any industry. They are the last to know. They get fooled in all directions. Ai is the bubble of all bubbles. But then bubbles have substance. That is why investors get fooled. FOMO sets in. The dot com has delivered and exceeded on every single promise. But 20 years later. Each subsequent bubble is larger.
Bubbles burst. They don’t taper.
I visit colleges around the country. We have a tragic situation. Blog.satishmehta.in has some of my posts.
We don’t have an employment crisis. We have a productivity and quality of education crisis.
Just a year ago I was with Jaipur Rugs in Jaipur. The daughter was doing brilliant work on design. The son is an angel investor and had a useless discussion saying robots could not weave carpets. I opted out of the conversation.
A bullet once fired cannot be undone with an apology. Or with regret. The dead don’t come back. They don’t talk either.
Ai will destroy the concept of a corporate. Or of a nation state. And of money.
The question is meaningless.