Old jobs fade, but new jobs appear in Indian infotech

Thirty years ago, there were typewriters. What happened to all those stenographer and typist jobs? Well, we did not see them getting laid off by the thousands, but many of them reinvented themselves.

Thirty years ago, there were typewriters. What happened to all those stenographer and typist jobs? Well, we did not see them getting laid off by the thousands, but many of them reinvented themselves in various secretarial tasks done with computers – even as a new generation came into the work-force, learning to type on its own, even on touchscreens.

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Technology does change things, often causing fears, but new trends emerge to provide new opportunities. This thought came to me last week after reading a news report that many of the coding work done by software engineers are now being replaced by algorithms. In simple English, they are like like a supercode writing simple coders out of their jobs.

Meawhile, in Hyderabad, the National Association of Software and Service Companies held its Big Data & Analytics Summit – on the new trend of services and software that try to make sense and generate intelligence out of data that comes by terabyte-loads onto the Internet –be it from websites, apps, blogs, social media posts or even machines connected to the Web. Such intelligence helps companies and policymakers take better decisions.

Big Data and Analytics can be similar to IT and BPO in spinning a new wave of jobs and services for Indian companies –though it might evolve new skills. There are only 29,000 analytics employees in India but the global analytics business is expected to grow at 12 per cent every year to $121 billion by 2016. This would involve both software and analytics – and new jobs.