Beware Of The “Upskill Or Die” Scam

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“Cognizant fires 30,000 employees at mid managment levels.”

“Infosys lays off 10,000 project managers.”

The media has been full of such reports for a while now. The common narrative in these doomsday prophecies is as follows:

World is going digital. Employees at middle management of Indian IT Services companies are not geared up for digital technologies. Besides, they’re expensive. Therefore, companies will have to get rid of them.

In response, scores of training providers and career transformation coaches have jumped in to shill upskilling courses and fill social media with exhortations that midlevel managers must upskill themselves or die. Click here and here for a couple of examples.

In my opinion, “Upskill or Die” is a scam.

There’s no doubt that jobs at project manager level are at risk, especially in the aftermath of the pandemic outbreak. But not because of the reasons given by these “upskill or die” pundits.

No midlevel project manager in an Indian IT Services company has survived for so long by working on just one technology skill. Through their 15-20 years career, they’ve upskilled themselves in a variety of technologies ranging from mainframe and client-server through to Web, Java, and many others in between. During the last 4-5 years, many of them have also picked up enough digital technologies to the extent required at PM level.

The real problem faced by midlevel managers is very different.

Zero customization SAAS, no-code / rapid application development platforms, Robot Process Automation and other digital technologies have slashed overall project management workload. Where software engagements on traditional tech stacks required 100 PMs, digital tech stack has slashed the demand to 30 PMs. Basically, demand for PMs has crashed by 70%, which has caused a massive threat of redundancies at mid level. Increasing supply via upskilling is not going to solve that problem. In fact, in the absence of new business on digital technologies, it will only exacerbate the problem.

Some may latch on to the “to the extent required at middle management level” qualification in the above paragraph and ask if the aforementioned threat can be overcome if project managers go beyond the surface and acquire skills in Social-Mobile-Analytics-Cloud (SMAC) and other technologies that underpin digital.

I’m afraid it won’t.

Just imagine a project manager with 20 years experience. Suppose he picks up coding skills in a sunrise language like Python and applies for a job as Python programmer. What do you think will happen?

Either he will be rejected as “overqualified”, or he’ll be offered the job at the payscale of an entry-level Python programmer. To quote a real life example, a project manager at a Top 10 IT company earning INR 26 Lakhs was told that his job was made redundant. If he wanted to stay, he’d have to take up the role of a developer at INR 5 Lakhs. How many project managers will agree to take such a drastic pay cut?

Then let’s consider upskilling in business skills to move to nontech roles like Account Manager, Client Engagement Manager, and Relationship Manager.

Yes, a Project Manager can learn sales and relationship management skills and not only hold on to their jobs but also get promoted to the aforementioned business roles.

But the numbers are extremely unfavorable: For every 1000 developers, there are 10 Project Managers but only one AM / CEM / RM. So, even assuming all 10 PMs upskill and pick up sales and relationship skills, there’s only place for one of them to get promoted to a business role. The other nine PMs will still be rendered redundant.

We’ve seen three plugs for upskilling:

  1. Within the project manager role
  2. To junior programmer role
  3. To senior business role.

We’ve also seen that all three are scams.

But that won’t stop upskilling training providers from spinning the “Upskill or Die” yarn to unsuspecting midlevel managers. Since it resonates with the mood of times – aka has great Product Zeitgeist Fit – it might work.

But it’s still a scam and consider yourselves forewarned.

If upskilling is not the solution to the looming threat of redundancy at project manager level, then what is?

Sell more digital, is what I’d say.

But, as I highlighted in Indian IT – Crisis Or No Crisis? and Indian IT Industry Needs Better Quality Sellers & Marketers, Not Engineers – Part 2, it’s not that easy.

Besides, given my sales and marketing background, you might think I’m behaving like the guy with the hammer to whom the whole world looks like a nail!

So, while this is not career advice, let me list below a few solutions proposed by people way above my paygrade and / or elected to office in landslide victories:

  • Sell pakora
  • Become Uber Driver Partner, Swiggy Delivery Partner
  • Create jobs, don’t seek jobs
  • Ban state immigration
  • Universal Basic Income
  • Organic farming
  • Robot tax
  • Levy 2% wealth tax on Top 1000 wealthiest people and redistribute the wealth to the needy.

Try them at your own peril.