Tech professionals return to IT companies, prisoners after startup dreams disappear.

After losing talent to startups that paid well to employees of IT service providers like Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys, Wipro, and HCL, the trend has now been reversed as the startup industry is shaken by mass layoffs and fundraising cold. People are abandoning their business goals in favor of a more secure job environment. After losing talent to startups that provided huge paychecks to the staff of IT service companies like Tata Consultancy Services NSE -0.47 percent (TCS NSE -0.47 percent), Infosys NSE -1.00 percent, Wipro NSE -1.00 percent, Wipro NSE -1.00 percent, Wipro NSE -1.00 percent, Wipro.

However, they all reported stability in quarterly attrition with better bonuses and raised, better hiring practices, and work-life balance. 

 “As of 2020, many startups and pre-IPO unicorns are heavily hiring. As a result, there has been a steady increase in startup job requests. However, layoffs in some of these companies have caused negative sentiment among job seekers,” said Balasundaram. 

 Fullstack engineering, data engineering,  product management and DevOps roles are in demand in IT companies, GCCs and Software as a Service (SaaS) startups, he said. The overall workforce of ITBPM in India is currently around 5.1 million people, of which about 420,000 work in startups. 

 Almost 20% of this workforce has left startups to voluntarily join the ITBPM ecosystem in the past year, he added. 

 A 31-year-old startup employee, who did not wish to be named, told ET  he moved from working at a top consulting firm to starting a  startup in January 2020.

Though he joined with a significant pay rise and the promise of a dynamic role, he quickly regretted his decision as funds dried up and the startup struggled to pay staff after the Covid19 pandemic. 

 “In March 2021, I started looking for work elsewhere. Although the first few months were difficult, I received several job offers in June and soon joined one of the Big Four (consulting firms). Indeed, two other employees of the startup team joined the same organization while at least three others.