Coding is nearly dead, or at least the routine of it. What do coders do now? Clearly, the future of software is not in the hands of software engineers.It’s in the hands of artists, mathematicians, scientists, and explorers. That’s where we must go.

Ten years ago, it would have been unusual to find a bright Indian mind forego opportunity to pursue engineering in the IITs for studying corporate law or joining a chef school in Finland. Today, this shouldn't be a surprise, because the gig economy is breaking social definitions of good and bad. Inside IITs, it’s a worry, with almost half the teaching positions lying vacant and global ranking of an IIT seems to be on a slippery slope every year.

But the gig economy has its whim. Sometimes, they pick alternate career paths to steer clear of future automation possibilities, and that's possibly when they get it wrong. Automation doesn't depend on the level of cognition or labor involved in a job, but the amount of routine involved in it.

Look at law, for example. A field that's largely believed to be automation safe has a 39 percent chance of job loss due to automation in the next two decades. Accounting and auditing have a vast component of collecting, processing and interpreting data, and there fore has 86 percent (McKinsey, 2016) chance to get automated. The 3.9 million software professionals in the Indian IT may be living in denial. Are they?

The large Indian IT players who have been the bellwethers of the Indian Stock Markets have been playing it smart and constantly lowering market expectations, and putting in a performance to match these reduced expectations.

They have been deflecting reality with ‘bad news’ on H1B reforms and automation, followed by publicized re-skilling initiatives. They are compelled to, for their large size of operations.

Automation doesn't depend on the level of cognition or labor involved in a job, but the amount of routine involved in it

The large-scale, multi-year relationships that require effort over efficiency are shrinking. New-age digital services that include IoT, Machine Language and Artificial Intelligence aren't a commodity yet – which is where the sweet spot of mass offshoring was in early 2000. They don’t need more coding but more data handling and understanding. For digital, explicit coding, creates dead applications from day one. We are heading into an era where there is no glory in algorithms, and a vast majority needs to be slicing and dicing data. The metrics of these greener digital uplands are already emerging and these aren’t numbers recruited per year or quarterly profits and revenue, but ‘per capita revenue’ and ‘per capita compute’.

All these changes are having an impact on the traditional IT software outsourcing business as we know it today. The cost-arbitrage is dead, and so are clichés like delivering value and exceeding customer expectations. Instead, they need to throw-in their might behind R&D and STEAM. Indian IT players in particular, have been miserly in spending R&D dollars. On a lighter note, if the pharmaceutical industry were to follow what we do, we would still be getting 14 injections every time a dog bites us.

Spending on, and making money out of research does not come easy. It's necessary to elevate us from ‘being impacted’, to the one who is ‘creating the impact’. At Pramati, we took the long road. We have been creating impact long before the prime minister conceptualized ‘Make in India’, and we have learnt many lessons along the way. Our leadership shares these in forums like iSpirit, the fledgling Indian software product association.

The days of large-campus companies are fading away; it’s back to basics, where less is more. Indeed, software is one ‘job’ where a single individual, single-handedly can make a global impact. There are umpteen examples, even historically the Ritchie’s and Torvald’s. Every IT professional needs to gauge and reinvent themselves in an ever-changing reality. We have the option to stay rooted and become irrelevant. Or stay relevant and reap the rewards.

Of course, we always have the option to write a blog on how-I-junked-my-job-and-traveled-the-world. I am not against those inspiring souls who do so, mind you – just that, let it be your informed choice. I think the TV Series ‘Outsourced’ has outlived its day. The next blockbuster series could well be titled ‘India vs. India’! Or...hey, is there one already on the floor?