🧨 Where are the Entry-Level IT Jobs?
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Over the last three decades, India’s IT sector thrived on a simple formula: hire in bulk, train fast, deploy globally. Entry-level roles, often referred to as L1 jobs, formed the backbone of this strategy. But that linear hiring model is slowly collapsing.
By Mohit Pandey
Despite continued global demand for tech talent, the nature of work itself has shifted dramatically.
TCS added only 625 employees in the last quarter of FY25. Wipro, which hired 10,000 freshers this year, had initially planned to onboard 38,000 just two years ago.
The drop is stark—and intentional.
As AI and automation redefine workflows, companies are no longer relying on armies of entry-level coders. Generative AI tools like GitHub Copilot and ChatGPT are handling many of the tasks that junior developers once owned.
From writing and debugging code to generating test cases, AI has not just replaced some functions—it has transformed the expectations altogether.
According to Mohit Saxena, CTO and co-founder at InMobi, AI has shifted the spectrum entirely. “It has lowered the bar for becoming an average engineer,” he explains.
Now, even non-engineers can produce code comparable to a weak developer.
“The gap between average and excellent has widened,” Saxena warned. “If you’re caught in the middle, not evolving, not leveraging AI, you’re in trouble.”
And the phenomenon is global.
Only 7% of big tech hires are now new grads. In the US, new graduate hires at big-tech firms have plummeted over 50% since 2019, according to SignalFire’s latest State of Talent report.
Across the board, companies are no longer evaluating new hires on whether they can write a few hundred lines of code. As Neeti Sharma, CEO at TeamLease Digital, put it: “They’re looking for people who can write prompts better.”
Fresher onboarding delays, shrinking profit margins, and flattened salary growth reflect a deeper systemic transition. The old playbook—recruit thousands of graduates, train them on-the-job, and bill clients—is rapidly becoming obsolete.
The hiring pipeline has shrunk dramatically. According to TeamLease Digital, only 1.6 lakh engineering graduates are expected to find employment this year—well below the 2.3 lakh placed in FY23.
IT firms don’t go to all engineering colleges—just the IITs, IIITs, NITs, and a few select Tier 1 institutes. This exclusivity makes internships no longer a “nice to have,” but often the only path to a high-quality tech job.
All in all, it’s no longer about being employable—it’s about being irreplaceable.
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