If TCS is truly preparing for the future, introspection must start in the C-suite
When Tata Consultancy Services announced it would lay off 12,000 employees, it hid behind phrases like “future-ready”, “realignment”, and “strategic initiatives”. These aren’t explanations; they’re camouflage. Beneath the polite language lies an unsettling truth: India’s biggest private employer is finally acknowledging that its core business model—legions of employees performing predictable, routine tasks—is obsolete.
Nearly three decades ago, Intel’s legendary CEO Andy Grove recounted a radical act of self-reflection in his book ‘Only the Paranoid Survive’. Facing existential disruption, Intel’s leadership symbolically fired themselves. They walked out of the building and asked, “If we were starting fresh today, would we hire ourselves again?”
Today, TCS and its Indian IT peers desperately need Grove’s dose of brutal introspection. TCS’s layoffs aren’t just about middle managers and seasoned coders losing jobs; they’re about leadership losing relevance.
Look closely at TCS’s announcement and you’ll notice what it doesn’t say: accountability stops neatly below the top floor. AI-driven automation is reshaping entire organizations, yet strangely, the people deciding who stays and who goes remain untouched. When an organization built on human capital claims that part of its workforce is obsolete, shouldn’t the people who hired and led that workforce come under equal scrutiny?
When Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced layoffs earlier this year amid record profitability, veteran tech commentator Om Malik pierced through Nadella’s corporate doublespeak:
“His narrative framework attempts to make the brutal reality of our AI-driven future psychologically tolerable… Satya and other corporate leaders can’t really say that, so they resort to verbal obfuscation.” — Om Malik,The Satya of Satya’s Layoff Memo (26 July 2025).
TCS’s decision to lay off thousands employs the same rhetoric. It cloaks harsh truths—human redundancy driven by AI, strategic missteps by leadership, and uncomfortable questions about executive relevance—in comforting phrases like “future-ready” and “strategic realignment”.
Over the past few quarters, the company’s competitive resilience has weakened, growth has stalled, and investor confidence has wobbled. Yet, the leadership’s chosen solution isn’t self-examination or accountability at the top but deep cuts among mid-level ranks.
If TCS is truly preparing itself for the future, shouldn’t introspection start in the C-suite? This is true not only for India’s largest IT company, but its peers as well.
Ironically, when the future knocked on its door, India’s IT leadership chose familiarity over vision. Infosys didn’t retain its former CEO Vishal Sikka, who once led the company’s collaboration and potential investments in OpenAI, the organization now synonymous with modern AI disruption.
We already know TCS considers middle managers and veteran coders disposable. The more uncomfortable question—still unanswered—is whether its senior executives and board members are themselves ready for the era they’re guiding the company into.
AI’s ruthless logic spares no one—neither the programmers whose code is now written by algorithms, nor the executives whose strategies depend on yesterday’s assumptions.
Grove understood this decades ago: paranoia and brutal honesty are not virtues but survival skills. If TCS, and indeed India’s IT sector, hopes to survive this seismic shift, the leadership must confront the same unforgiving standard they apply to their employees.
Which brings us to an essential, sharp-edged truth: If generative AI can churn out code faster than a graduate, shouldn’t it also disrupt the comfort of those who sit in executive lounges and boardrooms? It’s easy to pin obsolescence only on employees. But CEOs shaped by years of predictable revenues, infinite hiring, and incremental growth might be just as redundant as the Java coder they dismissed.
It’s time to ask the IT sector’s top executives the same harsh question they’re asking their teams: Exactly how does your experience make you indispensable in the AI era? If the answer isn’t clear, perhaps they’re part of the redundancy they’re trying so hard to erase.
India’s IT industry must do better. It must move beyond scrutinizing armies of coders now labeled redundant and instead direct its hardest, most critical gaze into the leadership mirror. If today’s CEOs can’t convincingly answer Grove’s piercing question, maybe it’s finally time someone else did the hiring.
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