‘I Am Sick and Tired of Constant Upskilling Expectations in Indian IT’

A software developer on Reddit recently summed up a growing unease in India’s tech workforce: no matter how much you learn, it never feels enough. The post described a cycle of working all day and then spending nights “upskilling,” only to find that the goalposts had shifted again. 

"I feel as if I am constantly living on the edge, as if my career is never settled. I complete one certification and four new pop up. Despite all this, there is no job security, always a fear of getting laid off," the Redditor posted.

The sentiment struck a chord, with many echoing the same frustration: learning no longer feels like growth, but survival.

That anxiety is now spilling beyond anonymous forums into real-world conversations, with professionals and industry voices revealing a deeper tension as artificial intelligence reshapes expectations of what it means to stay relevant in tech.

But for many developers, the issue is not just access to opportunity; it is the pace and nature of change itself, and how unevenly it is being felt across experience levels.

Ranjith Kumar PS, VP of AI and Technology at food brand Khetika, says the pressure is not uniform, and in many ways, it is more intense for those further along in their careers.

“With the experienced professionals, the problem is greater,” he tells AIM. “The reason being they got used to a certain way of working.”

What has changed now is not just the need to learn new tools or languages, but to fundamentally rethink how work gets done.

For mid- and senior-level professionals, the challenge feels compounded. “People with 15+ years of experience are facing the heat more,” he adds, as they juggle shifting technical expectations alongside team and delivery responsibilities.

At the other end of the spectrum, freshers are entering the workforce with a different gap.

“They don’t have the core skill… they don’t code,” Kumar says. “They are fine using more AI… but they can’t take code.”

The result is a workforce split in two directions: experienced engineers are struggling to unlearn and adapt, and younger entrants are leaning heavily on AI tools without strong fundamentals—both trying to navigate a system that is changing faster than they can keep up with.

Experience is Irrelevant

On the ground, developers say the shift is already blurring traditional distinctions.

A Drupal developer, who does not wish to be named, remarks that in the AI boom, there is little difference between a fresher and someone with over a decade of experience. “Whatever a fresher does with Claude is the same thing experienced people would do,” the developer tells AIM.

“The only difference is that the experienced ones will debug better, but that is not recognised much because Claude is also capable of doing the debugging job,” the person adds.

The consequence, they say, is mounting pressure on senior employees. “There is immense pressure on senior employees to upskill and understand how to deploy AI in workflows and understand the bigger picture.”

In some cases, the perceived value of experience itself is being questioned. “Whatever upskilling you do, at the end of the day, experience has become irrelevant,” the developer laments, adding that the shift could favour “AI-native freshers” while reducing overall hiring needs.

For others, the pressure feels more existential.

“We have always been compared to each other from birth. But now we are being compared with AI, and there is a high chance AI will win,” Amit Gujar, an AI developer, fears.

That shift is forcing a rethink of what the job even entails. “We need to keep up with the AI race, we need to always think differently, because mundane tasks are gone, we have to think creatively,” he reflects.

This transition—from routine execution to creative problem-solving—is fast becoming the new baseline for developers. But as expectations evolve faster than roles themselves, what that actually means in practice remains unclear for many.

Ansh Arora, Programme and Partnerships Manager at open-source software non-profit FOSS United, believes the nature of differentiation itself is shifting.

“Open-source contributions are an excellent way of showcasing your hard (technical) and soft (communication, teamwork) skills. With most companies moving away from traditional hiring mechanisms… open source hiring is becoming more prominent,” he says, adding that the focus is now on problem-solving skills as developers are increasingly being judged on “the problems they decide to work on, and their approach to solving those problems.”

Yet, even as AI promises efficiency, it is also creating new forms of stress.

“The AI world is moving too fast for people to keep up, which has created a lot of FOMO among developers,” he observes. “We are also seeing immense amounts of cognitive overload and AI-induced insecurity.”

Much of the fatigue, he adds, is not purely technical. “A significant amount of fatigue is coming from constant overthinking about new tools and the fear of falling behind.”

Research backs this growing sense of strain.

A study by ServiceNow and Pearson estimates that 16.2 million workers in India will need reskilling in AI and automation to meet demand. Globally, McKinsey & Company finds 46% of business leaders cite skill gaps as a major barrier to AI adoption, while nearly 60% of the workforce will require retraining by 2030.

Meanwhile, Deloitte, in its State of AI in the Enterprise 2026 report, notes that although companies are seeing productivity gains from AI, only a fraction have meaningfully restructured workflows—leaving employees to navigate shifting expectations largely on their own.

“There is a massive demand for trained personnel. “But it remains unfulfilled because professionals seem frozen,” says Riz Thakur, Founder of TheAIOfficers.com, offering fractional AI leadership. 

“They know AI is going to impact them, and they need to be upskilled, but… they are not taking any steps,” he adds, pointing to “fear of the unknown” and “fear of failure.”

He also stresses the need to rethink how AI itself is understood. In his view, perception remains a key barrier. “Professionals think AI is technical, hence not confident.”

The Reddit post that sparked the conversation may have been anecdotal, but the pattern it reflects is becoming harder to ignore. For many, the challenge is no longer whether to upskill—but how to do so in a way that is sustainable, meaningful, and actually keeps pace with a rapidly changing definition of work.