What the CEO of Microsoft-owned GitHub has to say on the company laying off 80% of its employees in India

Microsoft-owned developer platform GitHub has onboarded an additional 2.2 million developers in India, bringing the total number of Indian developers to 15.4 million. GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke who is in India spoke about a range of issues including the company’s decision to terminate 80% of its workforce in India in 2023 as part of a reorganisation process.
Dohmke told Economic Times that it was a challenging decision for the company due to economic circumstances, which affected certain segments of its team in India. “We didn’t make that decision lightly; it was based on the product areas these employees were working on, not because of India. Fortunately, the majority of these employees, originally from Microsoft, possessed skills that allowed Microsoft to rehire them, despite the process not being ideal. Nonetheless, we remain excited about India,” Dohmke said.
Nonetheless, GitHub remains enthusiastic about the opportunities in India, he added.

How AI will help Indian IT companies grow

Responding to the wide-ranging apprehension that Artificial Intelligence (AI) will pose challenges to Indian IT giants as businesses automate tasks that Indian companies have traditionally performed. Dohmke said that AI would lift Indian IT companies to the next level instead of disrupting them. “We’re dealing with an ever-growing amount of software in the system. No company I’ve encountered deletes more code than they write each day; the complexity keeps increasing,” he said.
“We’re constantly maintaining and updating software, adapting to the latest technology. With AI systems, we’re entering a new level of complexity, requiring even more software developers, especially in India,” he said. The developer community in India on GitHub is projected to surpass that of the United States, which currently stands at 21 million, by 2027.
“About 200,000 computer science graduates are coming out of engineering degrees, and that creates a convergence. India could be the leader, not only in software but also in AI. Children and adults alike will learn to code in their native language, leading to a prolonged groundswell of developers,” said Dohmke in an interview to TOI.