Dell's Executive VP has a message for techies: 'Upskill or leave'

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Computer technology giant Dell is asking employees to "up skill" or leave the sector, according to a report in The Hindu Business Line.

In an interview to the newspaper, Bask Iyer, CIO and Executive Vice-President of Dell and VMware said that he believes IT employees must surf the technology wave all the time. He added that employees must be prepared to opt out of the sector altogether if they are unable to up skill themselves.

He said that IT professionals can keep themselves relevant in the sector that is seeing severe layoffs.

"If a techie says he is a mainframe programmer, he or she won’t have a job today. The need of the hour is to up skill — ride the right technology waves, change and shift with the oncoming technology waves, much like surfing," he said.

"Techies must use and get familiar with new technologies, and sometimes guess what it is much ahead of time," he added.

Answering a question on how many professionals did the company lay off, Iyer said that he was making sure that all his "IT folks are best equipped to generate revenues rather than lay them off."

When asked why growth of India's IT services industry was dropping year-on-year, he said, "majority of the IT industry, everywhere in the world, is very conservative and that’s why their growth levels are dropping. One needs to have a healthy appetite for risk and change; if not, one has no business being in IT."