Tech talent movement from India to the UAE and the larger GCC region is still growing strong, with “good talents” flooded with multiple offers from companies in the Gulf region, despite large-scale layoffs by several tech giants globally, industry insiders said.
GCC companies are also spreading their net wide by increasingly looking at global tech hubs such as Silicon Valley for sourcing Indian tech talents, taking advantage of the growing pool of ‘available hands’ due to the ongoing employee firings by tech companies.
Besides the demand uptick in the private sector, the spike in tech talent flow is also attributed to the pro-employee policies by the UAE and other governments in the region, providing ease of movement of talent.
Indian tech talents
“We are still seeing a steady increase in movement of tech talent into the GCC region [from India],” A Ramachandran, founder and chief executive officer of MyRCloud, a tech-based recruitment marketplace mainly focusing on the Middle East, told Arabian Business.
“Interestingly, candidates from India still prefer tech companies in the Gulf region over tech roles in companies in other industry sectors, despite all the talks about the troubles in the tech sector,” Ramachandran said.
Tech talent demand is still high in fintech, healthtech, edtech and similar tech-enabled sectors.
Ramachandran said he did not see much of an impact on the sector in the Middle East due to the forced attrition of talent from large tech companies.
“[As of now] this (layoffs by tech MNCs) seems to be more of a consolidation of manpower,” he said.
Industry insiders said the demand is higher for leadership roles in GCC-based companies, while there is a marginal slowdown in hiring for lower-level tech jobs – in the 4-8 year experience category – compared to last year.
“The marginal slowdown is only on relative terms but there is still demand for these roles,” a senior executive with a Dubai-based HR firm said.
Ramachandran, however, said the trend of startups in the GCC region offering fat pay packages to woo tech talents is no longer there, with the tightening of funds to the sector.
“There are also some early signs of a ‘tech talent winter’ in the startup sector [in the Gulf region] also. But it’s too early to say whether it will gather momentum or suddenly the situation will change with the sun again shining on the sector,” he said.
Human Resource (HR) experts said of late many of the GCC firms are also exploring hiring of talents, especially Indian tech talents, from global hubs such as Silicon Valley in the wake of tech MNCs letting go of thousands of employees.
“We are hearing stories of large tech organisations reneging on campus hires in the US. This will add to the available pool of talents there,” a hiring industry insider said.
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