Working in AI offers no shelter from AI, new India survey of tech professionals suggests
The study, which covered 1,552 India-based professionals, found that 66 per cent of those in AI/ML functions expect a layoff or a significant reduction in headcount within their team over the next three to six months. That places the discipline near the top of the…
Engineering, frequently named as an early casualty of code-generating tools, emerged as one of the more secure functions. Enterprise software and payments companies dominated the upper end of the range.
What drives the unease is rarely a formal announcement. The mood is reflected in discussion on the platform itself.
What Happened
Engineering accounted for the largest share of respondents at 39 per cent, followed by AI/ML at 25 per cent, product and design at 9 per cent, sales and marketing and operations, support and G&A at 7 per cent each, and data and.
The study, which covered 1,552 India-based professionals, found that 66 per cent of those in AI/ML functions expect a layoff or a significant reduction in headcount within their team over the next three to.
That places the discipline near the top of the anxiety table, behind sales and marketing at 68 per cent and just ahead of product and design at 65 per cent.
Only 24 per cent of engineers described a cut as "very likely", the lowest share recorded for any team, and overall at-risk sentiment within engineering stood at 58 per cent, marginally below the survey-wide.
Key Details
Companies returning fewer than 10 responses were excluded from company-level analysis.
Data and analytics fared better still, with at-risk sentiment of 51 per cent and four in ten respondents calling a cut unlikely — the most confident reading of any function.
Perceived risk was highest at Salesforce, where 81 per cent of respondents anticipated cuts, followed by Oracle at 80 per cent, Uber at 77 per cent and PayPal at 75 per cent.
Two Indian SaaS firms sat at the opposite extreme, with Zoho registering 9 per cent and Freshworks 44 per cent.
Why It Matters
Among respondents who expect headcount reductions, hiring freezes were cited most often as the strongest signal, at 27 per cent, followed by cuts to budgets or headcount targets at 24 per cent.
Layoffs already announced accounted for only 9 per cent of responses, suggesting that anticipation, rather than confirmation, shapes how teams read their prospects.
Across the full sample, 24 per cent reported seeing no warning signals at all.
What Reports Say
Coverage of the story so far points to:
Blind conducted the survey in July 2026.
Continued reporting by t2ONLINE as more details emerge
