In the past few years, Indian IT has been heavily criticised for extending offer letters to freshers and delaying onboarding. In certain cases, these giants rescinded their offer, citing potential cost-cutting measures, and not utilising their bench.
Cut to the present, the situation is the same, if not worse. As per latest reports, TCS, Wipro, Infosys, and HCLTech have been cutting their bench sizes and timing for the past 18 months to address slowing revenue growth.
This report follows the viral layoff of 350 Infosys Mysuru employees who had reportedly not cleared their assessment process.
As per UnearthInsight’s report, the average bench time has dropped from 45-60 days during FY20-21 to just 35-45 days currently. This trend is expected to worsen in 2026. According to data from Xpheno, the bench sizes will decrease by 22 percent in the coming two years.
“TCS, when are you gonna onboard me, it’s almost 8 months,” ranted a developer on Reddit, who got his offer letter in July last year and has been waiting ever since to get onboarded and do some real work.
According to data from staffing firm TeamLease Digital, benched employees who once accounted for 10-15% of the average overall headcount mix have now decreased to just 2-5%.
This represents a dramatic downsizing of reserve workforce capacity across the industry.
Why is it a Problem?
The concept of the ‘bench’ has long been a defining feature of India’s IT industry—a buffer zone of unassigned employees for the company. Reddit almost always has posts from employees ranting about being on the bench for long without any assigned work.
This state of professional limbo where employees remain on a company’s payroll without being assigned to billable projects is neither good news for the company, nor the person on the bench.
A developer alleged that LTIMindtree was not giving out joining letters to the freshers of the 2024 batch. “Instead of onboarding us, they are hiring for 2025. I’ve been waiting for the last two months for the offer letter,” they said.
Cognizant has also been accused of this practice. “They wasted our six months and then assigned us to a completely different domain and a support project,” rued a developer.
Another former Cognizant employee said that after onboarding and four months of Java Spring Boot training, they waited two months for project assignment. Placed on the bench, they struggled to find another project amid intense competition.
Two years later, they were terminated with three months of severance pay.
Furthermore, employees with 9 to 14 years of experience in legacy skills face a particularly high risk of bench-related layoffs. Companies are prioritising the retention of talent with niche skills like AI, creating vulnerability for mid-career professionals specialised in traditional technologies.
Another developer from a service firm from India said that they have 10 years of experience at the firm but have only done actual work for around six years.
Only Infosys has provided more explicit data regarding its bench size. In its Q4 FY23 earnings call, Infosys CFO Nilanjan Roy acknowledged that the company’s bench size had increased to 20% due to a drop in demand. This represents a significant portion of their workforce and indicates how bench sizes can fluctuate based on market conditions.
Firms Pushing for Utilisation is Not Good News
Indian IT has pushed utilisation rates higher, from historical norms of 70-75% to current targets of 80-85%. This higher threshold creates a more demanding environment for professionals, with a reduced tolerance for unbilled time.
For context, Infosys reported utilisation of 80.7% for the full FY24 and 82% for the fourth quarter, which they indicated was still below their comfort level of 84-85%.
The employee count also increased for the second consecutive quarter for Infosys, currently standing at 3,23,379. “We have had a strong hiring in Q3 with the addition of over 5,000 employees,” CEO Salil Parekh said during the last earnings call. He added that the firm is on track to onboard 15,000 to 20,000 freshers at the group level in FY25.
Similarly, Milind Lakkad, chief HR officer of TCS, shared updates on workforce initiatives, including over 25,000 promotions in Q3, bringing the total for the year to over 110,000. Campus hiring is on track, with plans to onboard more recruits next year.
“We also want to get our campus hiring on track with 40,000 people this year,” said Lakkad. What this means for the utilisation still remains a question.
Some IT majors reportedly don’t want to keep any bench at all and are passing on the pressure to staffing firms. As one staffing firm business lead noted, “They don’t have to invest on the bench, but staffing firms have to bear the costs to retain the engagement with the client IT firm.”
Some companies have implemented redeployment initiatives. For example, Mahindra Satyam and Tech Mahindra successfully redeployed over 3,500 employees from bench to productive work. However, such positive examples appear to be exceptions rather than the norm in the current landscape.
AI will have a huge impact on the Indian IT workforce as the size of the teams decreases, which is clear from several examples.