Automation is spelling doom for IT services professionals in India with the recent flurry of layoffs by major IT players, a recent report suggests that adding analytics skills to your skill set can save careers for IT professionals, and maybe also help them get a bump in their pay.
The Indian IT industry has for the better part been services focused. While that worked a decade ago, it is no longer the need of the industry. The IT industry can transform itself into IT 2.0 by riding on the big data wave but the need of the hour is to move fast if they have to stay relevant.
Jigsaw Academy has launched the
Analytics India Industry Report 2017 – Salaries & Trends which has interesting insights on the kind of salaries currently being offered to professionals with analytics skills.
Machine Learning is a Good Bet
The bet on Machine Learning is finally paying off and it is the best paying analytics skill in the market currently, with an average pay of Rs. 10.43 LPA, even beating Big Data to the top spot, which comes in close with an average pay of Rs. 9.93 LPA. However, what companies seem to cherish are professionals with both these skill sets, a combination which fetches a cool Rs. 13.94 LPA on an average.
A huge change, as per the report, is the industry wide adoption and use of open source tools. In fact, for the first time this year, top tools that can help professionals get into analytics are R and Python, both of which are wildly popular open source tools. This points to the fact that popularity of expensive analytics computing software is on a steady decline.
The salaries based on tools too seems to reflect this. R and Python skills alone pay better than SAS, with average pay of Rs. 10.40 LPA and Rs. 10.12 LPA respectively. But here too, it is the combination of multiple skillsets seems to pay the best. The best paid professionals are the ones with SAS + R + Python proficiency, with an average pay of Rs. 12.91 LPA. The report also includes more salary insights based on city, company size, experience, and domain.
Machine Learning algorithms are dominating the business projects landscape with regression as the lone crusader fighting the battle for traditional statistical techniques. In fact, the top algorithms that organizations want people to pick up are Machine Learning ones.
Big Data is Still Big
This is not to say Big Data has lost any steam.
Big Data Analytics roles have evolved and the last 18 months has seen some level of consolidation in terms of techniques and tool knowledge needed. As per the report, Hadoop skills, in combination with Spark and Tableau, and along with knowledge of popular databases like Mongo and Cassandra, makes for that rare big data unicorn. The analytics industry has always favoured people with knowledge of multiple tools and that still stands true. The industry is on the lookout for specialists in different areas of analytics who can work on a project end-to-end.
The annual report by
Jigsaw Academy and Analytics Vidhya is compiled to cater to the needs of aspirants, analytics professionals, and employers. Based on information collected from 65,000 + analytics professionals with advanced analytics/data science skills, the report explains in detail the industry and salary trends for the upcoming year.
