IT firms tap freelancers to optimise staff costs amid Covid-19 crisis

Replacing part of contractual workforce with programmers, developers registered on online platforms such as GitHub, Topcoder

With increasing uncertainties, aggravated by the pandemic, over business demands, information-technology (IT) services firms are replacing part of their contractual workers (known as contractors in IT parlance) by freelance coders, or gig workers, crowdsourced from the marketplace.

According to multiple sources in large Indian and global IT services firms, even though crowdsourcing was there earlier, it is now happening on a scale and proportion never seen before.

“Already 15-20 per cent of the workforce, earlier used to be procured from staffing firms and subcontractors, are replaced by freelancers tapped from platforms like Topcoder, GitHub, and Upwork,” said a top executive