Naveen Narayanan, global head of talent acquisition at HCL Technologies, says that after a time an employee is not into developing technology, but offering a solution for the customer over a business problem. "You are taking a managerial role," he says. Texas Instruments' Thakurdesai says the domain knowledge that older engineers have often works well in defining the products and features required for a particular domain.

And about the need for managers to be up to date with technology trends, Ferose says, "I can't be just a manager, I have to be technically hands-on. If I have to have a conversation with my CTO, and if I say I don't understand technology, then there is no conversation.”

Many companies are coming up with the plans for employees to upgrade themselves. Infosys boasts more than 1,000 programs; many of these certifications are tie ups with universities or global enterprise product biggies like SAP, Microsoft, Cisco and IBM.

Infosys's head of education & research Srikantan Moorthy says every business unit creates its competence plan, and then each employee decides his or her competence plan. "Employees then take courses accordingly, and earn points based on the courses they complete," he says.

As Indian services companies increasingly move towards platforms and products , such retraining will become even more important, and the programmes will have to be more intense. Microsoft's Mohan says many technology professionals in the US have ingrained the idea of retooling themselves. "This is still not visible much in India. This is an era of hyper-specialization . This means upgrading yourself constantly, even on weekends," he said.