July-September 2004 has been a great time for geeks. The IT trio of Infosys Technologies, Wipro and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) added 14,530 employees to their rolls. They plan to add a similar number during October-December.

The biggest of them are snapping at the heels of Old Economy majors. TCS including subsidiaries, for instance, with 40,948 people is a shade behind Tisco (44,000), one of the biggest private sector employers. TCS grew by 3,974 people last quarter. Tata Motors, one of the fastest growing manufacturers, added just 250 people in double that time, April-September 2004.

In IT, however, there's demand across the board. Gautam Sinha, CEO of Bangalore-based recruitment consultant TVA Infotech, says: "The IT sector hired 28,000 people in the last quarter, 55-60 per cent freshers, By the end of FY 2005, the total recruitment by Indian IT firms and MNCs, will be over 100,000." Among MNCs, IBM and Accenture have added 2,500-3,000 each.

That has created the problems of managing the growth and maintaining organizational culture in the face of big lateral hiring. There is also the need to train the freshers -60 per cent of the hires. Wipro, for instance, has set up a team of 70, including eight PhDs, just to deliver a variety of courses. Says a Wipro official: "We can train over 1,500 employees every day."