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Umesh Kumar, CEO of Runable, expressed frustration over India’s talent crisis after receiving 1,000 applications for a backend role but finding fewer than five worth considering
According to Umesh Kumar, the company had issued a basic coding task as the first step of their job recruitment process. (Representational Image)
The belief that India is brimming with talent, especially in the tech world, was put under the scanner this week after the CEO of a Bengaluru-based startup publicly voiced his frustration over what he calls a massive “talent problem” in the country. Umesh Kumar, CEO of Runable and an IIT Roorkee alumnus, took to social media platform X on June 30 to share a blunt account of his company’s hiring woes. Despite receiving nearly 1,000 applications within three days for a backend engineering role, Kumar claimed that fewer than five applicants were worth considering.
“Honestly, forget high standards; is it too much to ask for code that actually compiles?” he wrote, expressing his dismay over the quality of submissions. “India seriously has a big f***ing talent problem,” he said.
According to Kumar, the company had issued a basic coding task as the first step of their recruitment process. But what came back, he said, was largely unusable, AI-generated code, much of it failing to even compile, let alone solve the problem.
In his now-viral post, which has amassed over 4,00,000 views, Kumar detailed Runable’s streamlined hiring pipeline: a basic code task, a short 15-minute call with the CEO, a 45-minute CTO interview, followed by a paid one-day trial with the team, and finally, an offer letter.
Despite being a relatively small startup, Runable offers compensation packages of up to Rs 50 lakh per annum, relocation benefits, and even a food allowance. Kumar argued that in return, it’s not unreasonable to expect applicants to produce functional code without AI doing the heavy lifting.
See the viral post here:
India seriously has a big f***ing talent problem. We got around 1000 applications for a backend engineering role in just the last 2-3 days, and guess how many were actually decent? < 5.We asked for a basic, simple coding task. The submissions? Mostly absolute trash.…
— Umesh Kumar (@itsumeshk) June 30, 2025
Kumar’s post triggered a wave of reactions across the tech industry. Many sympathised with his frustration. One developer responded, “It’s going to get harder to find talent. Students in colleges now do everything with ChatGPT.” Another joked, “Without AI, the average fresher can’t even build an Instagram feed.”
However, not everyone agreed with Kumar’s hiring methods. Critics pointed out that asking for a coding task before any human interaction might deter genuinely talented, but not desperate, candidates. One commenter suggested, “Add a clear salary range in the job description. That alone will filter out most unserious applicants.”
Others argued that filtering out applicants based on a single coding task could cause companies to miss out on diverse skillsets. “Not every good engineer shines in a take-home test. Context matters,” one comment read.
While Kumar’s outburst may have gone viral, it is far from an isolated concern. Multiple studies and industry reports have echoed similar sentiments. According to a report backed by NASSCOM, India will need 35 lakh digitally skilled professionals by 2026, but current skilling rates are falling far short.
TeamLease Digital estimates that nearly 9,00,000 jobs in AI and emerging tech will be created in the next 18 months alone. Yet, experts say India has a painfully small pool of experienced professionals to fill them, especially in senior engineering roles. For instance, there are reportedly only around 2,000 senior engineers in the country with the capability to build AI products.
A growing number of tech leaders are now calling for a stronger collaboration between academia and industry to ensure students graduate with hands-on experience in real-world software development, not just theoretical knowledge.
Kumar’s frustration may have struck a nerve, but it has also reignited a much-needed conversation about the gap between education and employability in the country’s tech ecosystem. As startups continue to scale and the demand for skilled talent explodes, the mismatch between industry needs and graduate capabilities is likely to widen, unless systemic changes are made.
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