hi guys...
i am a PGDM student specializing in HR and marketing..i am doing a project research on employee welfare in IT companies..it would be nice if anybody could help me in this field.
thanks guys
hima
From India, New Delhi
i am a PGDM student specializing in HR and marketing..i am doing a project research on employee welfare in IT companies..it would be nice if anybody could help me in this field.
thanks guys
hima
From India, New Delhi
dear Hina
do use google for basic search n den u can ask all d hr proff. 4m it companies on their views bout dese things it wil make it lots easier for u
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...T+companies%22
Indian IT Survivors!!!
IT Survivors Staying Alive In A Software Job
This was one of the best blogs I've ever read
Definitely the stuff is appealing n makes one think whether we Indian S/W professionals are anything more than Cyber Coolies?? The aura of intellect that we seem to be around ourselves. Is that real or we're just fooling everyone (not excepting ourselves) around.. Does the work which we're doing is the same which we dreamt of while we were in College? Don't u feel (I do feel) that ur mind is going blunt as each day passes. Though u may be becoming technically sound...
Just go through the stuff below. It exposes some harsh realities..
Find the original text at:
http://indicthreads.com <link updated to site home>
Written by Harshad Oak
Thursday, 03 November 2005
Before I started working for myself, I spent some years in some of the top IT companies in India and still have many friends working in various software companies. I wrote a blog Recruiting like crazy, about the same time last year about how Indian companies are recruiting like there's no tomorrow and the possible consequences. However I was avoiding writing this particular piece as it seems like an unpatriotic thing to do, to tell the world how bad the working conditions in software companies in India have become. And there's always the risk of excerpts being used out of context to bash up IT in India.
I am now writing this because I just keep hearing horror tales from the industry and it doesn't seem like anything is being done in the matter, so I thought I will do my bit and write.
First and foremost, before stereotypes about India kick in, I would like to clarify that I am not saying that Indian software companies are sweat shops where employees aren't being paid and made to work in cramped uncomfortable places. The pay in software companies is very good as compared to other industries in India and the work places are generally well furnished and plush offices. India being a strong democracy, freedom of expression is alive and well and Indians are free to express their opinions and voice their concerns. Yet, I say that the software industry is exploiting its employees.
IT work culture in India is totally messed up and has now started harming the work culture of the nation as a whole. Working 12+ hours a day and 6 or even 7 days a week is more the rule than the exception.
Consequences:
A majority of IT people suffer from health problems. As most of the IT workforce is still very young, the problem isn't very obvious today but it will hit with unbearable ferocity when these youngsters get to their 40s.
Stress levels are unbelievable high. Stress management is a cover topic in magazines and newspapers and workshops on the subject are regularly overbooked.
Most IT people have hardly any social / family life to talk of.
As IT folk are rich by Indian standards, they try to buy their way out of their troubles and have incurred huge debts by buying expensive houses, gizmos and fancy cars.
Plush offices, fat salaries and latest gizmos can give you happiness only if you have a life in the first place.
The reason I feel this culture has emerged, is the servile attitude of the companies. Here's a tip for any company in the west planning to outsource to India. If you feel that a project can be completed in 6 weeks by 4 people, always demand that it be completed in 2 weeks by 3 people.
Guess what, most Indian companies will agree. The project will then be hyped up as an "extremely critical" one and the 3 unfortunate souls allocated to it will get very close to meeting the almighty by the time they deliver the project in 2 weeks. Surprisingly, they will deliver in 2-3 weeks, get bashed up for any delays and the company will soon boast about how they deliver good quality in reasonable time and cost. Has anyone in India ever worked on a project that wasn't "extremely critical"?
I was once at a session where a top boss of one of India's biggest IT firms was asked a question about what was so special about their company and his answer was that we are the "Yes" people with the "We Can Do It " attitude. It is all very well for the top boss to say "We Can Do It ".. what about the project teams who wish to say "Please....We Can't Do It " to the unreasonable timelines...I was tempted to ask "What death benefits does your company offer to the teams that get killed in the process?". I sure was ashamed to see that a fellow Indian was openly boasting about the fact that he and his company had no backbone. The art of saying No or negotiating reasonable time frames for the team is very conspicuous by its absence. Outsourcing customers more often than not simply walk all over Indian software companies. The outsourcer surely cannot be blamed as it is right for him to demand good quality in the least cost and time.
Exhaustion = Zero Innovation
· How many Indians in India are thought leaders in their software segment? - Very few
· How much software innovation happens in India? - Minimal
· Considering that thousands of Indians in India use Open Source software, how many actually contribute? - Very few
Surprisingly, put the same Indian in a company "in" the US and he suddenly becomes innovative and a thought leader in his field. The reason is simple, the only thing an exhausted body and mind can do well, is sleep. zzzzzz
I can pretty much bet on it that we will never see innovation from any of 10000+ person code factories in India.
If you are someone sitting in the US, UK... and wondering why the employees can't stand up, that's the most interesting part of the story. Read on...
The Problem
The software professional Indian is today making more money in a month than what his parents might have made in an year. Very often a 21 year old newbie software developer makes more money than his/her 55 year old father working in an old world business. Most of these youngsters are well aware of this gap and so work under an impression that they are being paid an unreasonable amount of money. They naturally equate unreasonable money with unreasonable amount of work.
Another important factor is this whole bubble that an IT person lives in.. An IT professional walks with a halo around his or her head. They are the Cool, Rich Gen Next .. the Intelligentsia of the New World... they travel all over the world, vacation at exotic locations abroad, talk "american", are more familiar of the geography of the USA than that of India and yes of course, they are the hottest things in the Wedding Market!!!
This I feel is the core problem because if employees felt they were being exploited, things would change.
I speak about this to some of my friends and the answer is generally "Hey Harshad, what you say is correct and we sure are suffering, but why do you think we are being paid this much money? It's not for 40 hours but for 80 hours a week. And anyway what choice do we have? It's the same everywhere."
So can we make things change? Is there a way to try and stop an entire generation of educated Indians from ending up with "no life".
Solutions
1) Never complement someone for staying till midnight or working 7 days a week.
Recently, in an awards ceremony at a software company, the manager handing over the "employee of the month" award said something like "It's unbelievable how hard he works. When I come to office early, I see him working, when I leave office late, I still see him working".. These sort of comments can kill the morale of every employee trying to do good work in an 8hr day.
Companies need to stop hiding behind the excuse that the time difference between India and the west is the reason why people need to stay in office for 14 hours a day. Staying late should be a negative thing that should work against an employee in his appraisals. Never complement someone for staying till midnight or working 7 days a week .
2) Estimates:
If time estimates go wrong, the company should be willing to take a hit and not force the employee to work crazy hours to bail projects out of trouble. This will ensure that the estimates made for the next project are more real and not just what the customer has asked for.
3) Employee organizations / forums
NASSCOM (National Association for Software and Services Companies) and CSI (Computer Society Of India) are perhaps the only two well known software associations in India and both I feel have failed the software employee. I do not recall any action from these organizations to try and improve the working conditions of software employees. This has to change.
I am not in favor of forming trade unions for software people, as trade unions in India have traditionally been more effective at ruining businesses and making employees inefficient than getting employees their rights and helping business do well. So existing bodies like NASSCOM should create and popularize employee welfare cells at a state / regional level and these cells should work only for employee welfare and not be puppets in the hands of the companies.
If the industry does not itself create proper forums for employee welfare, it's likely that the government / trade unions will interfere and mess up India's sunshine industry.
4) Narayan Murthys please stand up
Top bosses of companies like Infosys, TCS, Wipro, etc. need to send the message loud and clear to their company and to other companies listening at national IT events that employee welfare is really their top concern and having good working culture and conditions is a priority. Employee welfare here does not mean giving the employee the salary he/she dreams of.
Last word
I am sure some of my thoughts come from the fact that I too worked in such an environment for a few years and perhaps I haven't got over the frustrations I experienced back then. So think about my views with a pinch of salt but do think about it. And if you have an opinion on this issue, don't forget to add a comment to this article
posted on Wednesday, November 23, 2005 9:34 AM
Feedback
# re: Indian IT Survivors!!! ----- “THE GREAT INDIAN ENGINEER”??? 12/30/2005 2:30 PM Vinod
“Nice article and I agree to most of it. I've been in a similar situation for four years. Now I with an organization which respect employees in every aspect.
On the contrary, what I see now is the “GREAT INDIAN ENGINEER”
Descriptions of “THE GREAT INDIAN ENGINEER”:
? Browsing the web all day on “personal interest/movies/songs/what not?”
? Spend hours on personal calls at work on mobile and on landline
? Stay late on purpose to enjoy the dinner, snacks, internet, phone, coffee, cool drinks, late night drop orrrrrrrrr just because their “pair” is working late.
? You have plenty of Indian holidays in addition to your leaves and you want a shutdown during Christmas/Newyear also.
? Change companies every six months for extra few thousand rupees.
I wait for the day when my son (or I???) would be dying to get a work permit to TCS/Infosys/Wipro Beijing.
# re: Indian IT Survivors!!! 4/13/2006 4:39 PM Arangakumar
This writer identifies the problems correctly. But for solution he begs Coporate gurus...
Do you think our employers will find solution for our problem? How it is possible that Azimgi will give less work and pay high as he gets project because the employee is paid less and exploited lot(that the writter himself mentions in his article).
So this article gives a clear picture of our problems. But for the solution it tries to show its servitude, slave attitude. It compromises.
Get the information and we will strive for the solution
The article itself mentions the reason for our problem is what the reason behind the west preference of India as IT desitnation. Then how come our corporate gurus will eradicate those reason (that means, - how will they improve our life at the cost of their business).
If it happens that our Corporate gurus have to decide between our welfare and their business thay will choose the second one. That means, they will shift their business to some other part of the world.
If we unite atleast we could say our grievances and get them resolved until the time come for our gurus flying out of this country.
My opinion is we ourself only able to find solution for our problems not our employers
I would stress again the need for IT union(not the conventional way - We have to discuss to find Neo ways).
Because while we are in the era of IT revolution, we suffer a lot(Even I heard of companies that are not at all paying and/or paying less(2000 ,3000) to their employees(Java etc)). What happen when the field is saturated (The following could expedite the saturation - high attrition rate, slaray hike), And competition become very very high(as companies moving from india to south east asian countries, pakishtan, China, affrican countries etc).
And also beware, now the talent pool is very less. that is why Corporates not much bother about willing to attract techies by paying high and Fakes. (For example: as new project are coming in huge the real talents required for those projects are very High. because the maturity of IT field in India is very very less (Absolute maturity will be around Five to three years). But the project we are attracting requires heavy number of experienced techies... Where will the talent market go? So fakes are available.. and thus salary hike and Attrition rate....employees are enjoying. This is Known as Bangalore Bug in IT HR people. But this will not continue...As years goes even an experienced person would find it difficult to shift his job or to find alternate company. This become evident now itself.)
Salary hike is chumma..One side we expedite increase in Cost of living the other side PC chidambaram insures we are paying high tax indirectly to contribute the unrealistic GDP growth rate..:-) see below one IT employee opinion about salary hike:(taken from the given Link)
"2005-11-04 23:17:54
As for the new generation earning more money - it is just an illusion. When I started working at the age of 23, my dad and I had the same paycheck. However he lived in a huge house given by his employer, all utilities were payed by the employer, and his pension was the last paycheck that he drew, which needless to say is substantial. If I factor all that in, I made considerably less than he did"
And I should mention that though our earnings are far higher than our parents, our life is very worst compare to what they lead. Atleast they have penson and peasceful(6 hr /day work) life. But for us?
Another thing is we beleive that ours is really intellectual work. But not really. We are just an external hardware of Computer. So we have high speed, heavy memory and computer like processing stuff but very clearly we are lacking creativity and common sence that a normal person would have.
This also one kind of exploitation. Because we think that we are doing something intellectual but not actually.
As the natural law says the worker' body part that involves in production will be affected(Hand, Knee joints etc). For us it is Brain and Hands.....What is the effect...Stress? Suicides? Sleeplessness?...
As the scenario goes like this....What shall we do...as we believe we are intelligent and even decide the future plans of Our Clients:-))
I am willing to have discussion with anybody
How Indian IT companies must change
April 07, 2004
Leading Indian IT companies have to go truly global in terms of their operations and culture. The example of the best Japanese companies like Sony and Toyota is useful. They have not just taken manufacturing capacity all over the world but also sought to adopt a truly global mindset.
Toyota's Lexus car is an example. Toyota was already a global company with widespread acceptance of its products by the time it introduced the Lexus to take on the European domination at the high quality end of the car market.
Yet it chose to distance Lexus from associations with the Toyota or the Japan brand. The India brand has come a long way since the mid-nineties when Titan tried to launch itself as a global brand and had to work against the disadvantage of its Indian antecedents.
But still, global success is reserved only for global companies, which have factories (development centres) all over the world and where non-Indian managers are plentiful and do not perceive a glass ceiling above them.
Within the US, Indian IT companies have to do more. They have to become good American citizens, adopt local causes and support charities generously.
Further, they have to change their way of doing business. They have to take conscious and visible steps to save American jobs. The perception of Indian companies that once they win an order, they take out (offshore) whatever work they can and bring in Indian technicians to handle most of what remains, has to change. They have to retrain and reskill at the client so as to try and ensure that as many of the existing workers can be retained as possible.
In trying to become global companies, the acquisition route has to be followed with earnestness. The aim has to be to get a US front office and a face, take on jobs as American companies and then execute them as much as possible within the US by existing US workers of the taken over companies.
This can be the strategy to counter US software vendors who field jobs as American companies and then get increasingly large amounts of it executed offshore.
There is an implicit change in the business model in this. The cost arbitrage, offshoring to take advantage of the wage differential, has to become less and less important.
The need to go up the value chain, acquire domain specialisations, offer consulting services to tackle business issues and not technical solutions to address only the client's IT needs, has been stressed for some time now.
Leading Indian IT service vendors are actively in the process of acquiring consulting skills so as to offer end- to- end solutions that capture greater value. But the winners in this game will be those who can run faster.
An obvious way to acquire consulting skills quickly is to acquire consulting companies -- middle, small or even big -- and then absorb them within the parent structure. This is a learning process with pitfalls and those who come to grips with the inevitability of making and successfully working acquisitions faster will turn out to be the winners.
Going up the value chain has two other manifestations. One is to go in for developing new technologies. If Indian companies are to become globally respected entities then they must aspire for at least a thin slice of the thought leadership of the global IT fraternity.
There has till now not been much sign of this. If leading Indian companies persist too long with their offshored delivery model whose emphasis is on managing scale and operational margins without any technological attributes, then the image of India as the home of the world's IT sweatshops will persist.
A concomitant to developing technology is growth of leading centres of learning with strong doctoral programmes, which are equal to the best in the world. These centres have to be supported by the industry and also be able to lead it, indicating to it what are tomorrow's new frontiers.
In short, India has to sprout its own Stanford if it aspires to a global IT status. And the point is that the IITs are not Stanfords. Their doctoral programme was poor until recently and it is only lately that collaborative research and better pay for research workers is raising the quality of work.
The other way of going up the value chain is to get into products. The nature of the products business model is such that if you don't go bust you will be singing your way to the bank.
That means, says the received wisdom, only those with deep pockets will be able to bear the financial risk that a foray into products entails. But the big players in Indian software are not interested. Their theme is: services is services, product is products, the twain shall never meet. This is because the two businesses require different mindsets. When did you last hear of the consultancy practice of Microsoft?
All this may indeed be so but then we may at some future date look back and realise that the first chapter of the history of Indian software was written by services companies and the subsequent chapter was written by product companies.
One myth that has already been blown, turning received wisdom on its head, is that you have to be big to survive in products. There are enough of small successful product companies to establish this new proposition.
As one looks at the future of the industry, what comes foremost to mind is the need for it to reinvent itself. Playing the cost arbitrage while delivering quality has won the game till now.
Beyond the need to innovate to do what is being done better and better, is the need to do altogether new things. If this need to develop a new business model and secure a presence in technology and products is paramount, then the villain of the piece seems to be the quarterly results.
Ever since the technology bubble burst and IT stocks took a tumble, the best players seem to have devoted almost their entire energies to shoring up the bottom line. This has till now been done by dragging ahead the top line, causing the game to remain a volume play.
For Indian IT to script a new and more exciting chapter, its leaders will have to have a new vision in the first place and then tell shareholders: lock up your investments for two years and then find out what they are worth
From India, Mumbai
49do use google for basic search n den u can ask all d hr proff. 4m it companies on their views bout dese things it wil make it lots easier for u
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...T+companies%22
Indian IT Survivors!!!
IT Survivors Staying Alive In A Software Job
This was one of the best blogs I've ever read
Definitely the stuff is appealing n makes one think whether we Indian S/W professionals are anything more than Cyber Coolies?? The aura of intellect that we seem to be around ourselves. Is that real or we're just fooling everyone (not excepting ourselves) around.. Does the work which we're doing is the same which we dreamt of while we were in College? Don't u feel (I do feel) that ur mind is going blunt as each day passes. Though u may be becoming technically sound...
Just go through the stuff below. It exposes some harsh realities..
Find the original text at:
http://indicthreads.com <link updated to site home>
Written by Harshad Oak
Thursday, 03 November 2005
Before I started working for myself, I spent some years in some of the top IT companies in India and still have many friends working in various software companies. I wrote a blog Recruiting like crazy, about the same time last year about how Indian companies are recruiting like there's no tomorrow and the possible consequences. However I was avoiding writing this particular piece as it seems like an unpatriotic thing to do, to tell the world how bad the working conditions in software companies in India have become. And there's always the risk of excerpts being used out of context to bash up IT in India.
I am now writing this because I just keep hearing horror tales from the industry and it doesn't seem like anything is being done in the matter, so I thought I will do my bit and write.
First and foremost, before stereotypes about India kick in, I would like to clarify that I am not saying that Indian software companies are sweat shops where employees aren't being paid and made to work in cramped uncomfortable places. The pay in software companies is very good as compared to other industries in India and the work places are generally well furnished and plush offices. India being a strong democracy, freedom of expression is alive and well and Indians are free to express their opinions and voice their concerns. Yet, I say that the software industry is exploiting its employees.
IT work culture in India is totally messed up and has now started harming the work culture of the nation as a whole. Working 12+ hours a day and 6 or even 7 days a week is more the rule than the exception.
Consequences:
A majority of IT people suffer from health problems. As most of the IT workforce is still very young, the problem isn't very obvious today but it will hit with unbearable ferocity when these youngsters get to their 40s.
Stress levels are unbelievable high. Stress management is a cover topic in magazines and newspapers and workshops on the subject are regularly overbooked.
Most IT people have hardly any social / family life to talk of.
As IT folk are rich by Indian standards, they try to buy their way out of their troubles and have incurred huge debts by buying expensive houses, gizmos and fancy cars.
Plush offices, fat salaries and latest gizmos can give you happiness only if you have a life in the first place.
The reason I feel this culture has emerged, is the servile attitude of the companies. Here's a tip for any company in the west planning to outsource to India. If you feel that a project can be completed in 6 weeks by 4 people, always demand that it be completed in 2 weeks by 3 people.
Guess what, most Indian companies will agree. The project will then be hyped up as an "extremely critical" one and the 3 unfortunate souls allocated to it will get very close to meeting the almighty by the time they deliver the project in 2 weeks. Surprisingly, they will deliver in 2-3 weeks, get bashed up for any delays and the company will soon boast about how they deliver good quality in reasonable time and cost. Has anyone in India ever worked on a project that wasn't "extremely critical"?
I was once at a session where a top boss of one of India's biggest IT firms was asked a question about what was so special about their company and his answer was that we are the "Yes" people with the "We Can Do It " attitude. It is all very well for the top boss to say "We Can Do It ".. what about the project teams who wish to say "Please....We Can't Do It " to the unreasonable timelines...I was tempted to ask "What death benefits does your company offer to the teams that get killed in the process?". I sure was ashamed to see that a fellow Indian was openly boasting about the fact that he and his company had no backbone. The art of saying No or negotiating reasonable time frames for the team is very conspicuous by its absence. Outsourcing customers more often than not simply walk all over Indian software companies. The outsourcer surely cannot be blamed as it is right for him to demand good quality in the least cost and time.
Exhaustion = Zero Innovation
· How many Indians in India are thought leaders in their software segment? - Very few
· How much software innovation happens in India? - Minimal
· Considering that thousands of Indians in India use Open Source software, how many actually contribute? - Very few
Surprisingly, put the same Indian in a company "in" the US and he suddenly becomes innovative and a thought leader in his field. The reason is simple, the only thing an exhausted body and mind can do well, is sleep. zzzzzz
I can pretty much bet on it that we will never see innovation from any of 10000+ person code factories in India.
If you are someone sitting in the US, UK... and wondering why the employees can't stand up, that's the most interesting part of the story. Read on...
The Problem
The software professional Indian is today making more money in a month than what his parents might have made in an year. Very often a 21 year old newbie software developer makes more money than his/her 55 year old father working in an old world business. Most of these youngsters are well aware of this gap and so work under an impression that they are being paid an unreasonable amount of money. They naturally equate unreasonable money with unreasonable amount of work.
Another important factor is this whole bubble that an IT person lives in.. An IT professional walks with a halo around his or her head. They are the Cool, Rich Gen Next .. the Intelligentsia of the New World... they travel all over the world, vacation at exotic locations abroad, talk "american", are more familiar of the geography of the USA than that of India and yes of course, they are the hottest things in the Wedding Market!!!
This I feel is the core problem because if employees felt they were being exploited, things would change.
I speak about this to some of my friends and the answer is generally "Hey Harshad, what you say is correct and we sure are suffering, but why do you think we are being paid this much money? It's not for 40 hours but for 80 hours a week. And anyway what choice do we have? It's the same everywhere."
So can we make things change? Is there a way to try and stop an entire generation of educated Indians from ending up with "no life".
Solutions
1) Never complement someone for staying till midnight or working 7 days a week.
Recently, in an awards ceremony at a software company, the manager handing over the "employee of the month" award said something like "It's unbelievable how hard he works. When I come to office early, I see him working, when I leave office late, I still see him working".. These sort of comments can kill the morale of every employee trying to do good work in an 8hr day.
Companies need to stop hiding behind the excuse that the time difference between India and the west is the reason why people need to stay in office for 14 hours a day. Staying late should be a negative thing that should work against an employee in his appraisals. Never complement someone for staying till midnight or working 7 days a week .
2) Estimates:
If time estimates go wrong, the company should be willing to take a hit and not force the employee to work crazy hours to bail projects out of trouble. This will ensure that the estimates made for the next project are more real and not just what the customer has asked for.
3) Employee organizations / forums
NASSCOM (National Association for Software and Services Companies) and CSI (Computer Society Of India) are perhaps the only two well known software associations in India and both I feel have failed the software employee. I do not recall any action from these organizations to try and improve the working conditions of software employees. This has to change.
I am not in favor of forming trade unions for software people, as trade unions in India have traditionally been more effective at ruining businesses and making employees inefficient than getting employees their rights and helping business do well. So existing bodies like NASSCOM should create and popularize employee welfare cells at a state / regional level and these cells should work only for employee welfare and not be puppets in the hands of the companies.
If the industry does not itself create proper forums for employee welfare, it's likely that the government / trade unions will interfere and mess up India's sunshine industry.
4) Narayan Murthys please stand up
Top bosses of companies like Infosys, TCS, Wipro, etc. need to send the message loud and clear to their company and to other companies listening at national IT events that employee welfare is really their top concern and having good working culture and conditions is a priority. Employee welfare here does not mean giving the employee the salary he/she dreams of.
Last word
I am sure some of my thoughts come from the fact that I too worked in such an environment for a few years and perhaps I haven't got over the frustrations I experienced back then. So think about my views with a pinch of salt but do think about it. And if you have an opinion on this issue, don't forget to add a comment to this article
posted on Wednesday, November 23, 2005 9:34 AM
Feedback
# re: Indian IT Survivors!!! ----- “THE GREAT INDIAN ENGINEER”??? 12/30/2005 2:30 PM Vinod
“Nice article and I agree to most of it. I've been in a similar situation for four years. Now I with an organization which respect employees in every aspect.
On the contrary, what I see now is the “GREAT INDIAN ENGINEER”
Descriptions of “THE GREAT INDIAN ENGINEER”:
? Browsing the web all day on “personal interest/movies/songs/what not?”
? Spend hours on personal calls at work on mobile and on landline
? Stay late on purpose to enjoy the dinner, snacks, internet, phone, coffee, cool drinks, late night drop orrrrrrrrr just because their “pair” is working late.
? You have plenty of Indian holidays in addition to your leaves and you want a shutdown during Christmas/Newyear also.
? Change companies every six months for extra few thousand rupees.
I wait for the day when my son (or I???) would be dying to get a work permit to TCS/Infosys/Wipro Beijing.
# re: Indian IT Survivors!!! 4/13/2006 4:39 PM Arangakumar
This writer identifies the problems correctly. But for solution he begs Coporate gurus...
Do you think our employers will find solution for our problem? How it is possible that Azimgi will give less work and pay high as he gets project because the employee is paid less and exploited lot(that the writter himself mentions in his article).
So this article gives a clear picture of our problems. But for the solution it tries to show its servitude, slave attitude. It compromises.
Get the information and we will strive for the solution
The article itself mentions the reason for our problem is what the reason behind the west preference of India as IT desitnation. Then how come our corporate gurus will eradicate those reason (that means, - how will they improve our life at the cost of their business).
If it happens that our Corporate gurus have to decide between our welfare and their business thay will choose the second one. That means, they will shift their business to some other part of the world.
If we unite atleast we could say our grievances and get them resolved until the time come for our gurus flying out of this country.
My opinion is we ourself only able to find solution for our problems not our employers
I would stress again the need for IT union(not the conventional way - We have to discuss to find Neo ways).
Because while we are in the era of IT revolution, we suffer a lot(Even I heard of companies that are not at all paying and/or paying less(2000 ,3000) to their employees(Java etc)). What happen when the field is saturated (The following could expedite the saturation - high attrition rate, slaray hike), And competition become very very high(as companies moving from india to south east asian countries, pakishtan, China, affrican countries etc).
And also beware, now the talent pool is very less. that is why Corporates not much bother about willing to attract techies by paying high and Fakes. (For example: as new project are coming in huge the real talents required for those projects are very High. because the maturity of IT field in India is very very less (Absolute maturity will be around Five to three years). But the project we are attracting requires heavy number of experienced techies... Where will the talent market go? So fakes are available.. and thus salary hike and Attrition rate....employees are enjoying. This is Known as Bangalore Bug in IT HR people. But this will not continue...As years goes even an experienced person would find it difficult to shift his job or to find alternate company. This become evident now itself.)
Salary hike is chumma..One side we expedite increase in Cost of living the other side PC chidambaram insures we are paying high tax indirectly to contribute the unrealistic GDP growth rate..:-) see below one IT employee opinion about salary hike:(taken from the given Link)
"2005-11-04 23:17:54
As for the new generation earning more money - it is just an illusion. When I started working at the age of 23, my dad and I had the same paycheck. However he lived in a huge house given by his employer, all utilities were payed by the employer, and his pension was the last paycheck that he drew, which needless to say is substantial. If I factor all that in, I made considerably less than he did"
And I should mention that though our earnings are far higher than our parents, our life is very worst compare to what they lead. Atleast they have penson and peasceful(6 hr /day work) life. But for us?
Another thing is we beleive that ours is really intellectual work. But not really. We are just an external hardware of Computer. So we have high speed, heavy memory and computer like processing stuff but very clearly we are lacking creativity and common sence that a normal person would have.
This also one kind of exploitation. Because we think that we are doing something intellectual but not actually.
As the natural law says the worker' body part that involves in production will be affected(Hand, Knee joints etc). For us it is Brain and Hands.....What is the effect...Stress? Suicides? Sleeplessness?...
As the scenario goes like this....What shall we do...as we believe we are intelligent and even decide the future plans of Our Clients:-))
I am willing to have discussion with anybody
How Indian IT companies must change
April 07, 2004
Leading Indian IT companies have to go truly global in terms of their operations and culture. The example of the best Japanese companies like Sony and Toyota is useful. They have not just taken manufacturing capacity all over the world but also sought to adopt a truly global mindset.
Toyota's Lexus car is an example. Toyota was already a global company with widespread acceptance of its products by the time it introduced the Lexus to take on the European domination at the high quality end of the car market.
Yet it chose to distance Lexus from associations with the Toyota or the Japan brand. The India brand has come a long way since the mid-nineties when Titan tried to launch itself as a global brand and had to work against the disadvantage of its Indian antecedents.
But still, global success is reserved only for global companies, which have factories (development centres) all over the world and where non-Indian managers are plentiful and do not perceive a glass ceiling above them.
Within the US, Indian IT companies have to do more. They have to become good American citizens, adopt local causes and support charities generously.
Further, they have to change their way of doing business. They have to take conscious and visible steps to save American jobs. The perception of Indian companies that once they win an order, they take out (offshore) whatever work they can and bring in Indian technicians to handle most of what remains, has to change. They have to retrain and reskill at the client so as to try and ensure that as many of the existing workers can be retained as possible.
In trying to become global companies, the acquisition route has to be followed with earnestness. The aim has to be to get a US front office and a face, take on jobs as American companies and then execute them as much as possible within the US by existing US workers of the taken over companies.
This can be the strategy to counter US software vendors who field jobs as American companies and then get increasingly large amounts of it executed offshore.
There is an implicit change in the business model in this. The cost arbitrage, offshoring to take advantage of the wage differential, has to become less and less important.
The need to go up the value chain, acquire domain specialisations, offer consulting services to tackle business issues and not technical solutions to address only the client's IT needs, has been stressed for some time now.
Leading Indian IT service vendors are actively in the process of acquiring consulting skills so as to offer end- to- end solutions that capture greater value. But the winners in this game will be those who can run faster.
An obvious way to acquire consulting skills quickly is to acquire consulting companies -- middle, small or even big -- and then absorb them within the parent structure. This is a learning process with pitfalls and those who come to grips with the inevitability of making and successfully working acquisitions faster will turn out to be the winners.
Going up the value chain has two other manifestations. One is to go in for developing new technologies. If Indian companies are to become globally respected entities then they must aspire for at least a thin slice of the thought leadership of the global IT fraternity.
There has till now not been much sign of this. If leading Indian companies persist too long with their offshored delivery model whose emphasis is on managing scale and operational margins without any technological attributes, then the image of India as the home of the world's IT sweatshops will persist.
A concomitant to developing technology is growth of leading centres of learning with strong doctoral programmes, which are equal to the best in the world. These centres have to be supported by the industry and also be able to lead it, indicating to it what are tomorrow's new frontiers.
In short, India has to sprout its own Stanford if it aspires to a global IT status. And the point is that the IITs are not Stanfords. Their doctoral programme was poor until recently and it is only lately that collaborative research and better pay for research workers is raising the quality of work.
The other way of going up the value chain is to get into products. The nature of the products business model is such that if you don't go bust you will be singing your way to the bank.
That means, says the received wisdom, only those with deep pockets will be able to bear the financial risk that a foray into products entails. But the big players in Indian software are not interested. Their theme is: services is services, product is products, the twain shall never meet. This is because the two businesses require different mindsets. When did you last hear of the consultancy practice of Microsoft?
All this may indeed be so but then we may at some future date look back and realise that the first chapter of the history of Indian software was written by services companies and the subsequent chapter was written by product companies.
One myth that has already been blown, turning received wisdom on its head, is that you have to be big to survive in products. There are enough of small successful product companies to establish this new proposition.
As one looks at the future of the industry, what comes foremost to mind is the need for it to reinvent itself. Playing the cost arbitrage while delivering quality has won the game till now.
Beyond the need to innovate to do what is being done better and better, is the need to do altogether new things. If this need to develop a new business model and secure a presence in technology and products is paramount, then the villain of the piece seems to be the quarterly results.
Ever since the technology bubble burst and IT stocks took a tumble, the best players seem to have devoted almost their entire energies to shoring up the bottom line. This has till now been done by dragging ahead the top line, causing the game to remain a volume play.
For Indian IT to script a new and more exciting chapter, its leaders will have to have a new vision in the first place and then tell shareholders: lock up your investments for two years and then find out what they are worth
From India, Mumbai
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