sh"IT" Industry - how 'sh' came to IT?
You ask a layman where the technology jobs are and his reply will be “India”. But if you ask me, I would rather say “Down the Drains …” This is my opinion of the IT industry – Straight from My Gut … (thank you Mr. Jack Welch).
Sure, IT has brought in a lot of light to India but just as every rose has its thorn, the IT industry has a Dark side.
A company can be categorized as either a “Product” based or a “Service” based. You have “Work Security” in one and “Job Security” in the other. When working with a product based company, rest assured you will always have your plate full, something even more than what you can handle. Every ounce of your talented will be squeezed. Analogically speaking, you are the sugarcane and you will repeatedly go through the rollers, with lime and ginger as motivation and incentives. These companies will take the extremes of offering you the “Best in the Industry” package to the best “Severance” package. Little do they tell you which industry they are referring to when they say “Best in the Industry”. For those in doubt they are referring to the industry of “Slavery”. The severance package will be offered under conditions of Acquisitions, Mergers or simply – “the project has come to a closure - Sayonara”. But you have nothing to worry. Work with a service based company and you will have a 40-60 ratio of work to leisure. This comes with a bonus, Job Security. These companies are messiahs to the “impotents” and “incompetents” your leaders and managers basically. Imagine a company having its presence in Tahiti or some where in the Caribbean or even Goa. Your onsite assignments will on the beach with “Cocktails and Skin” … a voluntary retirement scheme.
You have often heard the term “Benched” … this is a requirement for all CMMI Level 5 companies. Companies like Infosys and Satyam have been on a rampage with recruitments because they want to hold on to their Level 5 certificate. How are they related? Well, one of the criteria of this certification says: you got to have a work force showing anticipation and readiness for work. The more you recruit, the more anticipation you show, the more will the “stock” be traded. While the recruited, get paid to indulge in a little Solitaire and as the new fads are: Sudoku and Blogging. For the record “I am not on BENCH” … I just don’t have work.
Ever heard of “Body Shopping”? This is when you are subcontracted. You are working for service based company and you are asked to work for a product based company. The work will be to clean the toilet after some one just pooped in and didn’t flush, put in the technological jargon you are asked to do Black Box Testing. Your incentive for doing this is a daily allowance of 100 to 300 Rs. and a high speed internet connection – for posting your resumes.
We have the MNC, the feel good factor. All “MNCs” start of as “R&Ds”, IBM did, Intel did. They initiate the design of some revolutionary product and just when its time to hit the market, they change their R&D centers to “Indian Offshore Development Centre”. IBM changed to IBM India. This way the tax on software export is rescinded. As the saying went in our college, the “R&D” has been reduced to “R A & D” or “R A N D” or just “WHORE”. Not to feel bad, there is an incentive here to … the engineers in the west get “Bangalored”. What’s “Banglored”? Type “banglored” as the search string in Google and the first result is:
“The US slang term 'Bangalored' refers to workers laid off because their jobs have moved to India.”
AMEN TO THAT
The end is the beginning is the end. The end of software jobs in the west is the beginning of those in India, but not for long, because this beginning will soon coin a new slang “China-ed”. This is where the Indian professionals get fired because his work has been moved to the Chinese. The Chinese are cheap, just like in their flesh trade and their quality is not Six but Seven Sigma … beat that Mr. Jack Welch.
What can we do? … we can only hold on to your “Swadeshi Tri-colored Knickers” to prevent the “Communist Bug” from getting up into our asses.
How does that feel !
posted by Unknown @ 9:37 PM
7 comments
7 Comments:
True dude true.
Another thing that makes my ass hurt with laughter is when people claim to be 'domain experts' in the indian IT scene.
That too people with one or two years experience.
I don't know how anyone can become a domain, or any other kind of professional expert doing something just for two years. We need to learn from the white folks, whose shit we pick up. I was on a project with a client having 10 years experience in C++ - who for all practical purposes was an expert, who used to still tell me that he will ask his ex professor when he needed guidance on some design issues. Never once did I hear him refer to himself as an 'expert'.
The problem, as I see it, is that a large majority of us is quite happy being slaves - albeit well paid slaves when we compare our bloated paychecks to the average Joe working in a core industry in India. We like to live in denial that we are servants, and call ourselves 'developers', 'testers' and often 'domain experts' - when the truth is not many of us know the first thing about these words.
But then man, if we are so pissed about this - maybe it's up to us to get out of this morass.
Hey dude.. What you say is perfectly correct. I completely agree with it because I'm fed up myself being a slave/whore whatever u wanna call it. Except for one thing about good work in product based companies. There are many product based companies in which many people are far from doing good work. The only place where you will do some stuff is in startups I feel.
But trying to talk myself out of this miserable state I tell myself this: since out of college we make good money, we have access to the internet, and the whole life that comes with an IT job, we can actually talk philosophy and politics sitting in A/C rooms over chat and blog and groups and god knows what else.
Imagine being in a mech/civil kinda industry which soham is calling 'core industry'. You will start with a miserable life and end it that way.
Make some quick money early on and then go where u wanna go, and pursue what you want who is stopping you (assuming your satyam bond is getting over soon).
People on the other side of the globe start their career after a PhD, so you just can’t compare their work and ours.
Nice write BTW.
There has been only one Gandhi, one Gates and one Linux. The stardom is only for a selected few. We all have potentials but it takes only a few and a long time to recognize our “niche”. Gandhi was miserable as a lawyer, Gates is a Harvard drop out (guess his grades weren’t doing him any good) and Linux is still a developer. And yet they have had considerable impact on society. They found their niche and worked in them, on them.
I am not complaining about how and how much the IT industry SUCKS. Sure, I did read a few parables, “The Monk who sold his Ferrari”, “Alchemist” and “Zen and the art of Motorcycle repair”, but I am far from writing Philosophy. I am only highlighting what the IT is mutating into. Let’s not turn the topic around.
The choice I am making is to STICK with it. I have always enjoyed my work whether in Control Net or in Satyam. I love modesty. I feel proud every time I have to put my hand up during a roll call for “MORONS” but at the same time I don’t hesitate to ask my manager to “SHOVE IT”. At Satyam I have been a Developer, an Office Clerk and a Salesman. If you got to fix a drooping cycle chain you are bound to get some grease on your hand. It’s a part of the package.
I feel sorry for all the mechanical and civil engineers who are into IT. I just feel they aren’t doing justice to their degrees. We are Computer graduates and it’s a conscience decision we made – well for most of us. Unfortunate are those who got into IT because they believe in moving with the crowd and the other few who don’t have many job offering in their domain.
When I was in school I always complained and cribbed, and fantasized about life in college. It was no different in College, ControlNet or Satyam. It’s only “mortal” not to be content with what you have. “thoda hai thode ki zaroorat hai!”
This Blog was only about the ills. Next week its going to be h”IT” Industry – how to add an h
@atit : Three disagreements.
1.There's no need to feel sorry for Mech or Civil enggs in IT. Many people from non Comp backgrounds are very comfortable here, and perform well. How much of our Comp Engg studies help us in this industry anyways ? I can speak for myself - zilch. Not a single thing. Not even programming languages - which I didn't learn in college.
2.Many of us didn't make a 'conscious decision' to join the Comp field. I doubt if even 1% of our class did. It was all a huge auction where the bidder with higher marks in Class 12 snatched the Computer Science seats (the GEC seats before PCCE seats, then free seats before paid seats), before moving down the pecking order to alternate streams. A miniscule percentage, if any, made an informed career choice then. We all 'moved with the crowd'. The non-comp folk coming into IT are just making the same choice now.
3. The Indian IT scene hasn't mutated. It's remained exactly the same since it's inception here - which is the part that sucks. We aren't seeing high end design work coming to India, with a few exceptions like Bell, Google, and Microsoft. And as you pointed out, people like us, who are basically in the business of carrying out orders according to directions, without using a shred of creativity or innovation, are always in danger of being given the slip - a pink one - when a cheaper asshole who speaks english moves into the block.
Education at any level in any country is just a stepping stone … no one can teach you, you got to learn yourself. In institutes you will learn only the basics, things that will guide you. Why do you think they don’t and will never teach J2EE or Mainframes in college? But imagine you have spent all that time and energy learning machine drawing and have an inclination for automobile design and yet you just graduate and jump straight into IT without even trying for something you have worked so hard for or have an interest in … it’s these people that I feel sorry for.
There are a few people who don’t “move with the crowd” … I am for one. I was in J2EE, had I to continue working, my next package would easily have touched 7 to 8 lakhs. But yet I have an interest in system level programming and moved to Embedded Systems. Here, my future has entered an endless tunnel … there is no light at the other end. You can call it a mistake or pursuit of interest!
There are a myriad of small companies here in India involved in high end design and development and the pay is good too. Just to name a few, Trilogy, KPMG, Flextronics, Spirent, Encore, Kenati … the list is endless, I could even tell you what is it they have developed.
I really feel sad to learn that people took 2 years to realize there is more to software development than coding. In our field it’s called Software Development Life Cycle or SDLC. No doubt there are similar acronyms and processes in other industries too. Just a piece of information – sometime back Discovery show cased the making of Harley Davidson V-Rod. They portrayed the entire process that goes into the making of a Harley – framework design, component design, testing, styling and finishing. This is not something revolutionary. All non Level 5 companies have a haphazard way of working – no documents and they code with a sheer object to meet functional requirement. But in a certified institute you have certain standards to follow. This is where the difference between a “Programmer” and a “Developer” lies.
There is always more than one way of doing things … words of wisdom by Atit Shah … people don’t see alternative solutions cause a lot of thought process and squeezing of those grey cells is involved.
Just like a Doctor … a software professional can never say he/she has finished studying. Life is an unceasing learning process … you can never say for certain that you are thorough with any particular technology, you know the ins and outs even recite them back words … but thorough … NO WAYS
Its not IT which gives you access to fields … you have no choice but to learn that domain because you have to work in it … if you really care and are really interested, you can master any of these fields. I know of people, who by profession belong to one group but know a lot of banking and finance, tax laws, share market, you name it … to cultivate these interest in a person, all you need is self-motivation. Nothing great in here too.
@atit:
Your comments make sense. But my feeling is that it is somewhat digressory from the original arguement you made.
Some addendum(b)s from me :
. J2EE and Mainframe technologies are taught as courses in many colleges. They are offered as courses in many US univs.
. It's not worth feeling sorry for people who have invested in courses which they suddenly abandon after they leave college. Reasons being : either they are stupid and they don't have a career plan, or they are geinuses and have suddenly seent he right way to go. Either way - no point feeling sorry.
. Yes, there are a lot of small companies who do good work (the fact that IT people are well paid is pretty much a given - so no arguements about that), but the fact remains that the quality of work done here is nowhere what what one would term 'innovation'. The real designers and thinkers are all there in the US, and the specs are mailed to India. Of course the work in these companies is better than the work in the service behemoths, but you have to agree that innovative companies in India are the stark exception rather than the rule, unlike in the Silicon Valley, where the number of entrepreneurs per capita is higher than any place in the world.
@@shwini: I'm a little embarrassed, but I didn't catch the drift of the arguement you are trying to put across.
Atit- After reading your comment I can't even spell C-O-N-U-S-F-E-D.
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