Grand Illusions..........

Recently, the firm I work with celebrated 25 years of it's existence... and it was celebrated in a way so grandiose it would've put to shame all the others on the face of this planet...

Exactly on the day, the company turned 25.. sweets were distributed.. no no.. am not talking about box of sweets.. am talking about sweets.. or to be more precise a single piece of sweet...
no problems with that..since it does not provide any Gym so it makes sense not to overfeed the employees...

then came the shower of gifts.. a planner(leather clad .. wow) and a T-shirt with 25 years engraved in golded letters(and hordes of punchlines and logos that would put to shame a F1 rider's attire)

and yes.. with the usual pat on the back... praise for dedicated and hard working employees...

Now contrast this with the IT bellwether of India.. which sometimes proclaims itself(and with some justification) as the most respected company of India... a widfall of 126 Cr for it's employees... and the sweets... the planner and the T-shirt pale in comparison..

and yet.. my firm has the illusions of becoming a leader amongst the next generation of IT companies... and is trying to sell this illusion to the employees as well...

Back to Syntel Mumbai..........

A post after a long hiatus... have been trying to settle back into the fast paced Mumbai life after the calm and quiet one of Brighton.

The first thing that hit me was.. yes.. you guessed it dirt. Construction seems to be going on everywhere. Stayed with a couple of friends in Marol(for the uninitiated, a location very close to the international airport) and the main road that cuts through the market is still in construction.

Withing SEEPZ(that's where I work.. it probably provides more jobs per square metre of land than any other part in India!!!) the construction seems to have engulfed everything. New buildings.. new roads... and the works....

Coming inside the office, I almost failed to recognise the place... 90% faces are new, and I would love to bring any Syntel official to unit 89(which houses AmEx engagement) who says that attrition is under control. And in true Syntel tradition, more and more machines have been crammed into the already overcrowded unit. Everytime I leave my seat I come back to see the chair gone... the chairs in this unit can easily beat Houdini at his own game.

This is appraisal season and as usual, a few promises are being made. The date for releasing the letters has already been missed and there's no sign of the letters coming out anytime soon. And then people would start leaving in hordes... the same story is repeated every year.

Update - RSS feed added to yahoo 360 page

I have added to RSS feed for this blog to my yahoo 360 page also.

If you haven't been there already then follow the link below:

http://360.yahoo.com/onkarmann

It has almost all my photographs there.

Myth # 1 : The IT industry requires & hires the best

Now that's not quite true.

The reason is simple, the IT industry does not require the best. So why should it hire them? Whenever you join a company, you'll be told in the induction session, "We believe in hiring the best" huh... how do so many of them manage to find 'THE BEST' in tens of thousands every year?

What the industry requires is people who are reasonably intelligent, are hard working, can speak, read and write English and all this can be ignored if you have some experience.

The people who come close to being the best almost always are frustrated when they find out that the job they are doing does not even require an engineer. In a majority of cases it's repititive and no fun at all.

This is when the quest for onsite opportunities begins but we'll tackle that in another post.

The Myths about Indian IT industry - Introduction

So here we go again.

The industry that has been hailed as the sunshine sector, the industry that has changed the face of many cities and the perception of India and Indians the world over. So is the picture as rosy as it is claimed to be? Depends on where you are looking from...

This wouldn't be the first nor the last place where something would be written about this topic, but that's no reason for me to not write down my own views.

So I will try to capture all the Myths that are floating around, atleast those that I have heard of, and reveal the truth behind these.

The Why First

I've heard, now don't ask me from whom or from where, that you should know why you are doing something before you start it....

What is the purpose of this blog? or for that matter any blog... adding pictures, memoirs,comments,views... or maybe all of these... In many aspects it will be like holding a mirror to myself. What I think, observe, like, dislike, blah blah blah... so off we go!