Angry with poor pay hike, Indian techies push govt to make resigning easier

[aok]

Instead of addressing the root cause, I am seeing large service companies adopt such strategies for eg: minimum 2 years in a customer project until you can switch to another project(it used to be 1 year) and now a 3 month notice period.

The majority of the desirable (mostly product/web app/mobile app) companies to work in do not have such a policy and many are not willing to wait 3 months just to hire a certain employee.

If you look at it from a perspective of an employee trapped in such a company with such an employee unfriendly 3 month notice period policy, you we see that the employee gets screwed from both sides i.e. poor salary and difficulty in finding a new job to improve his/her financial situation.

Yes, a 3 month notice period is absolutely bullsh*t. You certainly don't need that long to transition or train someone on whatever you were doing. It is just kept so to make job switching difficult for employees and thus hope to maintain a low attrition rate

 

[aok]

Agreed 100%
I have seen similar behavior in my company. Most cases people just dont bother to work in their notice periods, I had this one girl in my team who resigned and wanted to serve here full notice period. She would be missing from her desk, or surfing or chatting on phone and taking twice the amount of time for small tasks. So I called HR to see if something can be done about it and if her notice period can be shortened, they replied that since she wants to serve her full notice period, if you want to release the employee early you have to pay them for the remaining period in the notice period. So it is not completely one sided as some people like to believe.

There are guys even worse. They will willfully mutilate code before they leave.. to take their revenge on their manager. But it will be the guy coming in as his replacement who will be suffering. The poor chap will have a tough time digging in and finding what is missing or what all needs to be changed.

 

[pauldmps]

an example - a friend of mine in tcs said that if an employee is not put on any project for 30 days or more they are automatically terminated.

I work in TCS and can confirm that is incorrect. Somebody might be scaring your friend so that he takes up any project that is offered.

 

[m-jeri]

For all the Tech Evangelists who screams there are lots of unemployable people and they don't deserve the job.. etc etc. Calm down.

I get it. You guys are good at your job. You breath ASP CORE, MVC, Tableau, Angular, React, Scheme <insert your favs> etc etc. There are lot that cannot do that. *Read that it any tone you wish*.

But for few seconds, see the logic in it. Whenever such discussions happen, that is towards the service industry folks. Makes sense. Agree.
However, this is very well known to the middle and upper management. And also for the clients who give out these projects.
There are lots of places people like that are required. It is by design companies hire them. Let them also live. Don't make others feel bad.

Not everyone is created the same.

One example I can give, One of the big defense company in US told us to look for people like that for the onsite assignments.
They were for testing a particular line of products. It was quantity work. Not quality. They were looking for people who will stay on, not move on.
Yes, we placed over 50 folks onsite.

 

[axis.meister]

Yes, a 3 month notice period is absolutely bullsh*t. You certainly don't need that long to transition or train someone on whatever you were doing. It is just kept so to make job switching difficult for employees and thus hope to maintain a low attrition rate

No it is not. I have to give 90% fixed planning for my team for next 6 months + 60% planning for next 12 months every month to my management. If you cant rely on your team members to be there for even the next 3 months then it is very difficult. I am guessing it would be similar for managers in IT (I am non-IT). Everybody operates on razor thin availability buffers to drive productivity higher. If you have bigger buffers then your productivity is lower and hence your margin is lower, which in turn would translate to lower pays for the workforce.

 

[booo]

No it is not. I have to give 90% fixed planning for my team for next 6 months + 60% planning for next 12 months every month to my management. If you cant rely on your team members to be there for even the next 3 months then it is very difficult. I am guessing it would be similar for managers in IT (I am non-IT). Everybody operates on razor thin availability buffers to drive productivity higher. If you have bigger buffers then your productivity is lower and hence your margin is lower, which in turn would translate to lower pays for the workforce.

you gotta fix your planning and work closely with your guys. it wont be a problem if you work closely with your guys.

 

[m-jeri]

No it is not. I have to give 90% fixed planning for my team for next 6 months + 60% planning for next 12 months every month to my management. If you cant rely on your team members to be there for even the next 3 months then it is very difficult. I am guessing it would be similar for managers in IT (I am non-IT). Everybody operates on razor thin availability buffers to drive productivity higher. If you have bigger buffers then your productivity is lower and hence your margin is lower, which in turn would translate to lower pays for the workforce.

Ah. Was wondering when someone would bring this up.

Again, I would agree with you. But however, if your planning is done with no buffer, you only have you to blame for them leaving.

 

[nRiTeCh]

A 1 month or 45 days notice period should be sufficient. But 60 days or 90 is simply pathetic. Its seems like a clear policy of forcefully harassing the employee to stay with the co. whether they find any replacement or not which is their problem.

Here employee suffers from financial, mental and opportunistic issues where either he has found a job or just leaving coz he is simply done! So you see its becames a huge burden on his head even if he wanna stay or leave.

Very few cos. are employee friendly and employees dont leave such cos. unless xyz personal or medical reasons.

 

[greenhorn]

uh, thats just poor project management. What if two of your guys were in an accident and hospitalized?
you need to have more flexible delivery and resourcing models. I will leave it at that (don't want to give away company secrets )
Just fyi, we deal with clients with variable work loads (not T&M obviously), people getting sick and other personal commitments, and we manage just fine

 

[axis.meister]

uh, thats just poor project management. What if two of your guys were in an accident and hospitalized?
you need to have more flexible delivery and resourcing models. I will leave it at that (don't want to give away company secrets )
Just fyi, we deal with clients with variable work loads (not T&M obviously), people getting sick and other personal commitments, and we manage just fine

Resource management, not project management and it is not poor. Sure you could have big buffers with multiple people on the bench, but that is not efficient, and the core principle of my industry is efficiency and optimization.

Of course we do plan for emergencies(medical/personal) and leaves, but that is what the buffer is for. Not for employees resigning, that is where the notice period comes in, to find replacement and fix the resource gap.

 

[Crapmypants]

A 1 month or 45 days notice period should be sufficient. But 60 days or 90 is simply pathetic. Its seems like a clear policy of forcefully harassing the employee to stay with the co. whether they find any replacement or not which is their problem.

Here employee suffers from financial, mental and opportunistic issues where either he has found a job or just leaving coz he is simply done! So you see its becames a huge burden on his head even if he wanna stay or leave.

Very few cos. are employee friendly and employees dont leave such cos. unless xyz personal or medical reasons.

yes and i think they do this so that if the employee is thinking about leaving then he/she will be less appealing to potential employers due to the long notice period.
i was working at a place with a 2 month notice period and in every interview i was guaranteed to be asked if i can get the notice period down to a month.

 

[sid_donnydarko]

You breath ASP CORE, MVC, Tableau, Angular, React, Scheme <insert your favs> etc etc.

The order caught my attention. Is this in vogue in India at the moment?!

 

[m-jeri]

The order caught my attention. Is this in vogue in India at the moment?!

I haven't worked in India for 5 years now.

 

[booo]

Resource management, not project management and it is not poor.

I will say this again, you should first treat people as people. maintaining a good relationship and investing in their success will not cause this issue. if you treat them like some abstract "resource" and consider them replaceable, you will always have problem with loosing the guys.

 

[m-jeri]

I will say this again, you should first treat people as people. maintaining a good relationship and investing in their success will not cause this issue. if you treat them like some abstract "resource" and consider them replaceable, you will always have problem with loosing the guys.

Amen to this.

I still see this with my delivery people. ****ers talk about them in terms of Resources. No respect to the person or his talents.

<rant>

But no, lets talk about how they are not employable first. Lets talk about how much they cannot be paid.

</rant>

 

[chiron]

lol talking about people not being employable in the IT services industry, especially freshers about is a joke. It is not like people have NASA as their backup in case they don't get into Infy or TCS.

 

[Darth Vader]

lol talking about people not being employable in the IT services industry, especially freshers about is a joke. It is not like people have NASA as their backup in case they don't get into Infy or TCS.

^^^ This.
There are always people exist in this world who are doing a better job than you at everything and for them, you're useless/non-employable lol.
Its funny there is whole thread dedicated to discuss on how people are non employable in IT industry.

 

[Mr.J]

Indian IT industry is a digital sweatshop anyway. I don't see why 'techies' (thanks for popularising this word Times of India) are smug and act all high and mighty. When automation comes, they're gonna get axed first.

 

[Lord Nemesis]

Every job is important. Even the job of a drainage cleaner is important and every job requires a particular set of skills that make you eligible or not eligible for it. A rocket scientist with multiple doctorates may be utterly unskilled and ineligible for the role of a drainage cleaner just as much as a drainage cleaner may be ineligible for the role of a rocket scientist. So regardless of the job, there are people that are eligible and ineligible for doing it. Also the fact remains that that certain jobs pay more than others. It all depends on supply and demand. For example, even the average rocket scientist will be paid a lot more than the most skilled drainage cleaner.

If a person is holding the title of a software programmer and unable to write a couple of lines of trivial code, then that person is clearly holding a job that he is not eligible for and still being paid and it does not matter whether he is in a digital sweatshop. A normal sweatshop does not hire people that are ineligible or unsuited for the work.

The bottom line is that 99% of the time, people just get what they are worth. If they are just another head adding to the head count or at some company where the average job just requires high school pass-outs with a crash course in using computers to get the work done, then that is how they are going to be treated and paid. They are going to pay peanuts, have lengthy notice periods and shitty policies. Deal with it because that is what that particular job is about.

Of course, different people have different value attached to them and not everybody is treated the same even in our services sector companies. I know classmates and friends who are paid substantially better than the rest of their peers because their time and effort is valued higher than that of others. Those people don't have a problem with a 2 or 3 month notice periods either because they know that any decent company would easily wait for that amount of time and more for a worthy hire.

If you think that your skills/talents are better appreciated elsewhere, then, all that means is that you are at the wrong place and that you need to go to that other place.