you explained it very well.
Salary and role for somebody with 10 years exp in software industry
- Thread starter Lord Nemesis
- Start date
anirbandd
Beginner
Self management is a near impossible with the quality of people you find in your typical IT services company. You do need a few layers of management, though probably not as many layers, or as thick as there is right now in most companies.
If you have not understood how CMMI sells itself, I'd suggest you read them again. Before we had a few good people, and they somehow managed to make things happen. As IT companies need to cut costs, they rely on more and more grunt work from freshers, and a shoestring quantity of management + some "knowledge" and "process" assets to achieve the same level of productivity, and more importantly, a consistent quality of service, regardless of how good or bad it may be.
How it is done, that would be giving away my company's operational strategy
People whining about the way things are being done, trust me, there is a simple and rational explanation for all this (though probably something you didn't expect)!
I know exactly what you are talking about.
anirbandd
Beginner
my comment was not sarcastic, if thats what you mean.
if thats not what you mean, then, im jsut ranting at the higher authority for not granting me leaves.
but, im taking the thread offtopic here. lemme stop. this is a great and informative thread.
Well, I can say for sure that it is how product companies (By that, I mean companies that create software and rely on its sales either as packaged software or SaaS) are moving forward. They simply cannot afford the manager culture anymore. Any company struck with it would soon find itself loosing its place in the fast paced software industry.
As for the services sector, I may not have worked at a software services company, but I have worked with them for sure as the companies that I worked for have often employed software service providers (all of them renowned ones both Indian and International) for certain jobs. Also my sis has been working in this sector (all of them big names) for years. So I do understand how they work and why the managers won't be going away in these companies.
Software Services sector would still continue with the managers and manager culture for various reasons. For these companies, its all about how to get new accounts, retain existing ones and milk them as best as they could. Unfortunately, many of them don't even consider technology to be a big factor towards meeting that end and hence its not given focus. The effectiveness and agility of their technical staff and the quality of their work doesn't matter to them and that is why technology folk often choke in such places.
They rely on the strength of their marketing more than the strength of their technology. They just need lots of cheap software professionals for head count so that they can bill the client and a minute fraction of good people to keep the projects running to give a perception of capability. Even the crap about their "industry standard" certified processes and throwing around buzz word like SEI CMM, ISO are again a facet of their marketing focused strategy.
There are other ways for achieving their primary goal. Ass licking the client side people, bribing them (with money, gifts and other means) and using every other trick in the book is fair game. That is where the manager culture often helps. They need people to manage stuff more than they need technology people. Their business is centered around managing stuff every step of the way. The need for managers in the these companies goes beyond the tech divisions and the skill or maturity or disciple of the tech staff are not the only factors and make them have managers at every level.
Can you believe that at one of the well renowned services companies that my sister has worked at, they were asked to deliberately compromise the quality of the software in a subtle manner so that they can bill the client further for maintenance. That is the way they manage client retention. Somebody has to be there to ask for this sort of stuff. A self organized team of developers would never dream of doing such things on their own.
anirbandd
Beginner
Taht last para.. such things are common for client retention. just that they do it so good that they dont get caught.
and as far as technical knowledge is concerned, a couple of people in my team are almost class X fail. they passed with border marks.. somehow ocmpleted engg and got placed.
woohoo.
heck the guy didnt even know how to resize a picture in ms paint. [he was trying to help *cough* a girl]
one more thing about PMs in services based companies is that they will never praise you, however hard you work and solve issues. as my PM says, thats just being professional.
but they'll happily lick the client's foot and what not to get the same praise for themselves. i feel happy that my client side manager/ ALM is awesome and helps us out lot of times. And my teammates, save a few, are also great and very helpful.
SMT was a concept which came to India around 11-12 years ago. It was tried out in companies which were extremely process - driven (like GE / Motorola). Every task / sub - itinerary was broken down into specific components with a tight frame work around them. SMT was the holistic approach for all of the above to function as a combined "job" and be highly automated. It failed...! Even the process orientation and alignment pivots were difficult to adhere to. So we saw the up-shoot of Six Sigma (DFSS and DMAIC) and LEANing of processes, to further analyze and fine tune processes. Six Sigma was used to probe and penetrate the variations (which resulted in errors) and LEAN was deployed to reduce waste and keep an efficient cycle-time. Again this was really not doing wonders. We then evolved to Agile SCRUM which focused on molecular agents coupled with a dynamic and evolutionary business method.
@Lord Nemesis, @anirbandd: for a moment i thought you guys were talking about govt jobs.
There are no dearth of companies with excellent work culture. I won't disclose the name of my company but I happen to work for one such company with quite an open culture. I never get to hear about stuff like deliberately introducing bugs, bribing, employee de-motivation, bogus billing etc. I can approach any of my superiors for unresolved issues/help. Anyone can talk to the CEO of the company. Leaves/timeoffs etc are shared at the project level... so, I'd know in advance when my boss is on leave and the same goes for other folks. There is transparency at every level, well of course, barring the salary structure
. There are no designated desks for anybody... not even for the CEO. All people are treated equally. There are hell lot of courses available and it doesn't matter if a non-tech marketing guy wants to learn Java or to find out how to write test cases... he/she can take the training and jump domains. Managers, Directors etc always support people wanting to change domain. They can learn about the technology, appear for an internal review and hop on to new project. Same goes for onsite travels... everyone is given equal opportunities.
I can go on and on listing down the good things, core values etc. In fact, you can check out the list of "best companies to work for" to find out more about the open work cultures of those top level companies. This list doesn't talk about companies in the terms of highest revenue or workforce but the employee satisfaction. My company used to be in the top ten since 2004. I stopped tracking it after 2009.
I never had to ask for any raise. Feedback is always prompt but as part of human nature, not everyone agrees to their shortcomings. Despite all this, if someone still notices discrepancies in the processes, act of bribing, sabotaging, harassment etc then one can approach any person above the manager level. In case one wants to remain anonymous then there are hotlines and mailboxes available for reporting unethical behaviour. This is handled by people outside our company and police, legal department are also involved.
So much so, just to let employees focus on their work. If I need to work late in the evening then I don't have to worry about the food, transport or the security. Shift allowance, overtime are always recorded and duly compensated in the form of money or day-offs. And client is always kept in loop about all this. If we are late on some deliverables even then the client is made aware of the delay. In fact, our reporting happens every 8 hours, so at the max we lose out a day and not months as it often happens in other companies. My company is among those very few which consistently deliver projects right on schedule more than 80% of the time. Check out the score of other big companies.
My company is not unique but there are several others with very high employee satisfaction rate. What's the fun of earning too much when you don't enjoy the work?
"Indians" are the only bad thing about my company.
There are no dearth of companies with excellent work culture. I won't disclose the name of my company but I happen to work for one such company with quite an open culture. I never get to hear about stuff like deliberately introducing bugs, bribing, employee de-motivation, bogus billing etc. I can approach any of my superiors for unresolved issues/help. Anyone can talk to the CEO of the company. Leaves/timeoffs etc are shared at the project level... so, I'd know in advance when my boss is on leave and the same goes for other folks. There is transparency at every level, well of course, barring the salary structure
. There are no designated desks for anybody... not even for the CEO. All people are treated equally. There are hell lot of courses available and it doesn't matter if a non-tech marketing guy wants to learn Java or to find out how to write test cases... he/she can take the training and jump domains. Managers, Directors etc always support people wanting to change domain. They can learn about the technology, appear for an internal review and hop on to new project. Same goes for onsite travels... everyone is given equal opportunities. I can go on and on listing down the good things, core values etc. In fact, you can check out the list of "best companies to work for" to find out more about the open work cultures of those top level companies. This list doesn't talk about companies in the terms of highest revenue or workforce but the employee satisfaction. My company used to be in the top ten since 2004. I stopped tracking it after 2009.
I never had to ask for any raise. Feedback is always prompt but as part of human nature, not everyone agrees to their shortcomings. Despite all this, if someone still notices discrepancies in the processes, act of bribing, sabotaging, harassment etc then one can approach any person above the manager level. In case one wants to remain anonymous then there are hotlines and mailboxes available for reporting unethical behaviour. This is handled by people outside our company and police, legal department are also involved.
So much so, just to let employees focus on their work. If I need to work late in the evening then I don't have to worry about the food, transport or the security. Shift allowance, overtime are always recorded and duly compensated in the form of money or day-offs. And client is always kept in loop about all this. If we are late on some deliverables even then the client is made aware of the delay. In fact, our reporting happens every 8 hours, so at the max we lose out a day and not months as it often happens in other companies. My company is among those very few which consistently deliver projects right on schedule more than 80% of the time. Check out the score of other big companies.
My company is not unique but there are several others with very high employee satisfaction rate. What's the fun of earning too much when you don't enjoy the work?
"Indians" are the only bad thing about my company.
Rave
Explorer
Hehe sounds like a company I worked for, I can safely say one of the biggest thing, if not the biggest thing wrong with Indian work environment is infact, Indians
On an unrelated note, PM me the name of your company if its ok, sounds like something to keep an eye out on
I worked in a IT co which was pretty open and transparent till the recent past. Right now I'm in another indian biggie, which is more known for its politics, and often compared to a govt institution. Thankfully I'm high up enough here and have a good enough network that the politics and the wheels within the wheels now work for me, so I can't complain
TCS?I worked in a IT co which was pretty open and transparent till the recent past. Right now I'm in another indian biggie, which is more known for its politics, and often compared to a govt institution. Thankfully I'm high up enough here and have a good enough network that the politics and the wheels within the wheels now work for me, so I can't complain
sharktale1212
Guide
I am moving to a product based company and they still have the manager structure. Maybe because the department/tech I am going to has less to do with the core products/offerings.
I think the last part is not so unbelievable, one of my colleague quit his job precisely because of such BS. He kept telling people about how the said company was milking the bank. No one listened to him, not even his own managers, finally when he quit - they scrambled to retain him to save their asses on a critical implementation. The line used by the business side manager was - Why did I not listen to you a year ago? (making it sound like even people not hearing the guy was that guys own fault).
The guilty party in this case was a phoren based "service company" ie even non-Indian entities are guilty of pulling these stunts.
@Criminal - I don't know what kind of company you work for but some of these companies are as bad as "govt companies". They support mediocrity than meritocracy. People who are smart are always relegated to doing the bulk of the work -- always called "helping".
Still same query as @Rave - pm me the company name. Might add it to my preferred list
people who think great product companies are better
http://minimsft.blogspot.com/2008/05/whats-up-with-microsoft-india.html
I had a friend who was offered 25L fresh out of engineering from a tier 3 college - he quit after 2 years because he couldn't take it any more!
http://minimsft.blogspot.com/2008/05/whats-up-with-microsoft-india.html
I had a friend who was offered 25L fresh out of engineering from a tier 3 college - he quit after 2 years because he couldn't take it any more!
avi
Juggernaut
So with one example of one product company you are saying all are bad? m'kay.
nah, just that a lot of people think that product companies are a cut above, and nothing can go wrong, and that service companies are crap. My point was that (I thought it was clear from my original post) Not all Product companies are good.
Basic Logical reasoning sire. Not all cats are hats != All cats are not hats
Basic Logical reasoning sire. Not all cats are hats != All cats are not hats
Many most companies are bad and rampant with bad practices specially towards the human resources. The glass ceiling for females is there, interview questions are borderline racist and horrendous. There is no personal privacy (leaves are questioned), and work hour ethics, hygiene conditions are ill-mannered. The worst of the lot are ADMIN and HR. One thinks they are demi-Gods, and the latter project themselves as Popes in civil clothing.