[Samurai]

Originally Posted by AltoLXI

This is from Vineet Nayar (former CEO - HCL)

"We are reaching a situation where employees take responsibility — to think and try to stay current."

It is funny he is saying it now. That should have been the mentality all the time. The employee is responsible for keeping his/her career future proof, it was never the responsibility of the company.

Originally Posted by AltoLXI

In 1998, a programmer who had been working on Y2K fixes started to get anxious because he couldn't believe how pervasive the problem was. He switched from company to company trying to get away from it

I was in the same soup in 1997-98. Everywhere I looked, there were only Y2K projects. Although I had no background in mainframe or COBOL, they wanted me to get into it. So I quit TCS and joined a tiny company where I could pick my own tech environment.

[sunishsamuel]

Originally Posted by Samurai

J

So let's be clear that employer has no responsibility to make your career future proof.

As I mentioned before, the responsibility of staying relevant is with the employee. Some employers like me volunteer to keep the employees relevant, but that doesn't mean employers are responsible. You are not paying them for it.

Spot on, Samurai. As an individual/employee, I need to make myself relevant to the industry - this could mean undergoing trainings, Executive education (MBA, MTech etc.), certifications (PMP, ITIL, SCRUM master) depending on the areas you want to work on. You can then add value to your existing role/ company and will get rewarded by role change, additional pay, bonuses etc when the time comes. It works !

Somewhere I feel that in India, good pay = management roles. Or that's how it has become. Partly because of this, many of my colleagues who wanted to be individual contributors left the country and are happy doing such roles in USA, Canada etc. I have started seeing a change in that trend, where a staff member with excellent coding skills getting paid on par/higher than the people managers/designations in the company. However, the number of such cases are low. Its not uncommon to see great engineers being managed by poorly skilled, poorly qualified managers. I had such experiences when someone with Good communication skills (that was his only qualification) managed our department for couple of months and the result was a big disaster!

Honestly, I did not want to manage people before 40. I had the opportunity to work with some great technical wizards early in my career. They were very inspiring. They all became Managers after 40. Till then they were learning, designing, solving problems, made sure their basics are in place. When they became managers, they automatically became great mentors. In fact, that helped in shaping our career during the younger days. There were times when i was struggling with Cisco networking issues (and google was not really great plus poor internet bandwidth in India to even search/look up the internet), but the mentors gave me the right support and helped me get where i am today. They never gave answers but explained the basics and that was more than enough to solve problems, integrate platforms etc. In fact things worked fine during the early 2000's when i had a manager in the US and no local managers in India. I used to report administratively to India department heads (for leaves etc.) but that's it. Somewhere someone introduced the role of a "Manager" who was supposed to bridge the gap in communication, culture between onsite and offsite. That became lucrative and everyone wanted to be one. Most of their time was spent on networking (social), excel sheets, and Outlook. I am not saying all were bad but most of them. There was no mentoring, coaching or retention strategy. Instead of letting people grow organically, inorganic growth was introduced which I feel ruined the equilibrium. But at the end of the day, those managers were the only ones who could afford a car, house etc. So everyone wanted to be one. People did not realize the long term impact of being an inexperienced Manager. Its these events like recession that makes people think/reflect and change.

And my own experience - good or bad, my personality was chosen for a "Manager" role and I started managing people at the age of 23, plus my Indian boss told me that if i need a better pay, career progression then i have to "manage". I enjoy doing that, I can get things done and coach people, retain them, mentor them etc. But i wish i did that only after 40. I kept attending training programs on my own, spoke to people from other companies to understand perspectives, gained certifications. At least i know what's going on.

And when I joined for an executive education program, a lot of my friends and colleagues criticized my decision. Most of them asked the same question - Why are you not buying a house/plot instead of wasting money in education at this stage of life ? The industry values "experience" "talent" and no amount of education will help - these were their words. People do not realize that the world changes for good when you learn more and stay relevant. And you cannot take things for granted and settle in your comfort zone every time.

[Samurai]

News is getting terrible by the day...

IT to layoff up to 2 lakh engineers annually for next 3 years: Head Hunters India

[sunishsamuel]

Originally Posted by Samurai

News is getting terrible by the day...

IT to layoff up to 2 lakh engineers annually for next 3 years: Head Hunters India

The link also says "job cuts will not take place in major cities like Mumbai or Bengaluru, but cities like Coimbatore or a few remote places " i dont think so many engineers are employed in those cities. Or referring to the BPO industries in those cites ?

[Samurai]

I at least know two people whose companies have branches in Coimbatore. Neither are BPOs. Don't underestimate how many engineers work in tier 3/4 cities.

Even I am puzzled at why all the job losses will be in smaller cities. Since I don't have access to their data, or their analysis, it is hard to comment.

[IndieGooner]

Originally Posted by Samurai

Even I am puzzled at why all the job losses will be in smaller cities. Since I don't have access to their data, or their analysis, it is hard to comment.

Maybe with this year's poor hikes, they expect attrition to take care of matters in tier 1 cities?

[sgiitk]

Originally Posted by Samurai

News is getting terrible by the day...

IT to layoff up to 2 lakh engineers annually for next 3 years: Head Hunters India

This had been on the cards for quite some time. Trump may have triggered it. So the jobs in the US will be low level and who are being laid off Tier II managers. We basicaally grew fat with the rupee drop vis a vis the $ to cushion it.

Now remember this will have a chain reaction. Many Tier II and III colleges will face a crunch, and then engineering seats will be lost, as will jobs of teachers. Quite frankly I will be happy to see many of these degree mills shut.

[m8002?]

Are all these pure simple extrapolation from a few(mostly 2 or 3) recent data points? We have seen these dramatic statements many times and it usually doesnt happen at the scale these people predict.
To me it feels like the stock market analysts. The markets go up for 2 months...everyone predicts it will hit 35K in 1 year. Its down for next two months, then the same guys predict 20K in one year.

This is not to take away the interesting and valid discussions going on above. I have been in software product development for 17 years and can easily relate to the discussions. But these extreme predictions should be taken with loads if salt in my opinion.

[earthian]

Originally Posted by m8002?

....should be taken with loads if salt in my opinion.

Unfortunately not. This is the real thing. A combination of factors, triggered by the Trump dictat, led to this reaction. While estimates may vary and as such it is difficult to forecast any near accurate numbers, fact remains that the appreciation of the rupee, automation, over staffing, lack of demand have contributed to this fall out.

The industry had it good when the going was good. In hindsight, one should have been cautious. Not trying to preach but just saying it as it is.

Take the stock markets today for instance. We know that the market is over heated, that P/Es ratios are way above sensible numbers, that there are not enough avenues to cater to the increased liquidity flowing in. A huge correction has to come in. Question of when and not if. Yet, how many have exited? Me included.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by m8002?

Are all these pure simple extrapolation from a few(mostly 2 or 3) recent data points? We have seen these dramatic statements many times and it usually doesnt happen at the scale these people predict.

Industry rares projects bad news like this. I agree that simple extrapolation is the norm when it comes to projecting good news. But even a sinking company usually makes cheerful noises in the hope that the situation will pass uneventfully. Nobody wants to scare stakeholders, it will frighten away the investors, employees and customers.

Bad news is usually given when the point of no return has been reached.

Also, I have been expecting this for few years now because it was inevitable. I am surprised it took so long. The H1B restriction was the final straw that broke the camel's back. The large IT companies finally got the pretext they were waiting for. Now they can start large scale firings while squarely blaming it on Trump. Trump is not really the cause for this, but he makes a perfect scapegoat.

[pratyush6]

Originally Posted by ajayclicks

I am a market researcher who has made a few polite attempts (and failed) at entering the analytics industry

I wonder if this person is meaning that they are trying to move beyond just data crunching and are looking to provide analysis/ reports etc. The reason I say this is because I have a few friends who are analytics professionals and they candidly admit that bulk of the work is limited to preparing dashboards and tableau files.

The other day one of my leaders actually questioned me, on why do I say dash-boarding or tableau is far different to Business/Data Analytics?
Anyone who wants to move up the analytics chain needs to be in the area where there is a severe shortage of people - people who understand business challenges, who break it down into specific questions and solve it using Data. Tableau/Dashboards are just the icing on the cake and not the cake itself. The only problem with this is that, untill and unless you are hands on you wont learn and unless you have experience employers don't accept you - its like a cyclic problem.

And as the people here have told - you are somewhat looked down upon if you are using SAS Coding - it's like, this can can only code. And your managers and super managers are the typical 'gyani-junta' (people who talk 60k feet in the air) who have rarely done anything themselves. You are lucky if you have a technical guy as your lead/manager.

[centaur]

Originally Posted by Samurai

We pay colleges to give us education. So there is a clear expectation that they must educate/train us well, for the money we pay them.

Exactly why I said we cannot equate colleges and IT firms

Originally Posted by Samurai

The employers on the other hand pay you to do work. If they train you, it is because it is a job requirement. You can't expect them to train you to make you future proof. They could, but it is not their duty or responsibility. If you hire a car driver, do you assume any responsibility to train him while he is working for you? If he not driving well, not following signals well, you might take time to educate him on that, because it is a job requirement. This is exactly what corporate training is all about, training you for the job. But you are not going to train your driver in data science so that he has a career when auto-driving cars takeover.

So let's be clear that employer has no responsibility to make your career future proof.

However, employer may take on the responsibility to train the employees well, as a retention strategy. I do that in my company. We can't pay very high, so we give good training. We even sponsor MS/MBA for long term employees.

For some reason I feel that what I am trying to say and where this conversation is going isn't related. The driver examples again doesn't fit because the technology change in IT is way different from in cars. Also for the sake of it, we do consider taking it, most of us would definitely consider training the driver because there its a factor of trust and reliability of the drive than anything else.

My point was more about relevance of a skill in a particular role e.g. the industry is structured such a way in a particular role you dont use a skillset and in that case you don really need to learn/upgrade it. You look onto new skills and not thriving on old ones. for e.g. when a person gets onto project management, he focuses more on people skills and project management/delivery. As he grows he focuses more on business development and relationship management. My question is around this fundamental structure and operating principles of the IT industry and not about a company future proofing an individual's career. Please note the difference.

Originally Posted by Samurai

As I mentioned before, the responsibility of staying relevant is with the employee. Some employers like me volunteer to keep the employees relevant, but that doesn't mean employers are responsible. You are not paying them for it.

Its not about the pay at this point but since we are at it, many times it can be seen that laterals with same experience and skillsets are hired at higher pay than giving an existing employee the chance to grow. The disparity of pay within the industry is just unexplainable. That again is a can of worms in itself but again that is better kept for discussion some other day.

BTW, Infy said they are deferring their pay hikes to July but are not firing anyone and this is what NASSCOM has to say -

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/...w/58649523.cms

Wondering which is to be believed and which isnt

[Chetan_Rao]

Originally Posted by centaur

......
My point was more about relevance of a skill in a particular role e.g. the industry is structured such a way in a particular role you dont use a skillset and in that case you don really need to learn/upgrade it......

Not presuming anything on your behalf, but would like to add a point there.

Skills and training requirements need to be compartmentalized into two sections: immediate & long-term.

Immediate covers what you need to perform your current role, and long-term is obviously what you need to get where you want to go. Depending on what you're doing, both sets may or may not have stuff in common. Goes without saying an organisation won't necessarily offer to support your long-term goals unless they gain something out of it. That's where Samurai's advice of 'owning your long-term education needs' is relevant.

Immediate is usually easy to nail down and quantify, but long-term needs meticulous planning and awareness of where your intended line of work/industry is going as a whole.

Most people manage the former decently well, but a lot lose out on the latter because they're too focused on the here and now. That's where mentoring helps, as I mentioned in a previous post (probably my initial response to you).

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by centaur

My point was more about relevance of a skill in a particular role e.g. the industry is structured such a way in a particular role you dont use a skillset and in that case you don really need to learn/upgrade it. You look onto new skills and not thriving on old ones. for e.g. when a person gets onto project management, he focuses more on people skills and project management/delivery. As he grows he focuses more on business development and relationship management. My question is around this fundamental structure and operating principles of the IT industry and not about a company future proofing an individual's career. Please note the difference.

You are talking about immediate requirements, as Chetan Rao succinctly put it. Such needs are usually met by companies, I have rarely seen them skimp on such training needs. They just don't worry about your long term goals. That is up to you.

Originally Posted by centaur

Its not about the pay at this point but since we are at it, many times it can be seen that laterals with same experience and skillsets are hired at higher pay than giving an existing employee the chance to grow.

Readily available skill is always desired over training an existing employee, especially if the skill is a tough one to acquire.

Originally Posted by centaur

The disparity of pay within the industry is just unexplainable. That again is a can of worms in itself but again that is better kept for discussion some other day.

Who says it is unexplainable? I explained it years ago.

Originally Posted by centaur

Wondering which is to be believed and which isnt

Nasscom is going into a full scale damage control now. Notice how they use the term net hiring. If you fire 50K senior level people and hire 2 lakhs freshies, it gives you 1.5 lakh net hiring.

In fact the industry continues to be a net hirer with over 1.5 lakh people being employed on a net basis each year, though the focus is shifting from scale to skill

But, most of us insiders know the problem is real and massive. No amount of PR damage control by Nasscom can undo the reality.

[shankar.balan]

Originally Posted by pratyush6

Anyone who wants to move up the analytics chain needs to be in the area where there is a severe shortage of people - people who understand business challenges, who break it down into specific questions and solve it using Data. Tableau/Dashboards are just the icing on the cake and not the cake itself. .

The input quality and the 'right queries' are what give one the desired quality of output.
Too often I find that like you say, the bloke writing the query is clueless on what he is writing it for, having near zero business understanding.
It is time to cross-skill and give hard core tech blokes an opportunity to learn business because in my considered opinion, Techno-Business is the path to the future.