[ashokrajagopal]

Originally Posted by centaur

The companies obviously charge this back to the clients/customers. So basically now services get more expensive for them.

It is not as simple. An engineer in US( on H1B, thus on reduced salary) costs 5-6 times the same in India. No client would take this for long. Any Indian tech giant who is even trying to do this basically are cutting their own roots. If the services are charged equal to what it would cost to hire a contract worker in US, why would any one want an Indian Tech giant ?

[centaur]

What other option do they have? It's not specific to one Indian firm but to all anyway. This was one of the downsides highlighted to the current President when the delegation went to meet him. Reduced taxes would be the other issue but they still went ahead with it. Within a year, things will get on clear whom this move from US has damaged more than others

[blackasta]

Originally Posted by m8002?

You are missing the main point of automation. Automation is to reduce the manual efforts. As an example, with automation, I need only 50% workforce. Even if everyone in the team learns "automation" as you put it, the company cannot provide opportunities for all the existing 100% just because they know automation as the manual effort is now reduced. So 50% will have to moved.

That's where the vision of correct forecasting comes in.
It's not in the best interest of either the employee or company that a trained resource moves out.
So companies should stop the mad hiring stint at ground level, look at their employee pool at hand more carefully, look at the work projection over the next 1-2 years and redeploy/reskill.

So a company with sustainable automation philosophy shall look at increasing it's work footprint with same or slightly more number of employees, not merely let the employees go.

[Red Liner]

Originally Posted by ashokrajagopal

It is not as simple. An engineer in US( on H1B, thus on reduced salary) costs 5-6 times the same in India. No client would take this for long. Any Indian tech giant who is even trying to do this basically are cutting their own roots. If the services are charged equal to what it would cost to hire a contract worker in US, why would any one want an Indian Tech giant ?

You have to understand that this issue is a very USA centric issue - i.e. Indian's fronting to Americans for business.

In Europe, where English is not normally the language of business, Locals prefer Locals to interact with. Which is why traditional Indian IT services companies are nowhere to be found around there (in relative comparison to the strides made in the USA). Maybe EU Fortune 10 or 20 do business with Indian IT services companies, but not most else.

It will simply be a business model re-jig, gone are the days of hefty margins, time to buckle down and operate in the league of a local competitor who probably got burnt out by these guys a decade back - and focus on "Earnings per Employee" as a P&L driver.

I don't see the USA or the American customers going back on this - there is a vehement push by the administration to hire locals/citizens. Instead, I see more American customers setting up their own units in India and control everything in-house, managing Indian delivery centers using their American staff from H.O.

PS: I lived in and started my own IT services business in Europe. I hired locals for sales.

[Chetan_Rao]

Originally Posted by blackasta

....Though scriptless automation tools are coming up fast.

True. Automation is a broad abstract concept, and 'what can be automated' is changing as I type this, so it's really difficult to quantify automation as a whole, so the next best thing is to evaluate at task-level. Any repeatable task that follows a well-defined set of scenarios/variables will need minimal human intervention, so it's not a matter of skill beyond a point, but efficiency.

Artificial Intelligence is a whole different ballgame, but it's still a bit far out in the future. Human labor has been decreasing since the first tool was invented ages ago, and the process is not reversible.

Regarding a company's objective being to train people to match task requirements - the companies have been stating that the next big thing is automation. So people learnt/were made to learn the same. Now the companies cannot provide promised work those very people, whose expectation has been set higher after learning something new

You missed the critical bit of my response. An automated task won't need the same number of resources compared to doing it manually. So there will be obvious redundancies.

Regarding contract labor - all offshore/onshore outsourcing is contractual. So there is absolutely no cost advantage by firing 3 contractors in India and hiring 3 contractors to do the same task in USA.

I wasn't referring to customer-vendor contracts, of course everything is contractual ultimately.

I was referring to vendor-resource relationships. I may hire an FTE in India, but I may hire a third-party contractor if forced to move the position onshore as an FTE onshore won't be cost-effective for my budget. Indian organisations went ballistic hiring FTEs just because labor is comparatively cheap, without proper capacity planning/forecasting and are now stuck with surplus headcount.

Originally Posted by centaur

The companies obviously charge this back to the clients/customers. So basically now services get more expensive for them.....

Not necessarily. The first hit will be to vendor margins. Most IT Services firms over-quote effort estimates, billing rates and headcount requirements.
Cost is a major card to play for Indian IT Services, so it's not easy to pass higher costs to customer without consequences.

.....this is a very rampant practice across most companies if not all. Some do have a structure in place where based on a particular experience level, they are put in a pay range and not above or below.

I already agreed pay disparities happen, and there are plenty of reasons for it, including some absurd ones. I do have experience with organisations that follow range-based systems, so I'd be skeptical to paint everyone with the same brush.

The question was where in a techie in most cases, basis his experience is slowly and gradually moved into a project management/people management role. In most companies, people dont get an option to not have reportees or stay pure technical. Have quoted examples earlier of people who tried to do that failed at it

I think you should swap 'experience' with 'tenure' there. Just because someone has spent X years in an organisation with a certain title doesn't necessarily equate to the person having X years of relevant experience in a particular domain, or them being ready to 'manage'.

Tenure-based promotions are a very Indian thing, and is obviously a major flaw because it moves people into roles they either don't want or aren't equipped to handle.

When it was time for me to move up to 'manager', I was fortunate to have a choice between taking a full-blown people manager role and hand-off my individual contributor responsibilities to someone else, or keep them and do a dual role. The manager gig had better pay and other benefits, but I loved my IC role and didn't let it go. Contrast that to a previous job where I wasn't given the choice and made to move for hierarchical reasons, same as you mention. I walked.

....People in India are being laid off to recruit people in US, a logic which I could not make sense of.....

Stop-gap solutions until the position can be eliminated altogether and/or regulatory issues of today calm down. Mostly the former.

...most likely those people are filtered out in the prescreening process itself. They don't even make it to the next rounds and even if they do, they don't land a job.

You would be surprised just how many incompetent people end up getting all the way through. If you've never experienced it before and if it's possible in your organisation, I'd recommend you get a first-hand taste of the recruitment process, even if just as an observer. You'll be in for quite a few surprises.

.....How do they expect a chemical/mechanical engineering student to write a code when they have never been taught about it?

Goes back to the 'whatever gets me ahead quickly' mindset. What is a chemical/mechanical engineer doing in an IT Services company in the first place?

From the company's perspective, most new engineering graduates are undeployable (like I said before), and they'll give them the bare minimum training required to start earning money on headcount.

Most firms don't give an option to stay technical....

You're broad-brushing again based on anecdotal evidence.

Even if you do walk out, most likely you will end up in a similar soup in your next organization. You would be really lucky to find an Org which would appreciate you being technical role wise

It's definitely not easy, but it's not impossible either. I've said multiple times we all make compromises based on a lot of scenarios (difficulty finding a job we love is one among them), but then we shouldn't blame someone else for our choices, and their consequences.

......looking at progress isnt wrong

You'll need to define 'progress' as it varies by person. It could be more money, better benefits, higher designation, a bigger office, high-quality projects, whatever floats one's boat. One can't always have everything, so technical progress may mean losing out on some of the others, or vice versa. Choices and consequences, again.

[ajayclicks]

Some form of protectionism happened even before Trump. My employer does a fair amount of work for US Federal Government, and 12- 14 months ago, I had to step out of 2 projects (non IT) as their contract mandated that vendors should staff only local/those permitted to work locally.

[centaur]

Originally Posted by Chetan_Rao

Not necessarily. The first hit will be to vendor margins. Most IT Services firms over-quote effort estimates, billing rates and headcount requirements.
Cost is a major card to play for Indian IT Services, so it's not easy to pass higher costs to customer without consequences.

The dent in the margin will be way lesser than what gets passed on to the customer.

Originally Posted by Chetan_Rao

I think you should swap 'experience' with 'tenure' there. Just because someone has spent X years in an organisation with a certain title doesn't necessarily equate to the person having X years of relevant experience in a particular domain, or them being ready to 'manage'.

In most cases they can be swapped in real life scenarios. Irrespective of the domain that you worked in, you can be a manager. Yes domain plays a pivotal role if you are to become an SME in that domain, else not much so

Originally Posted by Chetan_Rao

You would be surprised just how many incompetent people end up getting all the way through. If you've never experienced it before and if it's possible in your organisation, I'd recommend you get a first-hand taste of the recruitment process, even if just as an observer. You'll be in for quite a few surprises.

I was to mention this in my previous post itself that "this is based on my experience in recruitment drives" but decided not to. The incompetent people coming through is generally the come with a "recommendation" from a biggie inside else you can easily figure out who can be trained and who cannot. I have personally been in cases where in idiots have got filtered through and when asked to the person responsible for the final list of candidates, I get told that he/she had a heavy recommendation.

Originally Posted by Chetan_Rao

Goes back to the 'whatever gets me ahead quickly' mindset. What is a chemical/mechanical engineer doing in an IT Services company in the first place?

Not necessarily. What other option does a chemical/mechanical engineer have in India otherwise. The few positions in the respective fields are mostly raked up by top Tech colleges.

Originally Posted by Chetan_Rao

You're broad-brushing again based on anecdotal evidence.

Absolutely not. Its based on actual experiences.

Originally Posted by Chetan_Rao

but then we shouldn't blame someone else for our choices, and their consequences.

Thats the point. You dont get a choice many times.

Originally Posted by Chetan_Rao

One, you'll need to define 'progress' as it varies by person. It could be more money, better benefits, higher designation, a bigger office, high-quality projects, whatever floats one's boat. One can't always have everything, so technical progress may mean losing out on some of the others, or vice versa.

Absolutely but it still remains progress and still isn't wrong irrespective of what it means for anyone

[ashokrajagopal]

Originally Posted by Red Liner

You have to understand that this issue is a very USA centric issue - i.e. Indian's fronting to Americans for business.

In Europe, where English is not normally the language of business, Locals prefer Locals to interact with. Which is why traditional Indian IT services companies are nowhere to be found around there (in relative comparison to the strides made in the USA). Maybe EU Fortune 10 or 20 do business with Indian IT services companies, but not most else.

It will simply be a business model re-jig, gone are the days of hefty margins, time to buckle down and operate in the league of a local competitor who probably got burnt out by these guys a decade back - and focus on "Earnings per Employee" as a P&L driver.

I don't see the USA or the American customers going back on this - there is a vehement push by the administration to hire locals/citizens. Instead, I see more American customers setting up their own units in India and control everything in-house, managing Indian delivery centers using their American staff from H.O.

PS: I lived in and started my own IT services business in Europe. I hired locals for sales.

Agreed its a US specific issue, and agreed the Indian giants dont have that much of a presence in Europe. That automatically points to the fact that the Indian Tech giants would not be affected that much if EU turns protectionist. They are big time affected by the way US turns protectionist and they have to do a business model rejig alright, but I dont think they will ever fire Indians and replace with US citizens in US. That model will never work for anybody; not the giants themselves, nor the clients they serve.
I also agree on the US companies starting or expanding India Delivery centres. But that does not pose any problem for Indian engineers; its a welcome move.

[Chetan_Rao]

Originally Posted by centaur

The dent in the margin will be way lesser than what gets passed on to the customer.

It varies from deal to deal (margins vary by a bunch of factors), so it's nearly impossible to say that conclusively without having the numbers at hand.

....Irrespective of the domain that you worked in, you can be a manager. Yes domain plays a pivotal role if you are to become an SME in that domain, else not much so

Supervisor? Yes. Manager? No.

It may look like a semantics argument, but it isn't. If one is only expected to supervise a bunch of people administratively, then anyone who understands the admin systems/processes can be a supervisor. Even a smart teenager would do!

If one's expected to manage a team of professionals and actually be accountable for results, it makes ZERO sense to give the job to someone who knows nothing of the team's work/domain. Becoming a supervisor is easy. Manager, not so much.

Sadly, supervisor and manager are used interchangeably in the Indian context.

I was to mention this in my previous post itself that "this is based on my experience in recruitment drives" but decided not to. The incompetent people coming through is generally the come with a "recommendation" from a biggie inside else you can easily figure out who can be trained and who cannot. I have personally been in cases where in idiots have got filtered through and when asked to the person responsible for the final list of candidates, I get told that he/she had a heavy recommendation.

You aren't alone in that experience, and I'll just stop at saying a lot of incompetent people get hired for a variety of reasons.

Not necessarily. What other option does a chemical/mechanical engineer have in India otherwise. The few positions in the respective fields are mostly raked up by top Tech colleges.

And who forced the person to study Chemical/Mechanical Engg. instead of CS/IT? Why study engineering at all?

We desperately need career counseling/mentoring/guidance (call it what you may), and we need to move away from making peer-induced decisions. Most Indian youngsters have their educational choices made for them, heck if someone ends up with multiple job offers, quality of work usually isn't the top deciding factor in choosing one.

Absolutely not. Its based on actual experiences.

Anecdotal and actual aren't mutually exclusive, it's a matter of sample size. Even if a particular event is true for everyone I know, I cannot extrapolate that to claim it's universally true.

[shankar.balan]

You know what? We in India are very busy seeking Nirvana for ourselves as individuals and are unable to think or consider the 'common good'.

Thats why kids are literally forced to study by rote and do well in stupid archaic exams in this silly archaic educational system, irrespective of their real innate talent and / or interests. The single over arching goal is to 'do well' which has become measurable only by the amount of money and property that one can amass.

In India right now we have too many Engineers and MBA's - a positive glut in fact. Too many super qualified people chasing too few jobs. And a marked lack of that simple thing called 'common sense'.

Too many Chiefs and too few Indians or too many Generals and too few foot soldiers.
Having paid good money for their so-called 'education', sometimes with big fat loans etc, the pressure is on them, to pay these back!

Hence everyone wants to take the shortest cut and be a 'Manager' , earn big bucks, sit in an AC room and give 'gyaan' and make interminable excels and ppts.

No one wants to actually do the ground work. Fact is, unless one learns how to take orders, one will never be able to give orders.

The old tenets have a lot of sense in them, starting on the 'floor' and working one's way up etc. But today every fresh recruit has a great deal of attitude and ambition but many a time, lacks experience, common sense, humility and patience and yet wants to sit in the corner office and manage troops of people immediately!

It is also a fact that many people who are 'managing people' these days, can barely manage themselves and their time and their deliverables, let alone others!

I lament this because all the brighter (or greedier) engineers and MBA's are running towards the cushy, comfy jobs and only the lower end of the spectrum are landing up building bridges and roads and infrastructure and buildings and hospitals and getting into road planning and city planning etc.

Soon we'll have gangs of software engineers striding the non existent streets in our crumbling cities with leaky and broken infrastructure, seeking to 'chase some coding dream' or 'startup' something or other in the hope of making money, while exhibiting a complete and total sensory ignorance of the real broken state of affairs around them in terms of 'real life'.

This picture from Tintin immediately springs to mind when thinking of any typical 'Corporate' nowadays. This has been the case, in my experience, since around 2003 and shows no signs of abatement at all in 2017!

[aargee]

Don't know how much of truth is in store, but if true...whoa!!real troubles ahead of us

http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/bus...hg2BoCP4Xw_wcB

[TorqueyTechie]

Originally Posted by aargee

Don't know how much of truth is in store, but if true...whoa!!real troubles ahead of us

http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/bus...hg2BoCP4Xw_wcB

Very untrue! Mr. Azim Premji himself has come out with a statement to the press as well as sending emails to employees mentioning that the news is false and he along with other promoters are not planning to sell their stakes anytime in the near future!

Source : ET

[dailydriver]

The following picture could have fit best in the Official Jokes thread. But the hard reality of the day is too glaring to be missed and hence this post.




PS: The Kannada clipping offers to pay ₹15,000 for a butcher's job.

[Samurai]

Well, one of those jobs require real skill from day one.

[SilentEngine]

Originally Posted by Samurai

Well, one of those jobs require real skill from day one.

And comes with the risk of possible physical harm as well, given the frenzied curiosity about what's on the plate