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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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.....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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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....People in India are being laid off to recruit people in US, a logic which I could not make sense of.....
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Stop-gap solutions until the position can be eliminated altogether and/or regulatory issues of today calm down. Mostly the former.
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...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.
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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.
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.....How do they expect a chemical/mechanical engineering student to write a code when they have never been taught about it?
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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.
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Most firms don't give an option to stay technical....
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You're broad-brushing again based on anecdotal evidence.
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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
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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.
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......looking at progress isnt wrong
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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.