[NetfreakBombay]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

India is being outsourced to not just domain specialists in USA but to Eastern Europe, Ukraine etc and with this work force the pitfalls {for the employer} of attrition, and disgruntled employees largely disappears as these gig economy workers in far off Ukraine take up what were till yesterday Indian jobs.

+1

My team consists of developers from Detroit and Basov. Cost is not that much different as compared to Bangalore. (Say 30 lakh INR or 100K RON)

With WFH, location of developer is less relevant.

Originally Posted by Aceman82

2. Things could not be better for IC's who are technically strong. From my own personal experience, I keep getting weekly pings for roles across the globe.

1.Never lose the technical edge.

Can't agree more. Being an IC + being good at what you do is the best combination. be it Dev / QA / UX / Product Management / Sales.

Originally Posted by am1m

I still see most India-based managers at several US-HQ'd IT services and product companies (and it's even worse at EU-HQ'd companies!) performing the role of mailboxes - merely conveying what the US management wants to the Indian team. Or maintaining Excel sheets of how many hours an employee stayed at their desks and how many leaves they took.

Surprising to see such specimen at product companies. How do they even survive ? Only way to survive is to show hard numbers either in terms of product delivery or team growth. Both are tough jobs.

[m8002?]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

With bandwidth, IT security and WFH all coming together a lot of the work earlier being done in India is being outsourced to not just domain specialists in USA but to Eastern Europe, Ukraine etc and with this work force the pitfalls {for the employer} of attrition, and disgruntled employees largely disappears as these gig economy workers in far off Ukraine take up what were till yesterday Indian jobs.

Golden words, as usual from Narayan sir.

With the crazy salaries people are demanding, we are killing the golden goose. The only thing currently going for us is scale. A company will find it difficult to quickly scale to 3000 or 5000 employees in Eastern Europe. But if you are smaller company planning to have a 50-100 seater R&D center, Romania, Poland, Ukraine, et al. offer much better skilled workforce.

[V.Narayan]

Originally Posted by m8002?

Golden words...

Originally Posted by NetfreakBombay

+1
With WFH, location of developer is less relevant.

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

Folks I have been reading this thread for some months and I sincerely empathize with the travails and difficulties many of the members here have faced and continue to face. I'm not an engineer nor am I an IT person by any stretch. But I do sit on the sidelines of the industry and observe.

Dear Members, Readers,

Just some trends I see happening in your (IT) industry are stated below. These are trends that are being discussed and some of them are being actioned upon by the Board of Directors of the companies some of you work for.

1. Thanks to digitization, AI, ML, Robotics and so much more the demand for software is experiencing a quantum jump over the next 25 years. This is similar to the quantum jump the industry experienced in the 1990s onwards driven by telephony, internet, broad band, Y2k etc.

2. A consequence of #1 above is the emerging global shortage of skilled IT professional. Trust me this is not a India only phenomena. It is world wide and it will get more acute before it gets better. So for those members & readers lamenting their terrible boss or uncaring employer the next decade and more will be an employees market. Large global customers of IT services whom at least I have spoken to understand that manpower costs have shifted permanently and they will have to pay for it. I only hope our Indian IT majors use this to push for solution based pricing and not FTE based pricing.

3. But it is not all a bed of roses. The next generation of automating software coding is well underway and as I said in my earlier posts a zillion $ are being spent on it to counter the harassment investors and employers experience when salaries start going up 50% to 70% over night and attrition shots up to 35% per annum and more. These numbers make owning and running a business, any business, non-viable.

Most writers on this thread are employees and have my sincere respect for the great work they do. But a characteristic of several employees is to assume that they are the only factor/stakeholder in a business that count. The Customer, the Investor, the Employees and Society/Govt at large are all stakeholders and unless a business balances and fulfills the needs of all things topple. The way employees attrite in India, take a job offer and never show up, use WFH to hold two jobs does this country grievous harm.

4. Other than the changes WFH is bringing in within India I foresee a shift to smaller Tier -III towns and to smaller IT facilities. There is no good reason to maintain facilities or employment in a Bangalore or Hyderabad with its revolving door employees and sky rocketing salaries. At least some of the work can be outsourced to a gig economy WFH professional in Kakinada or Kiev or Lvov or Cebu. And this is happening faster than we realize. Data across companies indicates that Tier-III towns have attrition rates multiple times better than the big metros.

5. The one thing going for India is scale. That pool of constant supply of young talent will ensure that. Equally those IT professionals who really keep pace with upgrading either their technical skill or their domain knowledge can expect to remain gainfully employed as a gig professional at the age of 65.

Readers may or may not agree with these observations of mine as an insider-outsider of your industry.

[sdp1975]

I have colleagues in Eastern Europe. They are great guys to work with - very capable and sincere about their jobs. However, attrition there is extremely high. Some developers have communication issues with spoken and written English. They know their job really well but have problems in expressing themselves, at least in English. Another problem is political instability. Large clients don't like instability and some of them have asked for work to be balanced out betweeen other geographical locations, including India, to mitigate risks.

For employers, the situation may be bad right now in India, but I don't think it's rosy in other countries either.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

4. Other than the changes WFH is bringing in within India I foresee a shift to smaller Tier -III towns and to smaller IT facilities. There is no good reason to maintain facilities or employment in a Bangalore or Hyderabad with its revolving door employees and sky rocketing salaries. At least some of the work can be outsourced to a gig economy WFH professional in Kakinada or Kiev or Lvov or Cebu.

I foresaw this right after the first lockdown when initial WFH experiences started coming in. Since I worked from small town for a long time, it was bit obvious newly migrated employees won't give it up after tasting it.

https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/shift...ml#post4796452 (Work From Home (WFH): Is this the future for many?)

Of course, I assumed it will be co-working spaces that will move to small towns. But even IT companies can have such centers.

[JReacher13]

Originally Posted by R2D2

YOU are responsible for your career from the time you enter the industry to the time you retire. Do NOT make the mistake of expecting your immediate boss or anybody else in the hierarchy even HR to map your path. YOU have to do it. Take their help if required but don't expect them to do it for you.

GOLDEN words! I entered my professional career in 2008 and I have seen and experienced firsthand how leadership is becoming superficial. I am thankful to have good bosses in my early career who took a real priority in terms of developing team members. They felt it was their personal responsibility.

Now the entire focus of leadership is on being politically correct, not offending/ confronting anyone, and sorry to say, a majority of new entrants into jobs (esp. from B schools) are being snowflakes. So most work in the services, the corporate sector has come down to wrapping and re-wrapping the same thing, without much focus on getting things done efficiently.

Any younger members here! Remember the above quote for long.

[kushagra452]

Hello BHPians,

I am contemplating making a shift into the IT/Tech industry. I have about 14 yrs of post B.Tech work experience - mostly in Management Consulting (Business Advisory). Outside Consulting I have worked in different 'Strategy' roles in India.

I have two Post Graduate degrees - Economics (Global Top 5) and MBA (FT Global Top 5 program)

Seeing a marked shift in clients demanding digital transformation/digital strategy solutions, I decided to reskill and completed a Data and Decision Sciences certificate program from IIT Delhi last year. Additionally, I am pursuing introductory Python and R programming courses online).

What more can/should I do to increase my probability of getting interviews from tech companies/start ups?

Thank you.

[adithya.kp]

This is a very good advice. In fact, that is my plan too. But finding it difficult to implement. I know that I am working on things that have no relevance whatsoever. Since the work life balance is great, I am continuing. So the plan was to learn new tech on my own (Which I am doing and very happy with it) and do the minimum required at work ). The later is not easy. Because a) You will still want to give your best regardless of how bad the work is b) Your boss and co workers may think you are not passionate. I have stopped caring about it. But it does matter.
How do you guys handle it?

Originally Posted by three10

4) Be Selfish - crappy bosses / team mates / work will always come by - make sure there is always a value addition to yourself in every interaction or in every work that you do. If you don't see it in certain cases, do what Fangio preached - put in the least amount of effort to get the job done (to meet the required standards). Use the spare time on point 3.

[Shivam]

Originally Posted by kushagra452

What more can/should I do to increase my probability of getting interviews from tech companies/start ups?

Try not to shoot in the dark by just taking up courses and looking at startups. It may or may not give you a start, but that's not going to help in the long run.
Also, you many not always be able to contend against young graduates.

The courses might help you understand their core business, but do not get into programming or whatever job today's youth can do.

Instead, try to see what the start ups are lacking in and where you could pitch in. Refer your core skills and see where you could bridge and add value. That will certainly take you places.

Good luck!

[CliffHanger]

For stability in 40s, you have to start preparing in your 30s.

- stop jumping companies for hikes, join reputable organisations
- your senior management is your internal customer, build good relationship with them
- every moment at work just stay business focused, no other crap
- be exceptional at what you do, this along with the previous point, you will automatically get respect
- try and make sure you grow in the hierarchy with respect to your age. At 40s, you should be a part of senior management / core technical team / specialities team
- stay healthy, fit and energetic. Energy is least discussed but has big impact on how you are perceived at work.

Have fun in life, nothing is guaranteed, diversify your investments, buy properties that can yield rent, develop skills like trading that can help you earn money even after you retire. Every money you spend, make sure it is from investment perspective, remember you are not a teenager anymore.

Nothing in life is guaranteed, that's what makes it so interesting. Embrace uncertainties but don't dig a well after you become thirsty.

[kushagra452]

Originally Posted by Shivam

The courses might help you understand their core business, but do not get into programming or whatever job today's youth can do.

Good luck!

Thanks for sharing your views. The intent behind learning programming and algorithms is not to compete with the "youth", but to get a hang of the nuts and bolts that go behind making a product/service. It helps me in appreciating the challenges in implementing potential solutions, rather than just take a 30,000 feet view (which unfortunately is quite common in the Consulting world).

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by kushagra452

Thanks for sharing your views. The intent behind learning programming and algorithms is not to compete with the "youth", but to get a hang of the nuts and bolts that go behind making a product/service. It helps me in appreciating the challenges in implementing potential solutions, rather than just take a 30,000 feet view (which unfortunately is quite common in the Consulting world).

If that is your purpose, then programming is not the right path. I know everyone thinks programming is the sexy thing, but programmers often suffer tunnel vision by getting sucked into implementation details.

You need to understand deployment architecture and how different components fit together to serve the customer needs. Don't worry about software architecture, it is not worth your time unless you are building solutions, which you won't. Now that everything is getting into the cloud, you can skip all the legacy stuff and start with cloud architecture. Learn operations in cloud environment, Kubernetes is becoming gold standard now. Learn how different stacks work within Kubernetes. You don't need to learn any programming langauges.

Check this famous ELK stack (Elasticsearch/logstash/Kibana), it collects log of hundreds of services (VMs or containers), aggregates in Elasticsearch and then Kibana does the analysis to detect problems across a huge installation. You can set it up by yourself within a week after viewing youtube videos and some googling.



Similarly, there are other such stacks that come together to solve other problems. Grafana can work with any database to create outstanding business analysis and visualization.

This is what you need with your background.

[jkrishnakj]

Originally Posted by kushagra452

Hello BHPians,

I am contemplating making a shift into the IT/Tech industry. I have about 14 yrs of post B.Tech work experience - mostly in Management Consulting (Business Advisory). Outside Consulting I have worked in different 'Strategy' roles in India.

I have two Post Graduate degrees - Economics (Global Top 5) and MBA (FT Global Top 5 program)

Seeing a marked shift in clients demanding digital transformation/digital strategy solutions, I decided to reskill and completed a Data and Decision Sciences certificate program from IIT Delhi last year.?

Thank you.

I might not answer the ‘what more could I do’ bit. I do want to share that, amidst the several IT/Tech companies, there are a select few who excel really well in ‘transformative’ engagements that pans consulting, execution and sustenance. They really do the hard grind. And then you have those IT/Tech who are happy with the sustenance/support business.

If your kick is in working across different industries and helping clients transform, please take time in choosing the right one.

[sukhoi]

Originally Posted by udaydesai

Hi,
I have one question,
I am from oil and gas industry and have 20 years of experience in project management, what are my chances of getting into IT industry.
Also my age is around 49

If I have to upskill, should I do it in data science?

Regards
Uday

I presume when you say get into IT industry, you are talking about joining an IT company and not necessarily being a software developer. Typically, IT companies would have 3 broad divisions. First would be the application development line, responsible for developing software projects for customers. Second and third are specialist roles which are on domain (business) and technology side of things. So with your experience of oil and gas industry, you could consider joining as a domain specialist in an IT company. What this would entail is that when they next get a project around this area, you would help have conversations with the client team about the business, requirement elicitation and clarification (since you under the domain best) and then also translate it into smaller meaningful chunks for the development team to do the actual development. Data science, while being the current trendy thing, is a niche area I feel and if that is your interest you could certainly pursue it but that may not be a must have to joining an IT firm. Another option to get into IT could be to join a company which develops software specifically for oil and gas sector and there you provide domain consulting.

Originally Posted by three10

First post in t-bhp after probably lurking for more than a decade.

Crossed 40 two years back - Here's how I still retain the edge:

2) Lack of effort - I've rarely seen people spend more than 1 hour researching something and solving a problem. What typically happens is people look through the first two pages of google search - if they're lucky, stack overflow has the answer, or they post on some internal forum and wait for someone to come and provide them with a ready made solution.

Welcome to T-BHP mate.
Agree with this, shared the same sentiment in my previous post (The plight of IT professionals in their 40s).

Originally Posted by three10

3) Investing in yourself - technical skills are DAMN IMPORTANT. I spend a good amount of time studying and keeping myself up to date - sometimes I can't get sleep at night and I wake up and study (or browse through here as I'm doing now ). Are you spending time acquiring a new skill every year. I"ve figured out a handy way to do this - I sit down with my resume every six months - If I've not added anything that is relevant to my field, and on the horizon in terms of requirement (from an employability perspective), then I'm in deep $hit. That gives me another 6 months to course correct.

Valid point, being hands-on, being up to date. I work as a software architect and still write code (in fact enjoy writing code but do not always get as much time as I can), play around with new frameworks for development. Similarly I also read up about what is happening in the technology space to keep abreast of trends, developments so as to be able to have a meaningful conversation about it if needed.

Originally Posted by Aceman82

Among the general doom and gloom in this thread, let me make a contrarian point. I hope this is useful to someone staring in their career in the IT/Tech industry.

3. In leading product based organizations, senior individual contributors are very highly valued. Age does _not_ play a factor, only output does.

The key things to keep in mind are below,

1.Never lose the technical edge. Keep playing around and experimenting and updating ones skills.

2. Not be content with one technology or language. Have myself moved from assembly language programming to C, C++, Java, Java Script and its flavors, Kotlin, Scala and Python. Have worked (and continue to keep working) on everything from microcontroller's to Machine learning (AI). Okay, maybe not much on microcontrollers now .

3. Take calculated risks and experiment a lot. Something will work eventually and failing multiple times (and fast) is a valuable experience in itself.

Very valid points. Good advice for folks starting out in the IT field today.

Originally Posted by am1m

And to be honest even after 20 years in this industry, I still see most India-based managers at several US-HQ'd IT services and product companies (and it's even worse at EU-HQ'd companies!) performing the role of mailboxes - merely conveying what the US management wants to the Indian team. Or maintaining Excel sheets of how many hours an employee stayed at their desks and how many leaves they took. How long will an industry keep paying inflated salaries for such non-value adding, supervisory (as opposed to strategic or managerial) tasks?! Such roles will always be at risk.

This is true, we have such roles still however I would like to think that the times are slowly changing. we used to have people whose daily job was to receive e-mail from client, forward to the architect and/or lead with the words, FYI&A Please (For Your Information & Action Please), and nothing else.

Originally Posted by R2D2

a) I can't stress this enough - YOU are responsible for your career from the time you enter the industry to the time you retire. Do NOT make the mistake of expecting your immediate boss or anybody else in the hierarchy even HR to map your path. YOU have to do it. Take their help if required but don't expect them to do it for you.

f) Look after your health. "Health is wealth" is true. Give it priority # 1. I go for detailed health check ups including treadmill stress tests every 1-2 years. Minor tests as follow ups every 6 months.

Wonderful advice for all new comers joining the workforce, not just in IT. All valid points, especially the above two.

Regards,
S

[sanstorm]

It is amusing when the Indian media are picking up on IBM's story on the first page, while conveniently ignorant of the Ageism situation in our own backyard.

The stereotypical models and thought processes both on companies and sections of employees have built the impression.

https://www.livemint.com/companies/n...642896205.html

Sharpening the swords and not detouring from core strengths (against fads) seems the only survival mantra.