[Technocrat]

Lovely Post Ravveendrra & I agree with Samurai. Its really not as bad as its made out to be. Ofcourse there are exceptions like everywhere else.

@aaggoswami- I know many people who start their career at or after 22. Like Samurai I too wonder what dark secrets of the industry you know off that more experienced people are not talking about. Anyways may be you had some bad experience.

@BaCkSeAtDrIVeR- Before you ask that you need to ask how old is the IT industry in India. Apart from that I know of people in their 50's & 60's working in IT in US (My client, some of who are Indians )

[Roy.S]

Originally Posted by COUGAR

Well welcome to the real world!......
So no! no changes to labour laws. If anything, make them more market friendly. We are too pinko-commie right now!

Coug, are you in middle management, by any chance?

[aaggoswami]

Originally Posted by Samurai

aaggoswami, while you are already 22, I am still 19, in experience I mean.

You are making very wide blanket statements about the dark horrors of IT armed with very little experience and exposure. Like any field that welcomes creativity and talent, this field too can become what you make of it. So you shouldn't declare the war as lost before fighting the first battle.

So don't run away right away, unless you really don't like the IT field.

Wow, 19 in years in IT field!

Some background on which I am able to derive certain conclusion and be more aware of IT field :
My father is 50 years old working for IPCL ( now reliance ) since 1982 or even before that. Its more than 25 years.
He is a master of COBOL and FORTRAN. He used to do coding at such level that even HDD sector was assigned ( as HDD were very small at that time ). His experience:

a) The boss generally dont know what is the task they are suppossed to accomplish.
b) If you know more, you will have to work more, but pay will remain same.

The above two points lead to what I call exploitation.

In the present times, I am sure that things have gone from bad to worse. About my experince, I have done my graduation from " IT field ". From what was being taught, I am sure I can put up 3 years of experience. It was hell. I ended up teaching my teachers how to mess up with BIOS just to install OS. They were paid Rs. 15K/month. I consider them IT field people. This was enough for me to understand the follwing things :

To be a good person who is professionally successful, any one of the two virutes have to be there, if you find both, its good, but generally one is more than sufficinet.
The two virtues are being Passionate and/or Professionalism towards your field.

From what limited experience ( add to that the inputs from my father ) and observation, I have seen IT companies have emplyoees that have none of the above two virtues.
If in any field one has to be good enough, they must have any one of the virtues, then and then only they can work satisfactorily, without uneven work distribution and pressure.

Agreed that my experince is pretty limited, but I am able to derive lessons from that. I am not going to stretch myself only because someone else is able to play politics card and/or my boss is not capable of managing what he has at hand. People tell me initially you will have to do this and listen to this/that. After 5 years you will be in manager position, so start now. My arguments are simple : I am not tolerating anybody's useless words at any stage. This led to trouble for me. I cannot put up my personal exprience here ( sorry for that ) but to end this post, what I could conclude :

1) Dont make too many adjustments.

2) Adjust upto just what is tolerable for you. Be sure to hold your ground firm. Lose a bit and you end up losing it all.

3) You are getting paid for the work you do there, so your boss is not the ruler. If he is wrong, he is indeed wrong. If you start to tolearte his words, that will become a daily routine. React there and there only if something wrong is said to you, in polite manner though.

4) About raise. Nobody is going to give you that unless they have stretched you beyond limit. Make them realize that you have given ( if at all one has given because not everyone gives his best ) your best, so you deserve something. This also depends upon what opportunity you have at hand and your quality of work.

5) If some promise is being made, make sure you get that in written. This prevents exploitation.

I have always fought what wrong has happened to me, so I its not about running away, infact I like IT field. But things were a bit of compromise for me, so I am not going into it again.



EDIT : @ Technocrat:
I cannot put up my personal experience here.

[NetfreakBombay]

Originally Posted by aaggoswami

To be a good person who is professionally successful, any one of the two virutes have to be there, if you find both, its good, but generally one is more than sufficinet.
The two virtues are being Passionate and/or Professionalism towards your field.

From what limited experience ( add to that the inputs from my father ) and observation, I have seen IT companies have emplyoees that have none of the above two virtues.
If in any field one has to be good enough, they must have any one of the virtues, then and then only they can work satisfactorily, without uneven work distribution and pressure.

I am guessing your experience was in "IT Services" field. If that is true, then remember its "Service" first. IT part is there but service is more important. Things like keeping client in the loop, delivering what client's client wants.

You would be dealing with IT Employees of some company and they will be dealing with actual business users (what I call actual clients).

In this scenario , technical skills are just one part.

To add to this, you need to satisfy internal policies / rules / matrices as well.

So all in all, not a good place to be if you want to do "geeky" stuff.


If that is what you want to do, then join some startup.
In startup environment, due to smaller size management is not dependent on policies / matrices and your contribution is much more visible.

[Samurai]

aaggoswami, that's a very negative picture you have painted. If I recall all my bosses since 1990, I can recall only boss as very petty and manipulative, and there was another who was very manipulative, but very charming. Rest of them were all pretty honest and cared about their team. Generally I have been very fortunate with bosses.

[Jaguar]

Originally Posted by aaggoswami

About my experince, I have done my graduation from " IT field ". From what was being taught, I am sure I can put up 3 years of experience. It was hell. I ended up teaching my teachers how to mess up with BIOS just to install OS. They were paid Rs. 15K/month. I consider them IT field people. This was enough for me to understand the follwing things :

To be a good person who is professionally successful, any one of the two virutes have to be there, if you find both, its good, but generally one is more than sufficinet.
The two virtues are being Passionate and/or Professionalism towards your field.

From what limited experience ( add to that the inputs from my father ) and observation, I have seen IT companies have emplyoees that have none of the above two virtues.

aaggoswami, are you including some period when you were studying as experience? You are 22 and can't possibly have 3 years exp if you have done engineering.

First understand that there is a huge difference b/w college and corporate world. You can't consider computer teachers in schools and colleges as IT professionals. Most of them have not worked for any IT company and have just textbook knowledge. It is the norm for students who have passion and spend more time in front of computers than their teachers to know more than the teacher at times. Heck, even some corporate trainers have no real world knowledge.

Coming to the point of your two virtues, I don't agree with your blanket statement that IT Professionals are not Passionate and/or Professional towards their field. I have 5+ years of experience in the IT industry, half of which was with and Indian IT Giant which is being bashed in this thread and the other half with and American Company. And I have seen plenty of professional and passionate people in both the places.

Please take out these baseless negative theories from your mind. Things are not always bad.

- Jag

[greenhorn]

Agree. Its not like all IT services co's are filled with dumb/malicious people. Yes, there are a lot of them, and their percentage increases as you go up, but there are many, many good people in there as well. My own experience with the people I've worked with , including all my managers except one, and their managers, again, excluding one , has been very positive. Of course , I know several friends who have suffered, are suffering, or have quit due to their managers. But its not ALL bad as you've made out.

But yes, The policies and things rolled out from above do make things difficult for all of us. A popular in joke is that the latest Innovations in our co are from our policy department, not our engineers

[hondadude]

Originally Posted by aaggoswami

Wow, 19 in years in IT field!

Some background on which I am able to derive certain conclusion and be more aware of IT field :
My father is 50 years old working for IPCL ( now reliance ) since 1982 or even before that. Its more than 25 years.
He is a master of COBOL and FORTRAN. He used to do coding at such level that even HDD sector was assigned ( as HDD were very small at that time ). His experience:

a) The boss generally dont know what is the task they are suppossed to accomplish.
b) If you know more, you will have to work more, but pay will remain same.

The above two points lead to what I call exploitation.
To be a good person who is professionally successful, any one of the two virutes have to be there, if you find both, its good, but generally one is more than sufficinet.
The two virtues are being Passionate and/or Professionalism towards your field.

From what limited experience ( add to that the inputs from my father ) and observation, I have seen IT companies have emplyoees that have none of the above two virtues.
If in any field one has to be good enough, they must have any one of the virtues, then and then only they can work satisfactorily, without uneven work distribution and pressure.

aaggoswami,

If people are working in a company because they "just want a job" and treat it like that, then some of what you mentioned is probably true of both 'bosses' and 'employees'. However, if you work because you are passionate about something, it totally changes everything. I have worked in groups where everyone slogged every day and weekend for a long time, simply because we wanted to and not because someone told us to work extra hours.

Usually when you work for a product and stay with it for some time, the ownership that comes with it and the desire to make it successful, results in a totally different work experience. If one works for a IT service company, this feeling of ownership towards a product and the desire to make a particular product successful, is missing.

Join a startup or aggressive product companies and it is a very very different world. I have been in this industry for more than 16 years and I have stuck to these companies for a reason. IT Service companies have a lot of other benefits but the one that matters most to me (passion about the product/technology) is missing so I usually stay away from them.

BTW, regarding the points 'a' and 'b' that you mentioned above; I have had exactly the opposite experience in last 16 years.

[Samurai]

I agree with hondadude, I too work for product company. I have only worked for 2.5 years in software services, and that was the worst period of my career with least job satisfaction.

[aaggoswami]

Originally Posted by Jaguar

1) aaggoswami, are you including some period when you were studying as experience? You are 22 and can't possibly have 3 years exp if you have done engineering.

2) First understand that there is a huge difference b/w college and corporate world. You can't consider computer teachers in schools and colleges as IT professionals. Most of them have not worked for any IT company and have just textbook knowledge. It is the norm for students who have passion and spend more time in front of computers than their teachers to know more than the teacher at times. Heck, even some corporate trainers have no real world knowledge.

3) Coming to the point of your two virtues, I don't agree with your blanket statement that IT Professionals are not Passionate and/or Professional towards their field. I have 5+ years of experience in the IT industry, half of which was with and Indian IT Giant which is being bashed in this thread and the other half with and American Company. And I have seen plenty of professional and passionate people in both the places.

4) Please take out these baseless negative theories from your mind. Things are not always bad.

1) Completed BCA.

2) Wow, but you know what, those teachers were in IT industry somebody handling Database, somebody writing code. Hence I called them IT professionals.

Originally Posted by greenhorn

Of course , I know several friends who have suffered, are suffering, or have quit due to their managers. But its not ALL bad as you've made out.

But yes, The policies and things rolled out from above do make things difficult for all of us.

Things are not as rosy in my city or rather state.

Originally Posted by hondadude

If people are working in a company because they "just want a job" and treat it like that, then some of what you mentioned is probably true of both 'bosses' and 'employees'. However, if you work because you are passionate about something, it totally changes everything. I have worked in groups where everyone slogged every day and weekend for a long time, simply because we wanted to and not because someone told us to work extra hours.
....

The real problem is people end up IT without either passion or professionalism. Then they become managers, bosses, etc. What is the outcome then ? Not knowing what is human management, work distribution, how to interact with client. And then all the pressure is on the person who is so called junior. Rather than progressing as per work done, senior and junior theory is applied. I cannot speak against a senior, Why ? Any specific reason.
There were no discussions and senior junior discrimination was present. Arguments always.

I dont know what is the status in the cities where IT industry is more developed, but here in my city ( or Gujarat ) people have just one mentality " Earn money ". Smart work means you work less and earn more money by hook or by crook. Most of the people resort to politics and unfair policies just to get the work done. If I know more than others, more load is given on my shoulders, and others are enjoying. This is dark reality I have faced.

[hondadude]

Originally Posted by aaggoswami

1)

The real problem is people end up IT without either passion or professionalism. Then they become managers, bosses, etc. What is the outcome then ? Not knowing what is human management, work distribution, how to interact with client. And then all the pressure is on the person who is so called junior. Rather than progressing as per work done, senior and junior theory is applied. I cannot speak against a senior, Why ? Any specific reason.
There were no discussions and senior junior discrimination was present. Arguments always.

What you say above, doesn't happen in good product companies for sure.

I haven't worked in a service company but I have a lot of friends who do in companies like Wipro, Infy, Mindtree etc. They are extremely professional, are experts in their fields and most of them like what they do.

I am sure there are people who go through what you have written about. All I am trying to say is that there are lots of places where that doesn't happen, where you get paid for performance, where people care about your ability and not seniority etc etc.

I know lots of people in Product and IT services company where they have succeeded only because of their ability and hard work. It happens all the time. If you want to get into such places, you definitely can, as long as you are passionate about what you do or what you want to do.

[bblost]

The key to a good life is the ability to say NO.

If you cannot do that then you will face trouble in everything you do. Be it personal relationships or work.

I work for the Worlds Largest application company.
Some 6 years and a couple of months with them. Infact I joined them within a year of completing my MCA. In between that I experienced writing guide books, selling s/w products and also designing websites.

In the last one year I have received two Star (beyond the call of duty) awards.

I spend about 10 hours in office everyday. That includes lunch break and gym.
Most of the time am clicking on new posts link in team-bhp
Some of my colleagues spend a lot more time than I do.
I don't take late night calls. Only once did a US counterpart (Indian guy) call me beyond mid night. He never did that after I explained to him that India is in a different timezone and I am sleeping.
However I have sometimes spent entire nights in office. Very rare but I have had to.

The day this thread was created I was in the Gym and had just finished my workout.
An environment issue came up.

No one asked me to come back. I did not even need to as the US counterpart would have taken it up in less than 3 hours. But I am back at my desk, forgoing my shower to get the system up to steam.

The level of commitment I have for my job is not because my manager instructs me. But rather because he inspires me.

I have had the fortune of working under 5 managers.
Everyone of them had spent considerably more time in the same organization than I.

If I find new joinees spending time in office beyond reasonable hours often. They get a blasting from me.

I repeat learn to say NO.

btw:
I cannot understand how someone can code continuously for hour together.
I am quite old school.
Need paper and pen to get the design straight before I get on the s/w

[black12rr]

One thing is for sure , working for some one makes them rich and you stay where you are .

I too work for a pure product company for around 4 years now .Initially it looked all good and then realized ppl do anything to get get a raise or get promoted , even if they have to push down on some one .Its out right dirty and ugly there . Many things are done for sake of being done (even though they know its not needed ) . When you stand against it , you are marked arrogant , don't have attitude and what not . Recession is one more reason they are using to freeze hikes and bonuses even though company is making billions of dollars year on year growth .IT field sucks to core ,just like everything else . Its like clean factory with good salary .
Most of IT we do its benefiting someone else ,nothing is benefited to nation and to its ppl here.

[greenhorn]

I guess learning to survive in bigger companies takes skills which are entirely different from smaller companies.
For example Notworking® is a very essential skill. When faced with situations where the impression of being productive is valued more than productivity itself, Notworking® is a valuable tool.

By Effectively leaning to Notwork®, you can sit in the office and browse to your hearts content, get others to do your work for you, make them feel good about it, provide flawless and in depth metrics on your work, so that management and quality cannot touch you. I'm not quite there yet, but I've learnt from some of the very best

PS: Notworking® Requires a certain degree of Psychopathic and Sociopathic tendencies

Once You reach a certain level of proficiency in Notworking®, you will be promoted to a group of individuals who are as proficient, if not better , for you to learn even more. These Individuals are called Managers. Together, you will be able to create value out of limited rectal bandwidth by effectively leveraging best in class paradigms leading to accelerated delivery of optimal solutions!

[hondadude]

Originally Posted by black12rr

I too work for a pure product company for around 4 years now .Initially it looked all good and then realized ppl do anything to get get a raise or get promoted , even if they have to push down on some one .Its out right dirty and ugly there . Many things are done for sake of being done (even though they know its not needed ) . When you stand against it , you are marked arrogant , don't have attitude and what not .

From that perspective, its no different from any other place. Regarding standing against something, you gotta get to a point where you build credibility and then people listen to you. If you do that before you build your credibility, you run into trouble (like marked arrogant etc). Take an example of team-bhp, if Rudra gives feedback on someone's photo, everybody would take it in a very positive way because Rudra has built phenomenal credibility in this area. Same thing would be for 'sultan_khan', 'samurai' etc for offroading, HVK for Indian highways and the list goes on. Howeve, if on this very forum, lets say I (who has no credibility in any of these areas) give critical feedback to members on their photography skills or offroading ability, that feedback may not be received in a very positive manner.

What I am trying to highlight here is that the problem you faced, is not an IT problem. It exists everywhere.

Originally Posted by greenhorn

I guess learning to survive in bigger companies takes skills which are entirely different from smaller companies.
For example Notworking® is a very essential skill. When faced with situations where the impression of being productive is valued more than productivity itself, Notworking® is a valuable tool.

ROTFLOL