17 September, 2006

Have you spotted this trend before?

Indian IT companies are losing their jobs to Chinese competitors. The cost of operation in India was the primary selling point for IT companies to bring jobs from US to India. And thanks to hot Indian job market today, the cost of operation is increasing multifold. In simple terms, running same operation in china is roughly 3 times cheaper than India. The only disadvantage of Chinese friends is their proficiency in English. But we should not forget that Indian’s knowledge on English was also poor before all these IT operations moved down. If we could scale up all our resources, the efforts of Chinese governments to overcome this disadvantage will work in their favor soon. My friend was predicting that Bangalore has jobs only for next 3-4 years.

 

Indian IT companies are running in government office mentality. Less passion for the work among the IT population is the latest dangerous trend in India. They wish to freak out most of the time, work for fun; besides they want more and more salary hikes every year. The yester year’s government office working mentality has come into this place. That is not a great trend for Indian IT industry. People here should work more with more passion for work and work more towards profits for the corporation.

 


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16 comments:

Anonymous said...

hi satheesh
i agree tat jobs are moving out of india...since you are inside the organisation u understood well tat people's lack of commitment rather passion towards job is what dragging us down. though IT companies are poineers of the open culture, flat organization and more of employee favor systems and policies, they will feel the pinch very soon. wide known fact is, knowledge workers are difficult to manage (now,we know why kings and zamindars did not promote educational system).
This again has cascading effect on our Operationalizing project, setting measures & metrics and many more.Sorting out this problem may bring out the inefficiency in whole range of other areas which can be worked upon.
i stop here since i was told comment should not exceed the original script itself. ha ha..
nice work dude..keep going...also gimme chance to comment on that.

Santhakumar S
shanth_kin@rediffmail.com

Nirek said...

@Santha
Welcome to my blog and elated to have the comments from a REAL manager (MBA- BIM).
your views give rise to more questions:
1. is managing knowledge workers an open problem only in india or everywhere?

2. how do u guys think interms of solving this open ended problem? is any systematic thoughts gone into improving motivation of IT employees?

There is nothing like comments shd not exceed originial transcript. I want to know more on this...you can give me a gyan

Anonymous said...

Well said "Santha Kumar"! Its the passion in the job thats missing and more over the freedom to innovate. But believe me things are changing and getting adapted. Many passionate product companies are emerging in India to make that difference.

Then reagarding jobs moving to China, that wont happen soon because of its govt. policies. Even google found hard to sustain the pressure from their govt. With this risk factor I dont think soon companies would at large scale dependent of China.

Redi said...

Okay, we seem to have different problems here.
1. Passion for work
2. Rising salary costs
3. Losing business to China

Most people are not built for the kill. All we need need is an engineering degree and lo behold, there we are, coding for a US company which only wants to get the work done cheap. Our "Software Engineers" get paid so much, they start to sink into this "pseudo-confidence" mode, at one point in time they forget to ask themselves - "am I really worth so much money?". "Am I giving back to the company for what I am getting paid for?" So Why are we talking about passion? Honestly, we are making hay when this Sun is shining on us. The attitude will change when we stop getting hikes(as much as we get now!). When the market gets stagnant, as my friend said, our companies will start feeling the pinch and things will fall in place. Its the boom, thats all. Once it ends, the froth will be wiped out. Thats when our so called "software engineers" will feel the pinch. :)

As for business to China, I think we're safe for a long time to come. Atleast till the next slump. :)

When the slump arrives, I know am not the froth, but that time is very precious and personal career descisions must be made very carefully. Probably bury your face into a business school or something like that. (Its like buying the shares at rock bottom prices! you get the idea?)

ok. I know I've diverted in the last para but that calls for a personal comment from Santha!

Nirek said...

@Rajesh..
"More passionate product development companies emerging in India" does not help any bigger picture. We need to inculcate the passion for work with workers of IT majors like wipro , infy to keep this going.

Nirek said...

@Redi,
The timeline for next slump is not far away! We have to doubly careful that we are not in froth.

Chinese policies are changing drastically. Their infrastructure is amazing, comparable to western countries.

My company's- chinese division has developed a product on their own, contributing to company's revenue. But indian operations is yet to produce a big result.

Even if we face a slump, we are not going to run away from this industry. Isn't it? We should work more with ideas which can contribute to profit of the organisation.

Anonymous said...

Yeah! Too much of anything is good for nothing. Cost is the only factor that brought IT to India. And IT is the only factor that brought so many Indians out of India.

However, I don't think we'll loose the share to China. We are improvizing our Manufacturing stand & they are working on their IT side. We win together. Aren't we?

Nirek said...

@RanjHith,
Happy to see optimism in your words abt India's future. Even me too wish the same.
But the ground reality is that we lack the competitive spirit to keep the IT within India. Have you seen people working without passion? If yes, can you tell me one or two ways how can you correct those guys attitude?

Anonymous said...

I donno what is competitive here unless I get to know how IT ppl in other worlds work.

There'll be passion only in research/ with your own business. When it comes to *Work for mony & mony for work* do you see passion here?

Nirek said...

If I am your employee, and If you dont work with passion, dont work for profit, Why should i keep paying you with money?

Anonymous said...

I was speaking to a co-employee. If you are my employer, are u dare enough to fire me? >:O)

U work for ur employer bcos he's helping u to earn ur bread & butter. U work well becos u get paid. U take the reponsibility of completing a task - becos u r paid for.

Say ur employer doesn't pay u at all - not even a single penny. Is is possible to shower all ur passion towards work? Think otherwise, in research/home-brewn-business even when u don't earn anything - u keep doing until u reap something out.

HollowMan - movie - is an example.

Nirek said...

@RanjHith
Yes. I will fire you if you are not passionate about work. I dont want an employee to waste my investment in my company if he is not passionate about work. Agreed, more passion will come if you are the owner. For that sake, every independent man can't start a company on his own, thats not necessary too. Join a group of people with similar mindset and start your day with passion and with intention of adding value to your organisation.

Anonymous said...

If u r speaking abt commitment, I'm with u. I can understand, if u fire me for not being commited. But not for not being passionate.

Satheesh, Passion will be present when there is freedom. Freedom to choose what you want to work on. The deeds for tomorrow at work is not decided by me. There are hell a lot of ppl around me who influence my day's work. You know that.

In such a secnario, where does passion come? When ur employer makes you slog, with the work defined by him - u'll be more passionate about yelling ur sufferings at him rather than being passionate abt what he had asked u to do.

Nirek said...

@Ranjhith,
True, you can replace the verb in my words as commitment. You dont commit yourself to some junk job. Do you?

Dont yell for work slogs. Try to see how you can add value to boss's plan for the work. A boss will have something in mind when he assigns work. But there is always freedom for you to outperform his thoughts. Thats what we call initiaitve. That intitiative wont come if you crib about the work you do. If you love what you do, then you will defnitely have freedome from even the worst boss...

Anonymous said...

Isn't Commitment diff from being passionate. If u r passionate, probably u'll stay committed but not other wise.

Boss plan of work? Add Value? Yes Yes any work you do is about adding value - value for both company & urself. I agree to that. Do you really yearn for such a value? the value that u won't worry for?

Hey its like getting trained in Lisp while you do programming in ASM/C. Surely it adds value - gives u broad prespective - very much adds value to u - but do u want it? But yet u come out of the Lisp Training Course in flying colors (not all colors - u know there are a trillion of colors). Thats commitment (back to square one) &
not abt being passionate.

BTW, U have a "Mind of a Manager".

Nirek said...

@RanjHith,
Thanks for calling me "with manager's mind"

I am not against you yelling at the work. I am happy that u r committed to the company. though not passionate :(
Give time a break dude

At lower cadre, you gotto some bullshit work also becos your boss wants you to do it. But concentrate on your career. Dont get struck in those bullshits, stay in a company where you got chance to do what you are passionate about. Can't avoid this kind of stupidity as your organisation grow.

Think this way: You started a company. you are scaling up. At some point, you stop taking people for their passion, but ur managers hire those guys. They would have not come in this paradigm. You ask your manager to execute a project. He forces the guy below him to get the work done. But as the CEO/chairman, you may not be even aware of it or avoid it.