Infosys plans to rebuild after losing out to TCS

Heralded as the poster child of Indian IT industry has been struggling in the last few years to maintain its coveted top spot in Indian IT industry. Though it still kept the  market out performer tag even during past year, indications were very clear that all was not well with the IT bellwether. When the likes of TCS were chipping away with good performances after the recession, Infosys never really got out of the mud.

Among the major companies Infosys was the one who undertook so many cutbacks to employees and also had tight purse even during recruitment, but with the  lower than expected Performance and TCS overtaking Infosys, it might give more room for Infosys to go back to Basics and improve itself.

When a change of this magnitude happens it usually involves leadership changes and quite unexpectedly  Mohandas Pai, who was rumored to be the next CEO   has put in his papers. Though he publicly cited other reasons, the real reason was the disappointment due to not being considered for top post.  The board was not interested in a HR Head to lead the organisation during the tough times.

Also Infosys is looking for a restructuring  in the model of TCS few years back.  The board wants individual vertical heads who can lead their own mini organisation with their own path but aligned to company’s goal. With this approach they will want loose control at the top and stronger  heads for these mini organisations.

But rest assured it looks like TCS will be the top Indian IT services provider atleast for next few years.

Not so professional – Infosys Chennai

(This is a user contributed article -if you have any questions please leave a comment. Similar articles on Indian IT industry are welcome)

I am writing this here not to create any confusion among employees or to defame Infosys organization created by great minds like “Mr.Narayana moorthy”. I just want to stop the unethical and unprofessional practices followed in MCITY CCD department. I don’t want anyone to suffer anymore in that department.

I am an Engineering graduate with more than 80% from a reputed Chennai engineering college [Anna University]. I got placed in Infosys through on-campus interview. I felt so happy when I got selected. It was dream coming true for me. My days at Mysore training was so great except that extended training which we had to undergo due to recession. I completed all the streams successfully [generic, OS, mainframe] with CGPA more than 4.9. When we were eagerly waiting for our posting, HR informed us that we were put into CCD department. We were all shocked to death. We opposed their decision but nothing worked. After wasting our 7 months time in training, quitting was not a good option. HR told us that CCD would not be worse like we were all thinking. Then we underwent CCD training in Mysore and some of us got posted in Chennai – Mahindra city.



The First weirdest thing was when we had to call the CCD head “Sir”. Even if anyone calls him by his name, he would give them an odd look “How dare you to call me by name? You know who I am?” I don’t understand why we were told in my ILI classes that we should not use “Sir” and “Madam” in corporate environment. So then is CCD not a part of Infosys? Is it run by some local company? Please give the ILI sessions to this gentle man.

When we were introduced to our senior CCD employees, first thing they asked us “Why did you join this department? We are all trying to escape from this place.” We thought they were complaining about CCD department as there is no career progression. Later we realized they were referring to our Head and resource team Lead. I thought politics was common and if we work and exhibit our talents well, we could survive here.

The first assignment we were given was we had to go to all the user places and collect the employee details [employee ID, employee number and project code] , cubicle details and other s/w information. Note: Total capacity of Chennai, MCity DC is more than 10,000 and it s still increasing steadily]. If they really want this information, it can be retrieved by many easy methods. There is no need to go in personal and do it. Employee details can be easily retrieved from database system or from active directory by running a simple query in less than one minute.

Our CCD head and resource team lead blindly denied all our good suggestions as they were keen on sending us to collect these details as if they were no other work there to assign to us. And moreover cubicle details have to be collected by facility persons or H/W asset management team [resource team]. Another way is, if you drop a mail to all PM MCity distribution list for employee details and cubicle details working in their project, they will get it and will provide it to you. But what is the need that we, engineers who graduated with more than 80 % in reputed engineering college and got CGPA more than 4.9 should go and collect these details. These details [cubicle details] can be collected by even a 3rd class school student.

My CCD head and resource team Lead called this as a new initiative. [Here resource team lead means not human resource [HR] – laptop/desktop asset managing person.] Though she is not our manager, she thinks that she is our manager and acts like HR person. These practices are fully supported by our CCD Head. There is no limit for anything here.

Finally we went to user’ [employees] places and started collecting the details. This work went for more than a month. While my other batch mates who got into other units were coding, we were collecting the cubicle details. We spoke to our Head that we would want unit transfer as we were not interested in collecting user and cubicle details. He shouted at us and denied our request. Even at one point we planned to quit as a mass, but it didn’t go well. So we went to user’ [employees] place and collected the details.

In the first 6 months, we didn’t do anything good except calling employees on their extension and collecting their cubicle details. They gave us some work like account unlocking and other small s/w installations etc. After 6 months, they came up again with new initiative “port detail collection”. It is the worst of all. We have to go to user’s place and bend down the desk and collect port number located near the power plug point. The fun part is we were again asked to collect user and cubicle details as the data was expired over a time. Yes, these details change every day. Is this the feasible solution to maintain user details? If Infosys leaders don’t know how to maintain their employee details feasibly, then how are they going to maintain their client accounts? Are they going to send employees to their client places and collect their details manually?

The ultimate comedy is they called this as initiative. Nice initiative!! [Note: Our great Infosys Leaders like NRN thought if they give good ratings for initiative in appraisals,  people will be more interested to develop new, efficient and time saving  s/ws and methods so thought they introduced this.]  You know for initiatives there is good rating in appraisals. They put this task as a great initiative done in MCity CCD department and get good appraisals. When we put that in our appraisal as initiative, my head said this was not a good work and we got nothing in appraisal.
We were totally embarrassed many times when we went to users’ place and collected cubicle and port details. They would treat as like facility people and every time we would want to say to them “we are also employees of Infosys who finished engineering and Mysore training with good percentage but we were unlucky and so got into this work by fate. Otherwise we would be working like you only”.

Ok. These and all are some of the bad things happening here. I don’t want to write everything here as it would take another 20 pages. You may wonder how people work here. Actually nobody wants to work here and everyone wants to leave this place ASAP. Every month MCity CCD people quit Infosys. The Sole reason is they cannot tolerate stupidity of MCity CCD head and resource team Lead who is B.Sc Nutritionist graduate and she is unofficial manager of MCity CCD department. Even my PM would afraid to talk to her as she has strongly laid her foundation here.

I can hear people saying it is common everywhere. Yes. It is common everywhere. But there should be some limit for everything. There is no professionalism and work ethics here.[Other Infosys units are good only but except here . ] They are running their own empire here. Some time they behave like college senior and rag other junior employees. It is not fair. We really feel like we are working for some local dada[Rowdy] gang.

As I could not tolerate them anymore, I started searching for a job and got one too.
So I am quitting infy – my great Infosys.
While you people complain that you didn’t get onsite opportunity or CRR1 or for putting you into different technology, just look into our case. How pathetic it is! We were treated like facility people. I really feel bad that I could not do anything about these unethical and unprofessional practices.

Though Infosys’s slogan is powered by Intellect and Driven by Values, in our case is it true?
HR and other higher officials are not doing anything about this. They simply sit in their chair and close their eyes and create the policies. They always think about the ways to impress their boss and never think or look into employees’ issues.
If there is only requirement for facility, why did they recruit us? They could have recruited 10 th completed guys. Why did they recruit engineering graduates with good marks?
P.S: If you think, I am trying to catch attention or spamming here; you can ask anyone who joined MCity CCD department and verify the above information.
P.S.S: We are not supposed to sit and read newspaper in Lobby area because we are in internal support. What about other employees? They are also in support only but for external client so can they read newspaper in lobby area?
And we are not supposed to drink our tea/coffee in work place as our MCity CCD head don’t like it.
P.S.S.S: The incidents mentioned above are 100% true. 🙂

P.S.S.S.S: I m not saying whole Infosys is bad…It s really good company to work with. It provides world class training and teaches work ethics. You can never get such a good training anywhere in the world.

For every young man, Infosys training is a true dream.

Microsoft IT Outsource deal with Indian Giant Infosys

Microsoft today has announced that it has signed up a deal with Infosys to manage its internal IT operations and also some support kind of operations mainly for cost cut.But there is no change in their internal resources.Generlly if there is some outsourcing then resources will also be outsourced to perform the operations but Microsoft confirmed that their resources will not be moved to Infosys.

From Infosys point of view it is actually looking for a three year contract with Microsoft and it also says that Microsoft will be able to reduce cost by its effective service and support operations.
They also get a chance to experience Microsoft tools indepth and able to build applications in newer microsoft technologies
So overall Infosys has got a nice deal with Microsoft and also it will imporve its marketing value on the whole.