hey all! this is quite an old thread...didn`t notice.
i worked for Capgemini a year back...i was picked up from campus as a fresher. i joined in july 2004 and quit on december 2004...worked for a full 5 months!!
here`s some first hand gyaan and myth-busting:
1. Working at Capgemini is no different from working at any other indian IT company. so if you`re expecting something extra special coz it`s a big 4, u`ll probably not find it there.
2. Do not get blown off by it`s international profile...what it does internationally is very very different from what it does in india. India is it`s "Cost Center", which is a euphemism for "Outsourcing code factory to save money".
3. Capgemini is recruiting like crazy...it`s hiring codies in droves, from every nook and corner coz they`re desparate to double their staff strength. their target is to reach 10,000 employess in india within 3 years and they`re at 6000 right now.
4. the company USED TO offer excellent profiles in terms of consullting, business domain, etc. my seniors who were hired got into some excellent profiles and job roles and are doing very well. but the profiles currently offered are mostly limited to pure coding. the company aims to outsource almost all of it`s global software development (read: coding) to india. So be rest assured, if you`re an engineer, you`re gonna code allright! Dont paint too many fancy consulting-related pictures in your head...that era in capgemini is gone!
5. their training is seriously crappy. we were trained for a period of 1.5 months. they wanna pack in as much into training as they can and want to be done with it as quickly as possible. so in 1.5 months, we were asked to train in java, oracle, sql, dot net...EVERYTHING! needless to say, unless you already know stuff...you`ll be lost.
6. freshers are generally put into seriously crappy projects. most of my fellow batchmate freshies were put into projects that either got scrapped or cancelled or were worthless. some of us landed into some seriously disturbing "internal projects" like preparing databases for logging and billing the number of hours worked by capgemini offices in US/Europe!! there was this one project where they put 30 freshers into learning and coding in a new language called EGL (enterprise generation language). these guys worked on this lang for 14 months, after which the whole thing was scrapped and they decided to redo the project in java. so after 13 months of working, they have no real skills to speak of. Quite a few of us were actually taking calls!!
7. be extreeemly specific and find out about exactly what our job profile is gonna be. they make campus presentations and interviews where they promise you the world, and then put u on coolie work. the HR guy at my campus painted rosy pictures about what capgemini does in US and france and lured us in...finally what we did was small-time coding. find out exactly what you`re getting into. For example, everyone at capgemini is called an "IT Consultant"..that title is very misleading. it was funny to see a battery of "Consultants" sitting in night shifts and maintaining software developed ages ago.
8. the one thing i observed quite a bit was that most new joinees were dissatisfied. the coding geeks had found paradise, but the rest were not so happy. we had a bunch of mba guys joining with us...they were management trainees...they were`nt very satisfied and felt a little cheated too. i wont go into details of this coz i dont have the exact reasons.
9. i dont know about them being excellent paymasters, as guitar_killer here says. maybe the pay is good at senior or experienced levels. for freshers, it was at par with or in some cases slightly higher than wipro, infy etc. the starting package offered to us freshers was 1.96 lac ctc. from what i hear from my past colleagues, none have received a promotion yet, and they`ve moved from 1.96 to 2.40 over the last 20 months...which is a modest increase..nothing stellar.
10. opportunities do exist for overseas projects. quite a few freshers managed to go abroad within the first 4 months of joining...which is quite an eye-popping thing! but it depends on which project you land up in and a lot of luck. mind you, these were not overseas assignments, but 2-week overseas training kinda trips. no one went onsite "properly" for more than 1 month!
all said and done...if you want a good brand value, if you like posh office interiors, swanky office buses, gizmo laptops, umpteen free insurances and offers, extravagant parties at the coolest night spots in town, pointless conferences and seminars at 5 star hotels, headhunters treating you like kings, enjoy comfortable working hours, love the thrill of pure coding, then go for it.
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