Growing frustration among IT professionals in India!

[Mahip]

Aha!! A thread for the "over-hyped" IT professionals of India, many of them are on PaGaLGuY.com

Everyday I see many of my colleagues and friends in any software company talking in a similar tone and language -> "IT/Software $ucks". They all have same problems --> "What nonsense and useless job is this", "Why don't they send me Onsite", "I have no social life", "My Manager is sick", etc etc... get the drift? Frustration it is.

I see that by every hour of the passing day, the number of people belonging to the "frustrated group" is increasing in every BIG or SMALL company which follows the funda of Outsourcing Process. You'll always find a group of 4-5 folks in the smoking zone or having tea and "cribbing" over these same things over n over again. Finally, they come back to the desk, slog for 12 hrs a day and the same routine is followed the next day as well!!

I keep myself engaged in many extra activities apart from my project work, like conducting games, quizzes in office; moderating this forum; etc etc. And I do keep a balance between all the things and feel happy n satisfied at the end of the day. Agreed that many of us don't get into good projects or as per our liking but where does this frustration lead us to? How many of us have ever tried to change things around? Some of the companies have grown so BIG that it is very demanding for them to satisy the demands of all the employees. So instead of blaming the company or your manager, you should take the action so get your life back on track and feel content at the end of the day. Nobody will come and look that you are happy in your job!

Each one might be having a different scenario/work environment and all this also adds to this frustration. I sometimes worry about the impact of so many "unsatified professionals" working together for a company. What do you all say?

[BUGS BUNNY]

Originally Posted by Mahip

Aha!! A thread for the "over-hyped" IT professionals of India, many of them are on PaGaLGuY.com

Everyday I see many of my colleagues and friends in any software company talking in a similar tone and language -> "IT/Software $ucks". They all have same problems --> "What nonsense and useless job is this", "Why don't they send me Onsite", "I have no social life", "My Manager is sick", etc etc... get the drift? Frustration it is.

................


Each one might be having a different scenario/work environment and all this also adds to this frustration. I sometimes worry about the impact of so many "unsatified professionals" working together for a company. What do you all say?

Hmmm valid points by Mahip. But the part about changing things Mahip, do you really think it can be done just cos you want it to happen cos if that was the case then trust me IT companies woud have far higher attrition rate than what it is at present. And about the part where you engage in other activities, well if being on SB counts then yes I do. But on a serious note, the opportunities like the ones you listed out arent available in every company. (To think that I had a job offer from TCS and didnt take it up )
Trust me, noone (at the very least not me) complains when you have to work extra and stay late on some days. But when this becomes a regular feature instead of being an exception, thats when you begin to feel, man this sucks, wish I was in a job where I could get back home at a decent hour. I am almost a n00b when compared to guys like you and I had a certain level of expectation when I started working but now reality has set in and I realize why people say IT sucks. I agree that the quality of work cannot always be to your liking (and for the ones where this is true...lucky you ) but you do it to the best of your abilities cos you are responsible for it. But the quantity is worrisome and thats why you see IT professionals flocking to do an MBA and climb higher up the heirarchy chain. This and not money is the primary motivation to do an MBA cos what I have learnt is that even in the tech line there's lotsa money but when you become a manager, at least the quantity of work goes down a bit .
Now to counter the point that might be made
Who told you to get into the IT industry??
The answer is I am just a normal middle class guy, and very honestly during campus placements, the major recruiters are IT companies. There were core companies but it was more of a mad scramble to get into some company or the other, so the concept of choice didnt exist. Well now that I have touched upon this point, the concept of choice does not exist right from the time we pass 10th std. exams our career paths are laid out in a preset manner. For the very few who chose to be different kudos to them but like I said I am just an ordinary guy. So till the time I become a manager, I will crib


-
Bugs

[prade]

Mahip what u r saying is true, getting involved in extracurricular activities do help. I do play TT regularly and participate in different entertainment stuffs. There are few things thats imperative other than this. I do not complain about the fact that I have to stay late hours. I have the passion to work and work harder and get the best results, I have burnt myself in 2 years of my job and have given the best results. I have been awarded the best performer award last year but this is not the end.... Sometimes I feel is this what we are gonna do forever. The same old stuff of coding, testing reading functional specs error logging and then client changes everything and PM pounces on us. We are screwed to meet deadlines and do nonsense work of changing and rewriting the old code again and again. And mostly we keep cleaning the shit scrap of some moron's code. Follow the nonsense processes of quality half of them are just meant to get an ISO certification. You are coding something but you dont know why u are doing that you are not aware of half of it. U are at the mercy of your clients and your managers. The mantra of the success is "THE TEAM WINS" and if anything goes wrong "I DID IT". I know I am being very negative about my views but I am sure I can find the voice of many more SE's or SSE's here. I went and spoke to my PM about the plan he has for me in the organization he say U wanna go onsite- short term long term let us know... So after all the hard work ur PM has an onsite offer for u. I dont say its not a good offer it always helps u earn US dollars but is this what we are looking for. Coz we go onsite and again we are at the mercy of our clients and PM's. Either u do some requirement gather to put it in SIMPLE WORDS "DOCUMENTATIONS" or sit and clean some code. more than 50% of the software work is either maintainence or support which doesnt need a BE degree to resolve. If u are made to sit in front of the code for 15 hrs u know where to put a IF condition or a FOR loop. But doing this I am not satisfied with myself I do not feel I am doing any justice. This becomes monotonous. Its a mere fact that most PM's in IT industry become PM's by virtue of their experience of long term association with resolving bugs and copy paste. They will ty and solve every damn issue of team mates on the basis of his mindset on javacode or mainframe screens. I have seen many PM's doin the PMI certification course I seriously do not know how far it helps them in understanding member issues and solving them. I feel PM's with experience of being slaves for 7+ years for their US and etc clients are still slaves. They do not have any say in most of the cases what they are looking for is a less budget low cost and hig quality projects and they expect the coders and testers to follow what they have been doing for years. ARENT WE MAKING A CLASS OF TECHNOFUNCTIONAL BONDED LABOURS.....

Disclaimer:These are entirely my personal views and not meant against any one...

[Eccentric001]

I see that by every hour of the passing day, the number of people belonging to the "frustrated group" is increasing in every BIG or SMALL company which follows the funda of Outsourcing Process. You'll always find a group of 4-5 folks in the smoking zone or having tea and "cribbing" over these same things over n over again. Finally, they come back to the desk, slog for 12 hrs a day and the same routine is followed the next day as well!!

True. But do we have ne other options?. Urfortunatley these are the best paid cozy jobs around, and by the time we realise we hate our jobs, its too late to get back to our engineering related jobs. The only way out then is the great MBA degree..

I keep myself engaged in many extra activities apart from my project work, like conducting games, quizzes in office; moderating this forum; etc etc. And I do keep a balance between all the things and feel happy n satisfied at the end of the day. Agreed that many of us don't get into good projects or as per our liking but where does this frustration lead us to? How many of us have ever tried to change things around? Some of the companies have grown so BIG that it is very demanding for them to satisy the demands of all the employees. So instead of blaming the company or your manager, you should take the action so get your life back on track and feel content at the end of the day. Nobody will come and look that you are happy in your job!

Put a mining engineer in the Automobile industry, and frustration is bound to increase
Every 2nd indian is a software engineer. Lets stop the other engineering branches and lets just stick with IT engineering. You like your job, its not a pain in the arse to go to office the next day, so where does the question of frustration arise??
The extracurriculars u mentioned are to get rid of the boredom of going to work daily, not to get rid of the hatred towards ur work. And by this i am talking about the dislike towards ne IT related jobs and not certain projects.

Each one might be having a different scenario/work environment and all this also adds to this frustration. I sometimes worry about the impact of so many "unsatified professionals" working together for a company. What do you all say?

The impact is --Belonging to 3 IT companies (i dont need to name them ) becomes a big disadvantage to MBA aspirants. Your GD group of 10 might contain 5 of ur colleagues.

[ashishyahoo]

@Mahip
Superb post - and i bet this thread will go on for long ...

Well yes - the frustration levels among s/w engineers are reaching heights... the s/w companies dont seem to takin their employees very seriously - I for one would definitely agree with that - employees are taken for granted - and well, the poor employees are, of course always on the hunt for a new job - so they further get moulded by the s/w industry as how it desires..

But its heartening to see that many people are in the same boat - though when u have problems of ur own, u tend to think that the magnitude of ur own problems is at the peak... . I am of the opinion that:
1: Wrong people at the wrong places in the s/w industry - a person who doesnt know nethin about programming is workin 16 to 17 hours coding (development) in a good company, and well over a period of 2 years does manage to gain the skill - whereas a technical geek is doin some other shitty job like testing/call center etc etc.

2: There is a lot of bull shit 'processing' in the s/w industry. Every project/task has too many mediators in it which spoil the entire 'process' - just like too many cooks spoil the broth... especially in services companies...

3: There is nothing except diplomatic talk which happens between a manager and an employee... - and of course u can guess which side most of the diplomatic talk comes from ... best example would be during appraisal time...

More frustrations to come from my side - shall post later probably.. But as Mahip has said - a balance is whats required from the employee's side - the daily routine should not kill the creativity in him - the learning shouldnt stop in the process of earning.. - and so shouldnt the pursuit of one's own interests...

Ashish

[darthcoder]

Ha ha, this thread couldnt have come at a more appropriate time.
Especially after I quit my job yesterday, and NO I dont have any job offer in hand, it was just the fact that i could not take it anymore.

How do you think companies like TCS,Infy et al are getting $200 Million-$300 Million deals??Most of these deals are for Supporting the client application over a long period of time and that is where the problem lies.

With the rapid expansion of IT, the quality of the jobs in IT has decreased rapidly, most of the jobs reaching Indian shores are "Support" jobs.Ave been in a Support project for 1.5 years (8 months continously in night shift) and I seriously doubt whether you need a B.Tech passout to do all that Support Job Stuff.

Ave come to realise that 70-80% of the jobs involve the same repititive kind of "Support" work where you dont have to apply your brains (When I started to study for CAT after 2 years in IT, it took me 30 seconds to calculate 12X12, that for a guy who was a number-crunching wiz in college).

What I fear now is that my job is making me more and more brain-dead where I dont have to apply my brains and I just have to do the same repititive stuff again and again to get my salary.

As for the extra-curricular activities, they are hardly a way of venting out the frustration and the playrooms and stuff open only after 4 PM in my company so I dont get to do much of those .

Darthcoder.

[freakyme]

mere 2 anna on this bhadaas-nikalo-session..
looks like we're all on the same side of the boat..

1: Wrong people at the wrong places in the s/w industry - a person who doesnt know nethin about programming is workin 16 to 17 hours coding (development) in a good company, and well over a period of 2 years does manage to gain the skill - whereas a technical geek is doin some other shitty job like testing/call center etc etc.

yeah no shit but i've seen ppl from non-it backgrounds doing hardcore coding and the IT backgrounders (like me ) doing documentation and mediocre tasks like software testing..what the :bad-word:

3: There is nothing except diplomatic talk which happens between a manager and an employee... - and of course u can guess which side most of the diplomatic talk comes from ... best example would be during appraisal time..

this diplomatic talk is perhaps the worst part of it all..talks like 'you will go to the client site (read OVERSEAS) next when the current onsite employee comes back'. 'can't give you a holiday tomorrow, because more work may come from the client side (when you have alredy finished your deliverables)'..i am witness to the SHIT-iest of talks like 'what % increment do you intend to get after the appraisals' (NO EFFECT OF THIS TALK WHAT-SO-EVER) -- to sum it up these are the EMPTY VESSELS THAT MAKE MORE NOISE..

Now to counter the point that might be made
Who told you to get into the IT industry??
The answer is I am just a normal middle class guy, and very honestly during campus placements, the major recruiters are IT companies. There were core companies but it was more of a mad scramble to get into some company or the other, so the concept of choice didnt exist. Well now that I have touched upon this point, the concept of choice does not exist right from the time we pass 10th std. exams our career paths are laid out in a preset manner. For the very few who chose to be different kudos to them but like I said I am just an ordinary guy. So till the time I become a manager, I will crib

honestly said i totally agree...there've never been more wiser words said

I see that by every hour of the passing day, the number of people belonging to the "frustrated group" is increasing in every BIG or SMALL company which follows the funda of Outsourcing Process. You'll always find a group of 4-5 folks in the smoking zone or having tea and "cribbing" over these same things over n over again. Finally, they come back to the desk, slog for 12 hrs a day and the same routine is followed the next day as well!!

it definitely is ..the larger the firm the gr8er the level of frustu of its emplyees..


how do we tackle it?
BEST SAID..become witty.just don't give in to every thing your :bad-word: PM/TM/PL/TL says. for me i channelize the rest of my frustation..i gym ,
i learn new IT stuff..what in a try??

maybe some day the damned lay-luck smiles on me and i come out the winner of all this mini-battle between myseff and the so-mentioned-DIPLOMATS

ensoi

[in_finity]

This thread is surely going to be a very popular thread as most of us on PG can (unfortunately) relate to it

The real reason for this frustration among IT professionals is definitely the quality of work!
We during our campus placements are so excited about our first jobs, nd we do cum into d job with a lot of enthusiasm and expectations. And, mind u, if these IT companies can trap d enthusiasm of us freshers, it wud do a lot of gud to thm!

But wht happens is tht instead of being more involved wid d development of code, we r more concerned with d code formatting, why a tab space of 3 thn 4? , why one letter in caps n d other not ? Nd ask d ones who hav been in support, support can really $uck bigtime (Doin d same thng evryday does becum a bit frustratin...eh??)

Nd after being thru all this for a while, sumehr along d way, a feelin starts to build up...tht thr is no learning happening nd no growth......dat i didnt do all my studies to be doin all this!!!!!!

Well, though this is only d flip side of d coin, thr is d better side too.......d free internet, ac n all........but thn.....is this really worth it????????

Cribber since last 1 yr..........

[prade]

Originally Posted by in_finity

This thread is surely going to be a very popular thread as most of us on PG can (unfortunately) relate to it

The real reason for this frustration among IT professionals is definitely the quality of work!
We during our campus placements are so excited about our first jobs, nd we do cum into d job with a lot of enthusiasm and expectations. And, mind u, if these IT companies can trap d enthusiasm of us freshers, it wud do a lot of gud to thm!

But wht happens is tht instead of being more involved wid d development of code, we r more concerned with d code formatting, why a tab space of 3 thn 4? , why one letter in caps n d other not ? Nd ask d ones who hav been in support, support can really $uck bigtime