Infosys from the inside

I got a weblink sent to me by a friend, who suggested it would make a very good read, considering it appeared to be written by someone who either dislikes the infamous Indian outsourcing giant Infosys and still works there or dislikes the infamous Indian outsourcing giant Infosys and no longer works there.

In any case, the following transcript first appeared at http://insideinfosys.blogspot.com/ on March 25, 2006. A few days later, and suspecting that this type of negative content won’t be tolerated by the infamous Indian outsourcing giant Infosys for long, I decided to take a copy for offline reading at a more convenient time.

This proved to be one of my smarter decisions in life, as the website has indeed now been taken down. Continue reading and you’ll soon see why. The transcript is basically the responses of a couple of software engineers to one of those internal “employee satisfaction” surveys most of us have been subjected to, at one time or another.

What follows has been republished verbatim, the only changes being typographical:

The horror stories from people who work in Infosys. And you thought it was bad having your job stolen from you and outsourced to India. Spare a thought for the poor people doing it now.

ESAT

ESAT stands for ‘Employee Satisfaction Anal Therapy’. Pretty sure about the first two words, not so sure about the rest. Anyway, it’s a reasonably common thing in businesses- the HR department sends out an ‘anonymous’ questionairre asking what the employees think of the company, etc.

I’m not sure what other companies actually do with the feedback, but at Infosys it is simple to explain: they do nothing.

Any way, for your entertainment, here are the free text questions (as opposed to multiple choice) and the answers that our heros Jed and Pradeep Toshit Kumaswami-Krisnamurthy actually submitted (on the assumption that the feedback actually is anonymous.):

Editor’s Note: The italicised quoted text in Jed’s answers are statements about which the survey requested a ’strength of assertion’, such as “strongly disagree”, “agree”, “don’t give a shit”, etc.

Question 1: Do you have any suggestions to help improve these communication channels?

Pradeep Toshit Kumaswami-Krisnamurthy’s Answer: Replace the spam you deem to be ‘communication’ with real communication.

Jed’s Answer: I think I would be able to raise my concerns if I felt I needed to, but I wouldn’t/don’t because I suspect it would be a waste of time; within the company, nothing has ever happened when I’ve said “this is wrong/this should be fixed” or something like that. People takes notes, people murmur agreement but in the end nothing happens.

Question 2: Any general comments on communication?

Pradeep Toshit Kumaswami-Krisnamurthy’s Answer: I don’t know how type grunts and hand gestures…

Jed’s Answer: To be honest, I am not sure there is much more you can do. You tried, but failed. Still, you did try.

Question 3: Any general comments on your job?

Pradeep Toshit Kumaswami-Krisnamurthy’s Answer: I’m here to pay my bills. I think it was Jean Paul Satre’ who said that ‘he who has possessions cannot be free’. I know what he meant, the need to sustain my lifestyle, for what it is, means that I have to put up with pointless boredom and drudgery.

Jed’s Answer: “I believe that I am empowered to do my job.” is a nice sentiment but I have found out that Indians march to the beat of their own drum - ultimately we work for them as much as they work for us. You can ask them to do stuff but you don’t always have the power to do it when an offshore team is involved.

Question 4: Any general comments on management?

Pradeep Toshit Kumaswami-Krisnamurthy’s Answer: The Indian managers either seem to micro manage you to death or leave you to flounder. They mostly have no idea. I put this down to Infosys’ theory that a good programmer makes a good manager. The ‘natural’ progression up the hierarchy is stupid. Don’t you guys know about the Peter Principal?! Look: Google for Peter Principle.

Jed’s Answer: “A clear connection exists between my job and where the business is heading.” - Indeed it does. Helping minimise the impact of the incredibly poor code churned out from India directly supports Infosys’ direction of sending work overseas so it can exploit the price differentials created when you use cheap, poorly trained, programmers.

Question 5: My top three expectations from Infosys Australia are:

Pradeep Toshit Kumaswami-Krisnamurthy’s Answer: (1) That it die a quick and painful death once the GDM bubble bursts and people realise that half price resources are not quite up to halfprice quality. (2) Continue to allow attrition to get rid of all the skilled Australians that Expert could once boast. (3) To try and find out who wrote these comments even though the survey is supposedly ‘anonymous’.

Editor’s Note: Expert Information Systems was the Australian company that Infosys took over or merged with (depending on your point of view) to create the wholly owned subsidiary of Infosys Techonologies, India ‘Infosys Australia Pty Ltd’.

Editor’s Note: GDM is the ‘Global Delivery Modal’ which is basically what is known as ‘offshoring’ but has a warmer, fuzzier ring to it after the spin-doctor’s got a hold of it.

Jed’s Answer: I cease to have expections of this company.

Question 6: Any general comments on strategy and business?

Pradeep Toshit Kumaswami-Krisnamurthy’s Answer: I didn’t know there was one other than ‘make money out of our resources’. Honest.

Jed’s Answer: “I believe that the technical capability of Infosys exceeds that of the competition.” Only in quantity. But Quantity does not equal quality. “I believe our business model (GDM) adds value to our clients.” Code is developed faster but of a lower quality and more bugs. Infosys Predictablity is a bit of a myth; a lot of effort needs to be expended to get code from India to the starting blocks. “Delivery of quality solutions and service to our customers is a high priority at Infosys.” - I believe a lot of people sincerely hold this belief; they really want to put out something good. But there seems to be an unwritten rule that bad code is okay. Bugs are alright provided they are fixed eventually. Bad code and bugs gives Infosys something to maintain. No one says this but by the lack of action taken to improve coding skills strongly suggests this is, at the very least, a sub-concious stratergy on the part of Infosys.

Question 7: Any general comments on development?

Pradeep Toshit Kumaswami-Krisnamurthy’s Answer: I am good a programmer, why does Infosys feel the need to push me into a role in which I do not wish to be and at which I might not succeed. Fantastic HR skills, that, really.

Jed’s Answer: “Infosys provides me with adequate opportunities for career growth.” I don’t think my career plan has ever been used when assigning me to a position. Ever. I didn’t even get the chance to accept or refuse my current position, just was told to do it. That’s fine, I am an employee after all; just don’t try to tell me the career plans mean anything or are used for anything else other than to make it look like my feelings matter. “I receive adequate training in technical skills to effectively perform my role.” It seems entirely up to me to do any sort of training, but when you’re working long hours all the time to get things, who has time time and energy?

Question 8: Any general comments on recognition?

Pradeep Toshit Kumaswami-Krisnamurthy’s Answer: From what I see I am given opportunities to work overtime when it wouldn’t have ordinarily been necessary. I see people being commended and congratulated, myself included, excessively for merely doing the job. As such, recognition from Infosys is meaningless to me as it is given out too cheaply. “Wow! You didn’t urinate on the floor? Here’s a medal for your desk!”

Editor’s Note: The fact that I’ve never seen such a medal on anyone’s desk should give you a good indication of the state of the floor in the toilets…

Jed’s Answer: I strongly disagree with all these statements. Recognition in this company is crap. Recommendations arising from my reviews are always ignored. Not once have I receieved a change in position or remuneration equal to that which has been recommended. And the one time I made an issue out of it I was fobbed off with all sorts of excuses about “process” and the “Remuneration committee” at work and told in HRs opinion I got what I deserved and I was probably overpayed for my title. Yeah, thanks… Recognition in this company involves little more than your (Project) Manager giving you a slap on the back and a “well done, son.” If you’re lucky the account director will send you an email thanking you for your hard work.

Editor’s Note: The difference in Jed’s and Pradeep Toshit Kumaswami-Krisnamurthy’s Answers are probably attributed to the fact that Jed has worked for Australian managers whilst Pradeep Toshit Kumaswami-Krisnamurthy has worked for Indian manager.

Question 9: Any general comments on engagement and values?

Pradeep Toshit Kumaswami-Krisnamurthy’s Answer: I feel nauseous. Maybe Curty is cursing me for expressing my opinion?

Jed’s Answer: Infosys needs to stop plugging the line that certifications, and the bonuses therefrom, are the main means of making your pay more competitive as a package. But the more time I work on GDM projects, the less time I have for certifications. So I remain poorly paid compared to the market.

Question 10: Any general comments on culture?

Pradeep Toshit Kumaswami-Krisnamurthy’s Answer: Infosys has resources, resources don’t have personal lives. Verbotten.

Jed’s Answer: “I am able to maintain a healthy balance between my work and personal commitments.” - Infosys askes for so much (”you need to be flexible” they say) but gives so little. How often do I hear “uhhh, we need you to stay back and talk with the Indians offshore to sort out X. The phone hookup is booked for 6:30…Can’t do it any sooner; they’re at lunch…”?

Question 11: Any general comments?

Pradeep Toshit Kumaswami-Krisnamurthy’s Answer: Add some ability to preselect all the ‘ones’ so I don’t have to click so often.

Editor’s Note: this is a reference to the multiple choice questions where ‘1′ denotes ‘Strongly Disagree’.

Jed’s Answer: “My colleagues are reliable and quality focussed.” People used to be the strength of Expert, it was as good as it was because of the high quality of people it had. Infosys has succeeded in driving away most of these people, but the people that remain do put in great efforts to ensure that things work. This GDM/UDM/Offshore model only works because people here go to great lengths to bridge the gap between what the offshore teams produce and what is needed by the client. I give the Infosys workers in the field a 5, because they try their guts out. Sadly this is expected now, as opposed to being recognised and rewarded. Also, this survey is bloody long.

I think everyone would agree that Jed’s answer to question 4 is an absolute classic.

BTW, its nice to know that a super-duper, excellent, leading edge technology provider like Infosys is still using !DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" for its new web pages. Oh well.

Posted by Infoscion at 08:38

Did anyone out there have any inkling that an organisation which prides itself in providing cheap programmers to western corporations eager to make even bigger profits would be so despised by at least some of its employees?

Anyone?

Posted in Blogs, Business, Google, Technology by Ivan