La Vita Bella

I came across NASSCOM report for fiscal year 2005-06 which said there were more than 1.3 million people directly employed in IT/ITES services.My first rection:
Whoooooopz thats huge!!!

Majority of these 1.3 billion are employed with IT services companies like TCS, Infosys, Wipro, HCL, Satyam etc. The growth of these companies has been as much horizontal as vertical. Their presence in vast fields like banking, automobile, medicine, petroleum, airlines etc is a testimony of their horizontal growth.

Between all this cheer and hype I feel there are few things which need major thinking

1.Organizational Hierarchy
IT companies are flag bearer of next generation business model, but I am surprized to see too much hierarchy in it.In many IT companies in US some Software Developers may actually come at same level as a Deputy General Manager. They may have different roles, but no body is above or below anybody
But a typical organizational hierarchy of an Indian IT Service provider looks something like this

1.Software Engineer
2.Senior Software Engineer
3.Team Leader
4.Project Leader
5.Project Manager
6.Senior Project Manager
7.Deputy General Manager
8.General Manager
9.Vice President.
10 President
11. CEO

Now this looks seriously flawed. Not only this too much hierarchical, there is also no parallel career path for technical people. Sometimes I even wonder how companies satisfy technical needs of their clients when there are very few Technical Architects and Computer Scientists in the organization.

2. Billing System

Many service companies still charge theirs clients on Man X Hour basis rather than on project completion basis. This means that the more inefficient people a company employs the more revenue it generates. Now Of course there are some serious deadlines and people genuinely slog to meet them. But the majority is encouraged to just sit out their 8 hours, do some mailing chatting and go home without asking too much questions. No motivation for increasing productivity or taking any initiative.

3. Too Much Processes

In name of CMM levels companies have junked up large no of documents and innumerable processes. Most of them are blockers in rapid and quality S/W Development. Sometimes they are far too generic to make any sense to a perticular project requirement. Still they are forced rather than eased into the system.I personally feel that it’s the humans who should decide what processes to follow rather than processes deciding what humans should do.
And above all

How can new ideas evolve when people are told to do this, this, this and this and that too only in this particular way?

4. Too Little Processes

On one hand companies are making extraordinary efforts to achieve these CMM levels, but on the other hand the actual processes that are a MUST in any software business are nowhere to be seen. “Code Review “ is one of the first thing that becomes a scapegoat when there are few or no people with technical interest in a team. Fresh pair of eyes are always helpful not only in finding some programming blunders but can also tell flaws in the inherent design at a very early stage of software lifecycle. All the testing tools that come may test the functionality of a code but only a human can tell that Boss !! Your code is in total mess.. Please change your design.

5.Followers than Leaders.

Our IT giants are leaders in following things. Most of the time a client before giving a project says he wants to use this particular technology , use these many people and support these these application. Now a technical consultancy company is supposed to tell all these to its client and not vice versa.

The other emotional question that I ask to the Murthys and Premjis is that your companies are generating more than $2 billion revenues. That’s really good. But why can’t they spend at least 10-15% of it in R&D. I am so desperate to see TCS, Infosys or Wipro coming up with a world class product. There is no doubt they can do it if they want to but they won’t do it because product development is a riskier business and they are more than happy to be on the safer side.

6. Bad people management

A hallmark of any service company whether IT or otherwise is its people. But with huge size of organization there is worst kind of people management I see. People have lost their identities and are treated as resources rather than talented individuals. Those beautiful statistical graphs looks cool in MS project but hits hard on any good worker who comes to know that he is treated in the same way as the dick head sitting beside him. Both are represented as a number in his manager’s power point presentation. There is also mismanagement in allocation projects to people. Its very easy to find a highly skilled person doing a bullshit work and a dumb trying his hand on some very technical stuff. Result most people hate their jobs to unimaginable limits, sometimes despite getting good salaries.

7. No Emotions Please!!!

I used to work for one IT service company and my first lesson there was keep all your emotions outside workplace. Now I wonder how can a person come up with something good when he is not passionate about it. Isn’t my project suppose to be my baby? But I was forced to work indifferently. No surprises that I learnt nothing, did nothing and gave nothing in my 6 months stay in that company.

8. Morality Check

Its generally true that our IT giants have maintained a very clean image till now. Some of them are also in some social activities. But there are few places where they unofficially do some unethical work. For example whenever a person goes on leave, it is not declared to client and they continue to charge for him even when he is absent. This happens more in a large team where it is easy to hide one or two absentees. Though it doesn’t hurt too much as the work is anyway done but honesty pays in all circumstances.

The rest to be continued some other time…..

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Note:
I had a very short stunt of six months in a service company and hence may not be all right in my opinion.Also all these mentioned views are personal and should not be associated with my present or past employers