Especially who are working on IT field!! The reason is simple I am also belongs to that field.
I am a Software Engineer, programmer.
I want to make visible few lines to all programmers ,of course all these words are not from my mouth.
u r all my friends , This article is for my friends,
Subject: [Fwd: A reasonably good article by an MBT employee ( long but interesting )]
Job hopping. This is one phenomenon you frequently see in IT industry.
Also this is something I never really understood even after 3 1/2 years in
the software industry.
And it is a far cry from the Government service days of old when one
struggled to get a job when fresh out of college,
but once employed worked on there till retirement. In those days no one
ever thought of changing jobs. Perhaps nobody thought of career or
work/monetary satisfaction that much then. job stability was more
important.
In IT industry, it is a different ball game altogether. Here people are
supposed to switch else they would stagnate.
and it seems like a rule of thumb that no one sticks around in a single
company for too long and if he does then people think that is because he
is not good enough to get recruited anywhere.
Somehow when a person X switches from company A to company B, he gets a
40% hike (at least) and also goes one step up in the hierarchy. Similarly
when a person Y switches from company B to company A. he also gets a
similar hike and promotion.
Then why are they switching in the first place. ? If X is so good that
company B is ready to pay him a higher wage. and company A is also willing
to pay that amount to hire Y from company B then why do the companies not
retain their own
employees at a better scale. At least they can prevent the brain drain and
loss of talented people (or perhaps the companies also want some different
people after sometime? This way they too need not fire anyone. they go
their own way. )
It seems that IT majors now are in a frenzy to recruit the best talent
around that they give incentives to attract and pull in experienced people
from contemporary companies you see hiring sprees in Infosys, Wipro, TCS
even Syntel is hiring like crazy with so many walk-ins in the past few
weeks.
Interestingly, caliber and capability no longer matter it seems. you are
just supposed to have the proper names on your resume (names of big
colleges) and sufficient years of experience to show that is it. You are
in. For a little senior position interviews are a joke. One is usually
asked some general personal stuff and directly come to salary negotiation.
like "We can offer you so much. Are you willing to take the offer" !!
Note that you don't have to be a technical genius to be recruited into
any of these top companies with the amount of work (and most importantly
*kind of work*) being outsourced to third world countries like India.
mostly testing / support / bug fixing anyone with a few yrs of experience
to show. and who can type (and talks) in.
Good for the employees. one might say. It is easy to thrive under such
market conditions. As the saying goes.
"Make hay while the sun shines"
When I entered my first job in software. I was advised by my seniors that
frequent switching is not advisable. and you should stick around in a
company and stay loyal if you wished to learn and progress. but if you
look at the career graphs
and salary scale of people who switch regularly. You see that they have
progressed so much over a very short time that it is impossible to grow so
much staying with one organization.
But what is the main reason why people switch ? Is it career growth ? Or
job satisfaction ? Or money ? Or all of these ?
Maybe perhaps it is just need for a change with frustration levels
running high taken the kind of work done in software industry people need
a break occasionally. And a change of environment helps.
On a side note, I wonder how long this phase would last. There was a time
during the software boom. That anyone who knew just to type on the
computer were being hired in US. All and sundry were suddenly in the IT
industry and were landing in US earning big bucks. Once the bubble burst.
all was gone. the dream American IT job had vanished. everything is being
outsourced now to cheap labor houses. third world countries like India and
China. It would only be a matter of time before
it moved on to other countries in the south east.
Microsoft has now outsourced testing of most of its old OS versions to
India. They are not supporting anything older than XP now here. I guess
Wipro/Infosys have landed the contract for Win SE testing. A huge multi -
million dollar project for testing/bug fixing legacy OS components. I see
that many new vendors from Wipro/Infosys (maybe about 80 people) have
landed here in the past few weeks for knowledge transfer and carrying the
testing work back to India. no wonder they are hiring like anything.
Having mentioned this, the job scene in India is booming right now and is
expected to stay that way for the coming
few years at least. Ideal time to make a pile and plan for an early
retirement.
But what surprises me in all this is that people usually switch just
companies. they end up doing the same job in another place. Albeit for a
bigger sum and so the frustration never really goes. and hence the need
for another switch after a year. not everyone switch to a *proper job* and
that's why they keep going in circles switching from company to company.
also the money helps. But imagine doing the same stupid testing for twice
the pay. Would it help ? is it really satisfactory ? Maybe like someone
said. if you are doing something
stupid. might as well do it for a bigger sum.
This is where I feel a job culture like Microsoft is missing in India.
Here there are people who are developers even after 20 yrs experience
because they enjoy their work. and they are paid handsomely. Here salary
is not based on seniority but on
proficiency and experience.
people can choose what they like and want to work as some want to go into
management while others prefer technical positions. compensation is based
on ratings and work profile created according to the person's choice.
there are lot of cases here where experienced developers are paid more
than their managers.
Amidst all the outsourcing and body shopping we have missed out building
India into a software product development center. rather it is now like a
cheap labor shop. I read in an article that India is known as the "back
office of the world".
I don't know whether to be proud or ashamed of this tag. When Bill
started Microsoft. they were a few tens of people. we at MBT are around
4000 and all are capable and well qualified and what sort of work do we
mostly do. testing / product support / maintenance that is stopping us
from building some product and selling it to the world ? And why on earth
do we sell our work-force as contract workers to multinationals ?
Rather than switching from company to company in search of the ideal job.
or the best package. me thinks it is better to go down south to Kerala and
get a nice water-front house. settle down peacefully with family. purchase
some fields and do some farming. now that would the ideal job switch.
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I Agree to the fullest. And I have a similar problem in mind.
Why do people change the channels quite often while watching TV.
If we find the answer to this the problem in IT is almost solved.
I feel, "Too many options and that to not very different
from each other always bring confusion"
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