
Infosys, TCS or Wipro? - talonx
http://blog.susam.in/2011/05/infosys-tcs-or-wipro.html
======
chintan100
Having worked with Infosys, i agree with most of your points though i think
the number of engineers varies according to the market conditions.

80% utilization rate is considered good for these companies and so minimum 20%
people are always on bench. As the market started going from bad to worse in
Dec 2008, i saw more people being deployed in testing than programming.

And its a shame that an engineering student will say that their dream company
is Infosys/TCS/Wipro and not Microsoft/Oracle/Google/Apple. I mean cant they
even "dream" about being at M/O/G/A?!!

PS: I got kicked out of Infosys training because i could not learn fast enough
for them but since then i joined a smaller company as an iPhone Developer and
have had an awesome learning experience while my Infosys friends who passed
the training now forward their CVs to me because they often work on
maintenance and support projects on obsolete technologies.

~~~
priya_1989
hello, can u please suggest which start up companies should we join instead of
Infosys/wipro.tcs. I have just got my joining letter from Infsoys . Bt i want
to learn & not want to follow any brand name. I aslo want to know what are the
procedure likely in a company where u would learn?

~~~
gaurav_111
Hi, Zinnia Systems,its an excellent product based company in telecom
domain.You work there for one year and you are ready to take on the
programming world headon.

------
kikibobo69
This post misses the key point about working for one of these big outsourcing
companies: there is no technical career path. The only way to advance in a
company like Wipro (the one I have the most experience with) is to become
management. This leads to a very unhealthy dynamic, and I don't see how these
companies can remain competitive over time. Without an equal investment in
ensuring that they have some technical skills to bring to the table, they will
never been much more than a cheap place to outsource your testing or running a
complicated build environment. I'm amazed they can't see that.

~~~
braindead_in
There has been an ongoing debate in the industry about the services vs the
product approach. Services have been big success story whereas there has been
no big product success yet. The services people highlight that fact and hype
it up. It leads you believe that there is no future for product development
companies in India, which really is not true. The services market has
saturated and people are starting to look at product driven companies now.
You'll hardly find any startups in services business these days. It will take
some time to move on from the services mindset, but it's starting to happen.

~~~
wslh
The issue is that it's easy to start a service company and have a positive
cashflow than to sell a product.

I recommend Michael Cusumano's work on hybrid models:
<http://web.mit.edu/cusumano/www/>

------
train_robber
There exists a good middle ground in India too - companies that have some of
the advantages that Infosys or TCS offers (like the extra comforts) and the
advantages of a start-up working with more modern technologies. Companies like
Bosch, Siemens etc. I worked in one of those earlier, and I am quite happy
that I had that experience - both in my engineering career and in my life.

I've moved on to a startup in the recent past. Even though I find it more
fulfilling - I believe that it's a good idea for young engineers to experience
that slice of life, atleast in a company that doesn't stunt your learning
experience.

------
senthilnayagam
in India if you work for a bigger company you have a good chance of getting a
better spouse. in first 2-3 years they aspire to buy car, home and a get
married.

most employees who leave us dont join startups they join MNC's, these guys
feel proud that they are on bench or just need to work for couple of hours a
day and can spend more hours in coffee shops.

~~~
revorad
Big company for a better spouse? Really? Are people looking for six sigma
certification?

~~~
artagnon
Something like that. A passport with a US Visa, a large bank balance, and a
secure job ;)

------
uselessranter
1\. Indian IT Services and Consulting companies
(Infy,Wipro,TCS,Cognizant,Mahindra,HCL and 100 more) have engineering work
which is as good as any of their counter parts in the world. This is proven by
reshift in the delivery pie in the last decade. So, by saying these jobs are
useless you are discrediting the whole of the IT services and consulting
industry jobs across the world which include IBM, Accenture, Capgemeni, HP.

2\. We are talking about product focussed companies and services focussed
companies in the IT space. But both the types of companies have the other
offering. It is the proportion of their revenues which varies. IT Companies
keep shifting their portfolio of products and services based on market need -
Infosys 3.0 is an example. So generalizing job nature on a company basis based
on ones experience only is point less.

3\. IT Services/ITO and consulting industry generates business revenues of
US$595 billion across the world, this includes the services divisions of
product companies. All product revenues put together is about $250 billion. So
if every guy would work for only IT product focussed companies there would not
be enough jobs.

4\. There are people who write articles, whine and complain, quit and go.
Choose the easy way out. Then, there are people who work to improve and make
it better, lead society to a better world. Latter ones are the leaders and
have received accolades in the history.

~~~
asutoshs
I have one simple question to people who are commenting that freshers should
join Infy, TCS, Wipro. Why?

You guys are simply giving only philosophy like someone can join Infosys and
likes to change the system, improve culture n engineering practices, service
work is also important with product work etc. (Who is talking of service vs.
product here? This is engineering vs. non engineering)

Freshers are not interested in philosophy. They want to use their knowledge
and learn how to do work properly along with earning money at the same time.

Why will a fresher join a company to change the system and improve the culture
of the company. Are they social reformers? Are they the managers of
Infosys/TCS/Wipro? Should the freshers decide the culture of Infosys/TCS/Wipro
or it is the responsibility of the CEOs, HRs and managements to decide the
culture of Infosys/TCS/Wipro?

In short you guys tell me why a fresher should join a company to do all these
philosophical and cultural improvements instead of trying to join a company
where the fresher can do proper engineering work and learn good coding and
engineering practices from his seniors?

------
narendranag
This is a brilliant article.

It captures everything that's gone wrong with the Indian software services
industry — no emphasis on curiosity, exploration, or problem solving. If you
think about it for a moment, that's also exactly what's wrong with CS
education in the country.

I've been trying to hire a good engineer for the last four months to expand
our dev team. We're not a startup — we're part of one of the largest ad/PR
networks in the world. We're great paymasters and offer the opportunity to
work on some really cool products. And we're based in New Delhi, India.

I've met at least 10 people in the last eight weeks — all of them engineers,
and none of them seem to know what we're talking about the moment we say
things like NLP or Node. In fact, they're not even curious. Just scared, and
uninterested in being pushed out of their comfort zone. For eg, one guy told
me he ONLY does PHP using the Cake framework. I asked if he had played around
with any other framework, he said no. The only reason he was stuck with Cake
was because the place he worked at said Cake, he learnt Cake and he used Cake
ever since. I asked about MVC and I got a blank look.

I just wish I could come across another computer engineer (outside the
existing team) who's curious about programming, who still thinks it's magical
when the code you write translates in to cool stuff happening on your screen
and in boxes all over the world. Who realizes that you're not writing
software, you creating an experience for a user and every bit matters.

Either they're terribly hard to find, or I don't know where to look :)

~~~
lut4rp
<http://jobs.hasgeek.in> has turned out to be a very fine place for finding
very fine people. You should try it.

(PS: Hey Nag, ltns :))

~~~
narendranag
Pratul, what up!

<http://jobs.hasgeek.in/view/r1i2o>

------
skrish
I worked in a small company right after college, worked with TCS for 7+ years
after that and with Cognizant (another services firm) for close to 2 years.

Now, I have founded my own startup with friends and looking forward to
building some kick-ass solutions.

EDIT: Clarification - My advice to freshers is also the same - Do not pass up
an opportunity to work in a startup or good engineering companies.

Its a long comment, but I have to narrate my experience to convey what it
means for someone like me to have worked in TCS or Cognizant.

I graduated from college in 2001 at a time when every IT company was firing
employees and most of my batch mates took jobs in call centers (to work in
night shifts). I was one of the fortunate few to get job in a startup and I
worked there for a year. The way I grew up in remote village & my background,
I never had any financial backup (I was pretty much broke) nor the knowledge
that I could start a company on my own - I just did not know then. Call me
stupid. But it is just that - I did not have any exposure to such a thing.

Alas, I lacked the perspective to really appreciate what a blessing it was to
stumble upon an opportunity to work in startup and looked for a better paying
job in a year. I come from a lower middle class background who had to work my
way through and I had an obligation to earn money to start supporting my
parents when my father had retired by that time and felt obligated to support
my brother's education.

For people not familiar with this - in India it is perfectly normal for grown
ups to stay with parents even after marriage, support them through their
retired life and brother or sister's extended family is also considered part
of your family. That is how it is in a joint family setup, in places I have
grown-up. It is just part of the culture, though it is changing rapidly.

When the big services companies started recruiting later, I took up job with
TCS and worked my way through learning product implementations, integrating
purchasing apps with different ERPs. These may not be supremely engineering
problems, but definitely problems my customers had and worth solving. And I
did it really well to the extent my customers still vouch for my ability to
solve problems for them.

I do not for a single day regret what I did there. In fact I learnt a lot
about business, understanding that throwing technical knowledge at every
solution is NOT necessarily the best way and there are ways to tackle and
provide best value to businesses.

I credit my functional knowledge to the experience in TCS and Cognizant where
I had the opportunity to work on some of the support projects as well as best
of implementation projects.

How did I gain knowledge of Price Management domain again? I volunteered to
take up Quality Assurance of the existing SAP solution, learnt it really well
and took up the implementation pieces so we could 'reengineer' the existing
solution.

Now I am fortunate to get an opportunity and having the necessary financial
stability (thanks to my 10 years work experience so far) and the perspective
that I am working on my own startup.

I think we have to keep in mind that we all take one baby step at a time - as
a person, as a bunch of folks as well as a nation.

I have lot of respect for the vision of Mr. Ratan Tata
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratan_Naval_Tata>) and the TATA group
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tata_Group>) to invest in something like this
way back in 1968. Mind you this was at a time when India was not perceived to
have any skills and they trusted individuals to build something substantial.

This blog makes me feel sad in some way that some of the folks lack the
perspective to really appreciate what something really is.

I would rather encourage you folks to do one better than what they have done.
Start your own company. Give some good advise to youngsters to join startups &
make a conscious choice. No harm done. But do not try to discredit it all with
such spiteful blogs.

~~~
satsriakaal
I am not able to follow your point. What do you intend to say? An engineer who
can get a job in a start-up or proper engineering company should still join
Infy/TCS/Wipro? If not what are you ranting about?

    
    
        "Give some good advise to youngsters to join startups & make a conscious choice. No harm done."
    

So what else is the article doing?

    
    
        "But do not try to discredit it all with such spiteful blogs."
    

TL;DR? ain't it?

~~~
skrish
Sorry you find it to be a rant. My point is that the blogger need not
generalize all the work in TCS or Infosys or Wipro and take a dig at these
companies to recommend to freshers to work in startup.

My advice to freshers is also the same as the blogger - do not pass up an
opportunity to work in a startup or an engineering organization.

The same advice can be given in a more polite way without taking a dig at
these companies and that too specifically.

The companies themselves say they are "services" organizations and are working
on worthwhile problems which their customers pay for. The training, bench
strength et al, is part of the business they are into.

EDIT: Clarified the statements.

~~~
rajeevmadden
I didn't see generalization of TCS or Infosys or Wipro in the blog. The blog
indicated that most of TCS or Infosys or Wipro is involved in unchallenging
problems but there is a small number of people in these firms who work on
interesting problems too. The blog seems to encourage people to join startup
or engineering firm instead of joining TCS or Infosys or Wipro.

~~~
skrish
I do not know what else I could make out of these statements in the blog:

>>> Culture: One of the worst cultures you can find in the whole of software
industry. >>> Onsite: Contrary to the popular belief, the number of trips to
foreign lands isn't a measure of one's technical prowess. It is mostly (but
not always) a measure of how dispassionate one is about engineering and his
profession, and how greedy one can be for wealth.

I find such statements really insulting to find such generalizations - You can
tell me if this is generalization or not, but I find it very insulting to
paint with such broad brush.

I have come across several (hundreds) of smart individuals in these companies.
I have had colleagues who were well respected by peers in industry working in
these companies - who have been experts in their technology area.

I do not find the above statements in blog to be fair and hence my comment in
HN. Normally I would pass up such articles trying to stir arguments
deliberately but I had to convey my point at least to a small group that may
appreciate what it means to someone with background similar to mine.

Your thoughts?

~~~
jumpin
using a throwaway account because i don't want to fall in trouble. The blog
says that the number of engineers are a very few. What do you think is wrong
here? There are some good engineers and there are many many bad engineers. so,
it is possible that you had colleagues who were well respected but the
majority of colleagues in Infosys TCS Wipro are not like that.

I worked in one of these companies and I will tell you what type of things
happen.

# People insult each other in bulletin board. I am not kidding. This is true.

# Guys leave useless and flirtatious comments on blogs of girls in the
internal blogs.

# You have to compulsorily stay 9.5 hours in office every day even if you have
no work.

# In many projects there is no system of code review. how will the freshers
learn from their mistakes without code review?

# File checkin is done not using client side tools but some crappy software
created by internal IT team. The crappy software is interface between CVS and
desktop. You have to reserve names for new files you have created one by one,
then upload them one by one, upload each modified file one by one via a HTML
GUI. It takes roughly 3 hours to checkin just 10 files.

I agree with the author that these companies have one of the worst culture.

I started my career here and after that I worked in 3 more different
companies. All the three were better than these companies. At least I can
check in code properly where I am now. At least I can disagree with other
people in company bulletin board without fearing that someone will abuse me or
insult me. Infosys TCS or Wipro is absolutely bad place to start your career
if your aim is to learn good programming, learn good work culture and learn
good knowledge from good colleagues.

~~~
skrish
>>># People insult each other in bulletin board. I am not kidding. This is
true. >>># Guys leave useless and flirtatious comments on blogs of girls in
the internal blogs.

You are probably looking at it as an issue specific to those companies. I am
looking at it as a larger issue - herd mentality and a bigger issue in
culture. Having said that, I take it that it is the responsibility of company
to make some strong statement by kicking such employees out. If users can be
trained or disciplined to behave in an online forum like HN or SO, I do not
see why it can't be "enforced" in these companies.

If this is happening in these companies, it is something these companies
should take up seriously - lest it destroy their very existence - you can't
have angry & misbehaving waiters to serve customers and expect to do well in a
restaurant business.

I am with you on your other point. Even I would hate it when someone would
insist upon me to stay for 9.5 hours (though I have always had flexible
managers in TCS & Cognizant) who were never particular about it. I can't
comment on Infosys, as I have not worked there.

As for using crappy software for check-ins I really think it is pathetic if
that is the case. At least I have never experienced such bad software being
"enforced" in my 9+ yrs in these companies.

I give it to you that these may be the 3rd or 4th best options for someone to
start their career, if not in any startup. The advice I would still give
people in these companies & the ones who join anyway is that: be aware of the
industry you are in; connect with a larger community outside and be passionate
about technology and least of all "not to get institutionalized".

------
alagu
"please go and open your engineering textbooks again. Try to remind yourself
what you studied and what you learnt. Consider what you do now."

Overrated statement.

Do all engineers do stuff that was taught in their engineering text book?

~~~
gaius
Imagine if bridges and airliners were built like people build software, is his
point.

------
artagnon
It's not at all surprising; it's what happens when Indian society tries to
push everyone into either engineering or medicine. You come up with a huge
number of bad engineering colleges to meet the demand, which in churn out bad
engineers. So you have a country with a huge supply of people who are scared
of engineering. What follows? Jobs to utilize this huge workforce. A real
engineer is a needle in the haystack -- it's very difficult for him/ her to
stand out and be recognized.

------
Indyan
I just finished my B. Tech (Computer Science and Engineering) course. This
blog post was forwarded to me by my supervisor in Wipro, where I did my
internship. He himself agreed mostly with the article. Anyways, this article
inspired me to write this: [http://techie-buzz.com/discussions/engineering-
colleges-stud...](http://techie-buzz.com/discussions/engineering-colleges-
students-india.html)

------
scorpion032
While there is no Technical Merit in Infosys training he and I both went
through, I think there is a definite value add in therms of the exposure and
connections to so many people from so many places.

It would be hard to digest, but you will know that most people (in these
trainings) can't do what you would think is a SQL with basic join. And if you
are among the one that can, you are the star and in the top percentile. :)

------
raghava
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2483976> could be sort of a prologue for
Susam's post. The origins of the problem lie in the system and surrounding
culture.

EDIT: And <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2411695> too.

------
g123g
Liked this line from the blog -

Some employees are busy figuring out ways to impress their female colleagues
using the resources provided by the organization rather than learning and
solving problems in a better way.

So these companies are atleast good for something. Giving their male employees
opportunities to hone their flirting skills.

------
mpunaskar
Company i worked for in India sold very innovative products plus usual IT
service. Because of products, Sales team cross sold IT services to product
users and vice versa

An good example of utilising human resources and generating revenue when you
dont have many clients using your IT services.

------
chintan100
Someone just made a great Hitler video for this blog post. Hitler does not
want to work in Infosys, TCS, or Wipro:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRjM3d_Bseg>

------
anand21
for all the peoples from other part of world before making your mind check
this healthy discussion here

[http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50831/how-
do-...](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50831/how-do-
programmers-in-the-west-see-programmers-in-the-east)

------
gnufied
This is pointless. About 100% of engineers, who are looking for a technical
carrier path already know this.

~~~
rajeevmadden
You are about 50% incorrect. :-) You will be surprised if you survey students
of small colleges who often believe the hype of infy, tcs, wipro. You can see
some people like that in the comments section of the blog who did not know the
truth abt infy, tcs, wipro before joining them. in fact i am a student right
now and i myself didn't have a good picture of the software industry well. now
I know that I should prepare myself well to apply for Google or Adobe and i
shouldn't think about infy, tcs, wipro which come to our college every year
and hire 50 to 100 students each.

