
Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka Resigns - kamaal
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/infosys-ceo-vishal-sikka-resigns/articleshow/60113725.cms
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priyaaank
A lot of criticism is valid however rather generalized. The talent pool at
large-scale, low-cost services industry in India is comprised of people who
were mass hired, trained on the job and dug through a single skill set for
years. That being said, there are pockets within the organization which do
really well. It is worth noting, that it can't be a million dollar business
without actually solving a business problem. There was a time, when it did
manage to fill a massive gap in western markets and even today
builds/maintains large scale systems at lot of western enterprises.

In my opinion, it provides challenging opportunities around how to manage
large distributed teams. It is not a place to seek technical growth or high
powered teams.

As an outsider, I feel, Vishal Sikka, was attempting to change the culture
from within but was clearly facing considerable resistance from
promoters/founders. I admire the value system upon with the Infosys was
originally founded on; they originally went out of their way for employees,
however, over time the focus has shifted and I feel they have failed to keep
pace with evolving landscape and business models both.

~~~
bicubic
> It is worth noting, that it can't be a million dollar business without
> actually solving a business problem.

Based on my interactions with Infosis, I beg to differ.

As best as I can tell, their business model is basically to convince clients
that Infosys should take on IT projects at a fraction of the cost compared to
the competition. Whoever gets them through the door gets hailed as a cost
saving hero and is soon promoted. Meanwhile the projects that were given to
them inevitably fail, and some new executive is sent in to pick up the pieces.
At that stage the cycle may repeat with Infosys once again picking up the task
of cleaning up its own mess.

They don't solve business problems, they just sell snake oil to organizations
that have not yet learned to avoid them.

~~~
danmaz74
Just curious: did anybody here had a good experience with a project done by
Infosys? There must have been good teams and good projects.

~~~
radicaldreamer
Infosys built the original iOS App Store. It's not perfect, but for something
which operates at a massive scale, it isn't the worst it could be.

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qwefadf
Bullshit. My team built the original app store in Apple.

~~~
radicaldreamer
I might be mistaken on this then. I think it might have been the dev center
then, prior to the refresh? I heard this from someone who worked at Apple for
years, they were set up in offices across the street from the team they
interfaced with at Apple.

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fooker
No, Apple doesn't do that.

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throws3bit
Well, I used one of the body shops in India to move to the US on H1B. Then I
switched to a reputed US company within months after landing. This is what
every highly skilled Indian grads should do.

~~~
amrrs
>Should do? How does ethics play out here? Promising an employer to work for
them just to lure them and get an H1B visa and then ditching them? Doesn't
sound ethical.

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KekDemaga
H1B visa jobs are supposed to pay the prevailing wage to the employee, if they
did in fact do that how was OP able to find a better job so quickly?

~~~
nonamechicken
I know h1bs who jumped to Amazon, Intel etc. The salary increase was
significant, but they were relocating from low cost of living areas to the big
cities.

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nthcolumn
No direct experience but I heard they are one of nastier of Indian body shops.
Projects are full of the most appalling fail and 'just do it'. Line management
are utterly clueless enforcers with bad attitudes. But then that does seem to
be the go with these companies.

~~~
gutnor
The problem is that those companies exists to fulfil a very different
objective than what in-house developers are expected to provide.

You should see them as a Leasing system for Generic Development Resources:
flexible and clear billing, fleet management, transparent reallocation of
resources, economical and instant capacity to increase or decrease the fleet
sizes.

Their line management reflect that, and their developers have to reflect that
too. They are not in the business of delivering software or business feature,
they are in the business of providing development hours in the most flexible
and smooth fashion.

"Just do it" is what their client is buying.

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novia
I have a technical interview with this company next week. Anyone want to fill
me in on the good the bad and the ugly of being a programmer at a company like
Infosys?

~~~
leoharsha2
I highly recommend you NOT to join this company as a programmer because you'd
have no growth and also, they pay you peanuts and earn millions. They treat
you like shit. You'll be just another fish in the sea.

The only good thing about joining this company is good work-life balance as
there is no much work for you to do.

~~~
abhi152
I find it weird when people curse Indian IT companies which were once their
employers. Is it not true that once upon a time you were only fit to join them
because no one else would have employed you.

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kamaal
I find it really strange that people are down voting this comment.

Not only do these Big IT companies hire in mass, they also spend insane
amounts of money and time training students who come out of college without
exposure to real work.

Yeah they pay peanuts and yes you would be just a face in the crowd. But they
likely give you the biggest break of your life.

People need to show some gratitude.

~~~
kumarvvr
"insane amounts of money" is an overkill.

I have worked for a year in IBM. We had a two weeks training course on Lotus
Notes, sub-contracted out to a training institute. In a dingy place, in an
inner part of the city.

Even in companies like Infosys, most training is done in-house. So we are not
talking about insane amounts of money. Additionally, if you need to really
spend insane amounts of money to train freshers, then either you are hiring
wrong, or you are dumping complex work on them. Either way, it's the problem
of the company.

> students who come out of college without exposure to real work.

Of course, students out of college will not have any exposure to real work.
There is no real internship system in India.

Also, training fresh students, just out of college is a process followed by
literally every company on earth, which is hiring freshers.

> Yeah they pay peanuts and yes you would be just a face in the crowd. But
> they likely give you the biggest break of your life.

They are able to do this because, there is a huge supply of educated
engineers, and an acute shortage of jobs. Companies like Infosys mostly
outsource mundane work, to hastily trained engineers (to join Infosys, it
doesn't matter what your major is, Electrical, Civil, Mechanical, Aero,
anything will do.), essentially using them as mules. Fortunately, unlike the
coal workers of previous generations, the domain of work allows for natural
skill development. So yes, a break in life, but not the biggest.

> People need to show some gratitude.

They do. There is a lot of gratitude. But also simmering anger at the failure
of stalwarts like Infosys for failing to develop business to move up the value
chain.

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aivijay
I like the last one. True, Infosys like companies started as a service company
and never expanded their business to develop out of the service sector which
is bad. My observation is, all these service companies only focus on their
profits and never reinvest to expand the business out of it, maybe developing
a product to start with.

~~~
mindentropy
Why do companies have to move out of service business? There are so many
companies which would give complete product development to service companies
because it is not in their domain of expertise.

Personally they should have improved upon the service business. All the
present good frameworks etc does not need to be rewritten but has to applied
in a better way.

~~~
kumarvvr
Service companies developing products mostly happens for non critical line of
business apps, and usually its just an extension to the apps already serviced
by the company.

However, BigIT in India could have latched onto that work and move into core
product development.

Two reasons they did not.

One, their cash cow is service and moving people into product development
would hurt their bottomline.

Two, they failed to see the obvious growing threat of automation. This I think
is their biggest failure.

When you see the threat to your core business, its your responsibility to plan
for the future.

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gumby
I like Vishal and thought he was thoughtful and tried to make some interesting
changes. Not surprised that this conflicted with the founders.

------
known
Infosys needs a CEO: CTOs need not apply?
[http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/DCbAckNJOQA0J57CGkMuQK/Infos...](http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/DCbAckNJOQA0J57CGkMuQK/Infosys-
needs-a-CEO-CTOs-need-not-apply.html)

