Monday, May 15, 2017

Infosys Confessions - ICCA - 21000

"My confession is not regarding current events, but i hope my experiences and my understanding of it over time will put things in perspective for some of you.
I am an ex-Infoscion, i left Infy 5 years ago because of the same reasons that are mostly talked about here. Low salary, lack of onsite & promotions, unfair appraisal practices. I was a top performer (CRR 1+ for straight 5 years), until Infosys broke me down bit by bit. First my promotion was delayed stating lack of budgets... meanwhile i was given promises of onsite. My H1B initiation was delayed again stating lack of "slots". Remember all this is happening to a CRR1+ employee. Ofcourse i was lost and had lost hope. i did not understand what i am doing wrong or where my career was going. I worked hard and my employer is denying me the opportunities i deserve. My performance slipped to 2 the next year. That gave them reason to delay my visa again saying slots were given to deserving people with higher ratings.
Thats when it hit me hard.. that Infosys, NRN, your managers - no one there REALLY cares about you. Everyone cares about themselves first, which is so obviously true if you think about it. Have you seen any of your superiors really putting their ass on their line for their subordinates? Even one of you?. NO, they care about their job, their performance, their family, their home loan, their EMIs first. So my first advice to all of you is - if you want change in your situation, you have to act yourself after a point.
The IT Industry in India has evolved leaps and bounds in the last decade. As early as 2008-09, we were seeing signs of slowdown. Trust me, we did. But we refused to believe it then, thats what happened. Infosys exploded in employee count between 2000 and 2010 20x times... from 5000 employees to crossing 100000 employees! Ofcourse smart folks would know that the pyramid model that the company is based on will not hold up for long! But Infy kept hiring, laterals and freshers alike. It became a hero in news, and we were basking proud. We refused to believe that this cannot scale. But it did. Promotions slowed down, people got frustrated. How can you promote someone when there is no position? The other sought after prize was onsite for many. With visa restrictions, the Infy lawsuit for abusing H1b visas, and now with Trump's new tighter immigration and visa laws, that hope also has faded away.
Whom can you blame? No one. Maybe ourselves. Think about it. Some of the people here feel their seniors got all the golden days and they are suffering. Why did you join Infy? Did you think Infosys with >175000 employees can give same benefits and opportunities like when it had only 5000 employees? Today, how can it be ever possible that most of you 175K employees get onsite or promotions or great hikes? That is simply not possible ..
This is a reality check so that you can reset your expectations in today's world. The Software industry is evolving. Don't sit back and crib that Infy is not satisfying your expectations. Stop complaining and wasting your time and use your time to update your skills and learn and find the next big thing and get onboard it first (IoE, BigData, AI, Cloud, SaaS are some e.g), so that you can reap the benefits of it in your careers.
DC - BLR
YOJ - 2005
YOL - 2012

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