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Is Indian IT gone...

 
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Is it worthwhile to work anymore/aspire to work for in IT space anymore.
It proved futile after the housing bubble burst in US and I dont think, it would be able to get to normal track pretty soon.It might take 3 years now.And,between I see lot of pressure..really lot for squeezing the productivity out of an associate.
I think if we had same effort and sincerity in public sector, it would have been great to the society and we would enjoy security as well.
 
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Its good for INDIA that people will start looking for other sector, that will really increase our strength. And we grow in BALANCED Way. thats how we have to be...

Any way its a Great time for INDIA
 
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Originally posted by Sridhar Babu:
Is it worthwhile to work anymore/aspire to work for in IT space anymore.



Certainly on a relative basis the next 2-3 years won't see the growth experienced over the last 10 years. But consider the following questions.

1) What industries in India pay as well as software? (I don't know the answer but the sense I get is: not many.)

2) To those who are picking an industry to work in for 20-30+ years the increasing industrialization of Asia and the middle east suggests long term prospects for the software industry remain strong even if the current economic situation limits short term growth.


--Mark
 
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There are a lot of opportunities in India for good-paying (relative to general Indian salaries) jobs right now. I envy you. Engineering, medicine, almost any learned discipline.

The fact that the world is in a slump right now simply means that other opportunities are opening up. Wise organizations will exploit the excess employee capacity to grow India itself, which will ultimately be better for the nation than simply pumping foreign cash in.

Information Technology itself is key to any modern endeavour. World-wide, the projection is for growth for a long time to come. It's one reason why we still have IT jobs over here, even in the face of the vast differential in cost of living/salaries.

Having said that, however, I've never recommended that money be the major reason for selecting a career. I didn't get into the field because of the money - in fact, I was fairly financially clueless when I entered the workforce. I chose the profession because I enjoyed it. I've turned down all sorts of better-paying offers over the years because my primary interests were technical challenges and quality of life. With quality of life being most important.

The only regrets I've had is that I was a loyal corporate drone during the years I could have been raking it in as a dot-com developer, and that's only because the loyalty was not returned.

Economies ebb and flow. What's more important is whether you're satisfied with what you do. If that's IT, fine. If not, find something that better suits you.
 
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My opinions are in line somewhat with Mohammed and Tim.

In the last 10 years the excessive money seen by Indian IT job sector made many young people to leave their own "core" fields and move to IT. Once the overly built hype will go away people will remain in their core field and give their best there and not change industries just for money. That is Mechanical engineer will be mechanical engineer and electrical engineer will be an electrical engineer.
I am not saying that these people are not doing their job in the best way in IT. But I believe a person educated, trained and groomed for certain industry is better prepared to do that job. As Mohammed said, this will give India an opportunity to grow holistically in all the fields especially infrastructural sectors. And as Tim said, this will make people to choose career they love rather than career that pays tooooooo much.
 
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Originally posted by Paras Jain:
My opinions are in line somewhat with Mohammed and Tim.

In the last 10 years the excessive money seen by Indian IT job sector made many young people to leave their own "core" fields and move to IT. Once the overly built hype will go away people will remain in their core field and give their best there and not change industries just for money. That is Mechanical engineer will be mechanical engineer and electrical engineer will be an electrical engineer.
I am not saying that these people are not doing their job in the best way in IT. But I believe a person educated, trained and groomed for certain industry is better prepared to do that job. As Mohammed said, this will give India an opportunity to grow holistically in all the fields especially infrastructural sectors. And as Tim said, this will make people to choose career they love rather than career that pays tooooooo much.



A bit off-topic but some interesting & important observations. Achyut Godbole is a chemical engineer by qualification, and everybody knows his contribution to Indian software industry, his operating system book is considered as one the best books on the topic. There are many such examples, and most of the times 'fire in the belly' counts more than anything else.
 
Mohammed Yousuff
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Yes 'fire in the belly' matters, however what i try to say is to work in the area which we loved to rather than where we get more money....

That is the way we can do our BEST to the World...

A guy who is LOVED to WORK is always BETTER than a man who work for Money....

that what i believe...
[ December 25, 2008: Message edited by: Mohammed Yousuff ]
 
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just read this article.

Link

It is also here Link2
[ December 25, 2008: Message edited by: Sagar Kale ]
 
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To civil engineers I am in touch with,there is a shortage of qualified civil/structural engineers in India.Pay is almost same as that of IT.Civil engineers are available but they are expert in handling softwares like CAD/STAAD and not so good in fundamentals subjects like mechanics/statics etc.Some Indian companies have imported few engineers from France/Italy o short term basis to lead infrastructure projects.!
[ December 26, 2008: Message edited by: Arjun Shastry ]
 
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There is no end for the Indian IT sector. The most reputed Indian firms have relation with US clients which could atleast last for atleast 30 more years. There is a slide and there will be a change in the pay structure and the way we work. But still, the future of indian it sector is wide open.
 
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Originally posted by Shiaber Shaam:
There is no end for the Indian IT sector. The most reputed Indian firms have relation with US clients which could atleast last for atleast 30 more years. There is a slide and there will be a change in the pay structure and the way we work. But still, the future of indian it sector is wide open.


But you're assuming that the US companies will be there for at least 30 years... think Detroit and Wall Street and I would not be so sure
On the other hand, the future is wide open for talented software developers anywhere in the world!
 
Paras Jain
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With the steep increase in salaries in Indian IT sector, India is losing its competitive edge in terms of cost. The quality work will still keep some of the customers but I see other countries giving good competition.
Still, Indian IT is not totally gone. We are going to stay [ ]
 
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'Gone' is a totally wrong word for the situation now.

This is a temporary phase.

If it is 'gone', where do you think did it go? USA and the world wouldnt stop using computers would they? And if it comes back, where will it be going back to? The answer is: it didnt go anywhere; the demand shrank worldwide, not just India. If it comes back, it will come back to where there is supply, which would most likely be the same as before, may it be India or whereever.

Although there remains a big demand for nurses, of course, demand for them shrank too, but of negligible relative amount. It is because even before the big economic trouble from subprimes, there is a huge demand for nurses, even as we speak now.

Maybe on a not-so-related view, we can possibly postpone that expensive software upgrade, but we cannot postpone healthcare to someone who will die if you ignore.
 
Sagar Kale
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One more bad news. Microsoft asked to layoff 9,000

link
[ December 29, 2008: Message edited by: Sagar Kale ]
 
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I believe that this is only a temporary phase like it happend back in 2000.
Around that time I was in colleage and started learning Java. Many people suggested not to learn Java since many people lost their Java jobs along with other IT jobs that time. However, I got Java job after graduation in 2002 and until now I am doing a Java job.

This kind of down time may help to stabilize markets in near future eventhough this gives lot of pain to employees. This kind of situation will improve 'immunity' of IT . Markets may get stabilize in the Q2 of 2009 and recruitment will start again! We don't have to loose hope, market is graph and graph doesn't have to show up always, it can come down and goes up. Its a trend change and we need to cope up with trend to sustain!
[ January 01, 2009: Message edited by: Sai Surya ]
 
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check out following links...

link1

link2
 
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Thanks for those links Vikram
 
Sagar Kale
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Most of the people says this is temporary phase and this will go in sometime. But how long this phase will remain? 4 months, 6 months , one year or Indian IT industry has permanently lost it's glory? No companies are recruiting!!! Some companies are laying off people. Has this bad phase has reached to it's peak or something more bad is yet to come ?

No one has answers to these questions.
 
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I think there will be more. I think ALL companies are affected. It is just a matter 'when' will the companies 'adjust' - voluntarily or involuntarily (e.g. Lehman is involuntary).

You gotta do what you gotta do. Easier said than done indeed. I hope those that are the end of the tail can hold on.

This can take time, like 2 years or more to go back to normal.

Big companies adjusts. Small ones also do. No one is safe from this global economic bomb.

Everything is relative. I think saying IT is gone for good from India is like saying USA will not try to recover.

Just my 2 cents.
 
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Originally posted by Shiaber Shaam:
There is no end for the Indian IT sector. The most reputed Indian firms have relation with US clients which could atleast last for atleast 30 more years. There is a slide and there will be a change in the pay structure and the way we work. But still, the future of indian it sector is wide open.



They are not relationships like you have with your friend. They are business relationships and business relationships always deal with money. Where you get things done cheaper, you tend to go there.
[ January 02, 2009: Message edited by: Jothi Shankar Kumar Sankararaj ]
 
Sagar Kale
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The companies which were giving work to India for last few years had good relationships with other companies where they used to get done their work before giving to India. After wards they found giving work in India is cheaper so they turned to India. Now if they find India is not cost effective, they will find some other option.

Business is all about money first. Money saved is money made.
[ January 02, 2009: Message edited by: Sagar Kale ]
 
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If you are building your career and have option to choose between IT and non IT field then don't choose IT field . I am java developer I know whats going on. Mnc are not hiring and small companies are exploiting employees
 
Sai Surya
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rahulash sharma wrote:If you are building your career and have option to choose between IT and non IT field then don't choose IT field . I am java developer I know whats going on. Mnc are not hiring and small companies are exploiting employees



I didn't understood 'exploiting employees'. Can you elaborate on this please.
 
Sagar Kale
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I didn't understood 'exploiting employees'. Can you elaborate on this please.



Small companies use lot of tricks to make work long hours.

For example saying your performance is not good, we expect this and that from you. When you know market is not good outside, you can not think of change. So you have to work longer. When it comes to salary raise, you get almost nothing. But still you think many times before going outside looking and market situation.

So in short it means work more and get less raise in compensation.
 
rahulash sharma
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I know many small companies in INDIA specially in MP who pay only 4000-5000 to java developers .Employees have to work for 11-13 hours daily Since my many friends are in these type of companies so I know the whole story .I think it is EXPLOITATION
 
Tim Holloway
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rahulash sharma wrote:I know many small companies in INDIA specially in MP who pay only 4000-5000 to java developers .Employees have to work for 11-13 hours daily Since my many friends are in these type of companies so I know the whole story .I think it is EXPLOITATION



Do you mean 4-5 lakhs/year, or really Rs. 4000/month? It's not been that long since 5 lakhs was considered a decent salary for someone with 5 years experience. On the other hand, if my math is correct, Rs. 4000/month does sound absurd. I'd heard maids and gardeners can make more than that.

11-13 hours/day, on the other hand offends me for a number of reasons. One of them is that software production has absolutely no resemblance to grinding meat into sausage. You can't simple "turn the crank" longer and faster and get more software. People's brains start shutting down after a while and instead of producing code, they start producing mistakes. In my case, it's LONG before the 11-hour mark. If you want to impress me as a potential customer, you DON'T brag about how everyone's putting in long hours. Even in the meat-grinding business, there's a point where things break down. Run the grinder too fast, and instead of hamburger, you get cooked ground beef out the other end. If, by the way, you're of the vegetarian/Brahmin persuasion and you find the hamburger analogy offensive, I should point out that I use this particular illustration in large part because that's exactly how offensive it is to me.

When I started in the business, it was a common saying that just because one woman can have a baby in 9 months doesn't mean that adding 8 more women makes the baby come in one month. But we seem to have lost that concept and I've been in one or 2 companies myself who tried - and failed - to disprove Brooke's Law.

Quality software seems to have a life of its own, and you meddle with its natural growth at your own peril. It's easily possible to waste time, but attempting to gain time is almost impossible without damaging the results.

Unfortunately, the global mindset is these "fast and cheap", and in large part I think it's because technology HAS made a lot of amazing things possible faster and cheaper and more powerful than anyone could imaging. But hardware is not software, so better machines and even better development software won't help with things that depend on the same old human brains.

We've gotten so much for so little for so long that we forgot that in the end, no lunch is free, and there's a big difference between "cheap" and "good value". Only when the corners have been cut so far that we poison ourselves or experience preventable failures do we begin to see again.
 
Sagar Kale
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Do you mean 4-5 lakhs/year, or really Rs. 4000/month? It's not been that long since 5 lakhs was considered a decent salary for someone with 5 years experience. On the other hand, if my math is correct, Rs. 4000/month does sound absurd. I'd heard maids and gardeners can make more than that.


I think he meant 4000/month. Yes that happens in smaller cities in India where there is no IT industry. So there are no big companies. There are only small consulting companies who have indian clients. These companies pay very less to the people who are either freshers or less than 3 years experience. These guys want to take good project experience and are going through learning phase. Myself had started my career with small consulting company without pay !!!. I worked in that consulting company only for one month but the agreement was I will work without pay because I do not have experience, and I want to learn things. That was long time back. It surprises me when I see IT freshers in big cities get at least 1.25 lakh/year now.


11-13 hours/day, on the other hand offends me for a number of reasons.




Last year I worked for 13 hours a day on an average ( Also on most of the weekends ). Yes my brain used to stop working when I used to get tired and I used to do more mistake than doing something productive. But my client knew I a m not happy on that project and if I leave, they will have problem. So they wanted me to finish project as quickly as possible.

About quality, few service companies believe in quantity. They ignore quality. May be because they are not aware of maintaining that that code later on.



 
Tim Holloway
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Sagar Kale wrote:

Do you mean 4-5 lakhs/year, or really Rs. 4000/month? It's not been that long since 5 lakhs was considered a decent salary for someone with 5 years experience. On the other hand, if my math is correct, Rs. 4000/month does sound absurd. I'd heard maids and gardeners can make more than that.


I think he meant 4000/month. Yes that happens in smaller cities in India where there is no IT industry. So there are no big companies. There are only small consulting companies who have indian clients. These companies pay very less to the people who are either freshers or less than 3 years experience. These guys want to take good project experience and are going through learning phase. Myself had started my career with small consulting company without pay !!!. I worked in that consulting company only for one month but the agreement was I will work without pay because I do not have experience, and I want to learn things. That was long time back. It surprises me when I see IT freshers in big cities get at least 1.25 lakh/year now.


11-13 hours/day, on the other hand offends me for a number of reasons.




Last year I worked for 13 hours a day on an average ( Also on most of the weekends ). Yes my brain used to stop working when I used to get tired and I used to do more mistake than doing something productive. But my client knew I a m not happy on that project and if I leave, they will have problem. So they wanted me to finish project as quickly as possible.

About quality, few service companies believe in quantity. They ignore quality. May be because they are not aware of maintaining that that code later on.





OK, for local work, basically intern stuff, I can see really low pay. As I understand it, 100 years or so ago, it was fairly common for entry-level people to pay their employers instead of the other way around - see Dicken's Bleak House, for example. I think there are still places where you have to do that when income from tipping is where you actually make your money. If it helps build community prosperity as a whole (as opposed to all going into the pockets of people who already have more than enough), I consider it a good thing.

On the other hand, "the laborer is worthy of his hire", and to make a slight regional adjustment to an old assertion of mine: I'd rather grind spices and sell them in the marketplace than be paid an insulting low wage on a job where I'd made a significant investment in learning and keeping up with technology (actually, the original was "I'd sell cell phones at Radio Shack", but you get the idea.).

The US apparently became infected with the more/bigger-is-better mentality at the end of WWII. We'd built up a lot of manufacturing capacity for the war effort and it lifted us out of the Great Depression, so we wanted to make use of it/ Plus, this was when the Cold War began in earnest and we felt obliged to demonstrate that our way of life was superior. One way by doing this was by ensuring that our citizens could afford unimaginable amounts of material possessions and technology.

But somewhere along the way, we got so seduced by stuff that we forgot to value service. We say we're a "service economy" here, but people now have self-service petrol, self-service supermarkets, even self-service building materials. We can't reach company personnel, only telephone menus, sit around waiting for phone queues, deal with "monkey-with-a-script" solutions. In short, instead of employing others, we've become unpaid employees of the very companies we purchase from.

We value quantity over quality so much that we've forgotten that while it's nice to be able to furnish a room off a week's labor, when the furnishings are all made of composite that falls into sawdust when wet, we're going to have to work another week to replace it. And again, and again.

To requote you: "Last year I worked for 13 hours a day on an average ( Also on most of the weekends ). Yes my brain used to stop working when I used to get tired and I used to do more mistake than doing something productive. But my client knew I a m not happy on that project and if I leave, they will have problem. So they wanted me to finish project as quickly as possible. "

There's something horrible wrong with that concept.
 
Jesus Angeles
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rahulash sharma wrote:If you are building your career and have option to choose between IT and non IT field then don't choose IT field . I am java developer I know whats going on. Mnc are not hiring and small companies are exploiting employees



I think that you should not base your decision on the short term like entry-level (no experience) salaries.

Even in US, entry-levels also are 'relatively' lower-paid (as expected) than experienced guys in US. I put importance on the word 'relative' as you cannot compare salaries between US and India.

The fact is, even if they charge you for that entry-level position, you should consider it.

Once you have experience, the reward is a million-fold. You will have the option to work anywhere in the world and get paid at that country's standards. This will in turn give your family an option to immigrate to other countries.
 
Sagar Kale
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10 million indians to loose jobs by march link
 
Sagar Kale
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Also this

$30bn investment can create 900,000 jobs link
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