IT Industry sins

Yeah, so the Indian IT industry is doing well. Most of them provide services to clients especially overseas clients. What they call outsourcing. Someday, the cost factor in which India has an advantage will be lost. Then the same thing will happen that happened after the dotcom bubble burst. Companies will have to cut costs and definitely employment will get hit. Indian IT companies have to start moving towards end to end solutions rather than just providing services.

Companies, especially the larger ones are recruiting fresh engineers from all parts of the country regardless of whether they can provide work or not. These recruits if lucky manage to get in projects or the company doesn't mind keeping people on bench. This is the trend for most of the companies which is a very sick trend. Personally, if I owned a company, I'd rather have 100 experts and 25 freshers than 1000 freshers and 50 experts. But that is what is happening. People who lack experience are not guided by mentoring which is a must to produce quality engineers. Imagine a fresher civil engineer being asked to build a bridge. Would anyone do that? But in the software field, that is what is being done. Instead freshers should be placed in an assistance mode till they become mature enough. Best solution: mentoring but whose listening?

Then there is the issue of services. Well, will we only be a service oriented industry. Depending for much of our revenue on foreign clients who see us nothing more than cost saving machines. The key is to balance it with providing end to end solutions. We need to be independent at least so that we don't land in trouble because of our dependence.

And finally the issue of employee health. Most of the companies have set a trend which encourages people who work late and spoil their and others health. While working overtime is an individuals choice, it seems that companies encourage it for their benefit. Atrocious project estimates seem to have become the key in getting projects. That's why the current generation is facing all types of illnesses like stress, hypertension, back problems, etc at such an age when their fathers and mothers are healthier than them. Sure work is important and IT work is a lot challenging but somewhere we need to draw the line. Right now there seems to be no chalk.