Indian IT Industry

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 28 Jan 2009 04:00

Do these ITvity abduls prefer ISRO out of awe for Chandrayaan and GSLV (as claimed) or is it just that this is one of the more stable jobs for them out there right now given the mass layoffs in ITvity. I think it is more of the latter for most.

Satya_anveshi · Post by **Satya_anveshi** » 28 Jan 2009 04:38

del..

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 28 Jan 2009 05:08

Satya shouldnt this be in the Satyam thread?

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 28 Jan 2009 08:38

wuff wuff Bose saheb. me always use vi and emacs...all dev in all my jobs so far have been hosted on unix servers.
but vi is not linux bkgrnd!

vina · Post by **vina** » 28 Jan 2009 09:59

Singha wrote:wuff wuff Bose saheb. me always use vi and emacs...all dev in all my jobs so far have been hosted on unix servers.

I could never figure out why in heavens did the Unix geeks have this masochistic tendency of inflicting that command line interface and the vi editor on themselves, especially when you had X Windows and Motif , for all those years. Well, I could understand earlier times when when hardware was expensive and X Windows terminals and the GUI interface were resource hogs.
However I could never understand how folks , where the standard infrastructure was a Windows desktop, would use an emulator to get work on a Unix machine and feel great about it!. What would it have taken to install and X windows terminal software on that desktop I wonder!.

but vi is not linux bkgrnd!

Right. What I do on Linux is type gedit and have a nice neat GUI based editor with none of that ghastly vi stuff to work!.

pradeepe · Post by **pradeepe** » 28 Jan 2009 10:07

Even vi has given way to vim and gvim for those wanting a gui.

krishnan · Post by **krishnan** » 28 Jan 2009 10:36

Kate is nice editor too. Available in KDE.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 28 Jan 2009 10:55

but true men of austerity and discipline use the old vi - a relic brought from makkah by a old pilgrim 300 yrs ago and guarded zealously by a murderous tribe of cannibal pgymies living on the outskirt of a large unnamed city.

krishnan · Post by **krishnan** » 28 Jan 2009 10:57

No, they use EMACS

Purush · Post by **Purush** » 28 Jan 2009 11:02

Netbooks are okay for basic stuff like browsing teh internets, chat, and light office work on the go. They simply don't have the horsepower, storage capacity (yet, but that will easily change), or screen size for more serious work. It's not going to replace a 'proper' laptop or desktop anytime soon, rather it will be a mobile add-on to existing computing power. The main attractions of a netbook are its size and weight; it's cheap because it lacks the hp of the 'proper' notebooks, and the OEMs don't have to fill MS's coffers with licensing money. But, you can squint at a 9" screen only for so long before frustration sets in

.

Once you start adding in features, an MS OS, bigger screen etc the price approaches that of a notebook. E.g. I was checking out the new Sony Vaio P the other day at the local store. Beautiful, well built and loaded with features...but the price was a staggering SG$1700..well into the territory of midrange notebooks.

And, it was gasping and wheezing as it struggled to run Vista (bad choice of OS on a netbook!). This is supposed to be the current king of netbooks!

What's going to happen is that netbooks and laptops will simply converge...large screen (13.3" or higher), low weight, ample processing power, sufficient storage space, long battery life and reasonable price. You can already get these things in very high end notebooks from Toshiba, Panasonic, Sony and Lenovo, but they are very expensive right now, running more than SG$3k for loaded configs. Eg. The Vaio Z I checked out had an astounding screen (13.3"@1600x900), a proper mobile C2D CPU, 320GB storage, (claimed) long battery life, a proper keyboard, and weighed...1.5kg

. Sony, Panasonic and Toshiba have even lighter models....if you are willing to pay.

Then there's the smartphone...with the qwerty keypad, built in multimedia facilities and sufficient computing power to use stripped down MS office. As screen sizes expand to the 4-5" range, I think this is will eat into the emerging netbooks market. Phones have mostly killed off MP3 players here. As G1/N97 type smartphones roll into the market, they will take a chunk out of the netbook market too. Why carry another device when your smartphone can do most of it for you, albeit with compromises (just as netbook to a laptop).

Bold prediction:

in developed markets, desktop/laptop + smartphone is the future. Netbooks will be a niche commodity and eventually die off like the pdas did, as more people run into it's inherent limitations. Emerging markets may be different, I don't know.

As for cloud compooting etc, Larry Ellison has this to say
"What the hell is cloud computing"?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FacYAI6DY0

Ya'll better have a fat and stable connection with plenty of bandwidth and unlimited data plans for cloud compooting from home. And complete faith in your service provider that all the data stored in the 'clouds' will be secure and private. Not going to happen anytime soon with the likes of BSNL around....people still need fat harddrives to store their pr0n for quick local access

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 28 Jan 2009 11:09

krishnan, you are going one level up from the maulanas into the realm of The Immortals. janissaries sworn to loyalty and secrecy for generations.

imho a decade ago, most colleges didnt even have linux much and hence only eye eye tee had access to high end unix machines and x-terminals to run emacs on.that too onree CS/EE depts. rest had PCs and vt220s.

now its common but people are lazy to learn a new editor when gvim
is so easy.

true faith is hard to find these days. get me someone who will work on
sunday to learn emacs vs making out with his girl and biking around?
show me the "eye of the tiger"

krishnan · Post by **krishnan** » 28 Jan 2009 11:13

Using EMACS can be conphusing for people new to linux, so they take to vi and most of the time stick to it. VIM goes a bit further, with text coloring and all

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 28 Jan 2009 11:19

rediff

Infosys puts over 5,000 employees under scanner

January 28, 2009 02:52 IST

Infosys Technologies has placed around 5 per cent of its global workforce under the scanner. The move, which is being seen as an offshoot of the global financial meltdown, is expected to affect over 5,000 of the 100,000-plus employees on the company's rolls.

It is learnt that Infosys [Get Quote], the country's second-largest information technology services provider, has told its senior managers (project managers, senior and group project managers, delivery managers) to give the lowest performance rating (4 on a scale of 1-4) to the 'underperforming' 5 per cent as a part of the company's consolidated relative ranking (CRR).

Though rock-bottom rankings are not unknown in the company, this is the first time that Infosys has made it mandatory. CRR is decided based on the employee's appraisals which is done twice a year. "The recommendations have already been submitted this month," a senior project manager working with Infosys told Business Standard on the condition of anonymity.

Infosys Vice-president and Group HR Head Nandita Gurjar said there was no change in the policy but "...the percentage of employees who are given CRR 4 keeps varying every year between 1 per cent and 5 per cent based on their performance."

The company has decided to implement a six-month mentoring programme for such employees after which it will decide their future based on the improvements they have made. As a part of this programme, each affected employee will be asked to work under the supervision of a mentor who is a senior executive.

During this period, the employee will not be given any important assignment, even though he will be allowed to work on the project where he is working at present. If the concerned employee is on bench, he will give all his time for the mentoring programme. During this time, the employee will get full salary as well as the regular allowances.

"While 50 per cent of such employees come back to the system, others get the message and quit voluntarily in most cases," Gurjar said.

It has also been learnt that about 40-50 pre-sale executives, most of who were located in the US, have been asked to quit during the last two months. Most of these people are from consulting background who are in a client-facing role. Gurjar confirmed the move but did not cite the number of people who have been asked to quit. "This is a part of our annual CRR initiative," she said.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 28 Jan 2009 11:20

pre-sale = business development managers I guess. most would be GC/US citizen PIOs to facilitate easy intl travel.

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 28 Jan 2009 11:47

http://www.physorg.com/news152302007.html

IBM quietly cuts thousands of jobs
January 27th, 2009 By JORDAN ROBERTSON , AP Technology Writer in Technology / Business

(AP) -- With the recession forcing tech companies to announce thousands of layoffs, IBM Corp. is joining the fray - but not advertising it.

The Armonk, N.Y.-based company has cut thousands of jobs over the past week, including positions in sales and the software and hardware divisions. IBM says the cuts are simply part of its ongoing efforts to watch costs, and the company won't release specific numbers, even as reports of firings stream in from IBM facilities across the country.

Workers have reported layoffs in Tucson, Ariz.; San Jose, Calif.; Rochester, Minn.; Research Triangle Park, N.C.; East Fishkill, N.Y.; Austin, Texas; and Burlington, Vt.

Meanwhile, other tech companies such as Intel Corp., Microsoft Corp., Texas Instruments Inc., Sprint Nextel Corp. and Google Inc. have all publicly revealed job cuts as part of their strategies for riding out the economic crisis. More than 20,000 jobs will be lost from those companies alone.

One of IBM's biggest rivals - Hewlett-Packard Co. - is also laying people off. HP is shedding 24,600 jobs, nearly 8 percent of its 320,000-employee work force, as it digests the acquisition of Electronic Data Systems Corp.

In 2007, the last full year for which detailed employment numbers are available, 121,000 of IBM's 387,000 workers were in the U.S., down slightly from the year before. Meanwhile, staffing in India has jumped from just 9,000 workers in 2003 to 74,000 workers in 2007.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 28 Jan 2009 12:15

no vi emacs etc. ghazi hadithar for me. I being cowardly SDRE stick to eclipse IDE for all my dev. nice interface, nice editor, workspace management, tons of plugins, support for all languages I use and has plugin support for on device debugging hardware for all the embedded systems I have worked on.

2nd question on those 'typical' Intel interviews usually deals with init and so on it goes till Intel determines: (a) you are dead; (b) you are linus torvalds's baap; (c) you can withstand \the daily flogging that you will endure as an Intel employee.

hnair · Post by **hnair** » 28 Jan 2009 13:04

Singha wrote:krishnan, you are going one level up from the maulanas into the realm of The Immortals. janissaries sworn to loyalty and secrecy for generations.

The eccentric master swordsmith, Masamune himself was in town..

Little birdies had to wade through a chest high cesspool of clueless jholawallahs to say howdy. Apparently, he wanted to collect the finest Wootz steel smelters of India, but might have ended up collecting tyre vulcanizers.

krishnan · Post by **krishnan** » 28 Jan 2009 13:07

Richard stallman , when we meet him , kept pestering us to stop using VI and start using EMACS.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 28 Jan 2009 13:09

word on the street has it sasken imposed 40% pay cut on people in the bench and around 10% general paycut and 20% for top management.

can anyone find out?

ArmenT · Post by **ArmenT** » 28 Jan 2009 13:39

Raja Bose wrote: This has been going on for a while. A lot of Intel positions ask for Linux background. In fact to make sure of this, one of the first skills (and sometimes the first) they test during onsite interview for lowly abduls is to give them a terminal with vi and ask them to do a bunch of stuff doodh ka doodh paani ka paani right there! So Singha ji brush up those vi skills if they are rusty!

I used to have a boss who used to ask this precise question. He would ask what editor the candidate used and heaven help them if they said anything but vi (great) or emacs (grudgingly acceptable). Saying "notepad" was an instant disqualifier in this guy's group. Then the guy would ask the candidate to do some stupid ass search/replace commands in vi and reject some potentially great candidates simply because they couldn't get it right accurately (mostly stuff like change a bunch of lines into insert SQL statements and such).

Finally I got tired of this and showed him that it was quite possible to do the search/replace without using ANY regular expressions. I challenged him to set the 5 search/replace tasks and I beat his butt on all 5 of them. While the man was busy trying to figure out the appropriate regular expressions (and undoing them since he invariably forgot to escape '/' or '%' or whatever), I simply fired up emacs, flipped on the macro record feature and asked it to record the keys I pressed, as I edited the first line. Then I told it to simply repeat those keystrokes on all the subsequent lines. Rinse, repeat for other 4 problems and I was done with all 5 of them by the time he got to the 2nd one with vim

. I also pointed out that many editors had this macro-record feature and he was unfairly rejecting candidates simply because they didn't know how to do it in vim!

Since I wasn't in his group any more, I left with a pretty appropriate parting shot:

Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll use regular expressions." Now they have two problems.

-- Jamie Zawinski

pradeepe · Post by **pradeepe** » 28 Jan 2009 14:32

Our company, "we love to hate chipzilla" just built consensus for a 5% for engr/10% for MTS and above paycut. Mostly well received with a strong show of support given that everyone is actually seeing rifs among their counterparts in massaland.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 28 Jan 2009 14:37

I thought MTS was engr..as in mts1..4? ruiz sahib's ex co?

pradeepe · Post by **pradeepe** » 28 Jan 2009 14:49

Should have been clearer. Yes MTS is engr.

Engr1-2, S. Engr - 5%
MTS and above and that includes all in the Managerial path - 10%.
Executive - 15%.

Yes Ruiz's ex. co. 12 years in massaland with chipzilla and now on the other side

Tanaji · Post by **Tanaji** » 28 Jan 2009 14:52

Sasken is partially owned by Nortel. I am not surprised.

CalvinH · Post by **CalvinH** » 28 Jan 2009 15:06

Singha wrote:pre-sale = business development managers I guess. most would be GC/US citizen PIOs to facilitate easy intl travel.

BDM is a sales role. The pre-sales onsite is a part of client solutions group methinks and not client engagement or pure sales. They pipeline to this group is from consulting streams.

Anyways I posted this news few months back. Infy has tightened the belt and reduced Overheads onsite. Most of these people would have been given option to go back to India.

SRoy · Post by **SRoy** » 28 Jan 2009 19:48

Raja Bose wrote:no vi emacs etc. ghazi hadithar for me. I being cowardly SDRE stick to eclipse IDE for all my dev. nice interface, nice editor, workspace management, tons of plugins, support for all languages I use and has plugin support for on device debugging hardware for all the embedded systems I have worked on.

2nd question on those 'typical' Intel interviews usually deals with init and so on it goes till Intel determines: (a) you are dead; (b) you are linus torvalds's baap; (c) you can withstand \the daily flogging that you will endure as an Intel employee.

It is really useful to have familiarity with atleast one command line editor. There are practical utilities like configuring new *nix installation or remote administration over ssh.

vi IMHO is a wrong tool for people jumping into *nix environments. Sensible replacements are 'nano' or 'ee', very much like the 'edit' of MS DOS.

EMACS is another overrated tool advocated by Linux fanboys. There is even a GUI version of that beast. Don't get me wrong, I'm posting directly from a *nix laptop. There are RAD oriented IDE's available for every desktop environment nowadays.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 28 Jan 2009 20:24

emacs has been around from long before linux. in the days when no "eclipse" type things to work on a unix codebase , emacs gave the option of having multiple windows, syntax highlighting, powerful macros, unlimited undo levels etc that vi was not giving.

imho its a pretty useful thing, although "eclipse" type things might have crossed it now.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 28 Jan 2009 20:29

heard on grapevine.

info security in Snecma bangalore is so super tight there is a guard
posted at the printer. if you go to take a printout, he phones the manager
to find out if you are authorized to print that and lets you have it only
on approval!

and there is pervasive and real time network monitoring to catch people
either carelessly or due to time pressure mailing office docs to external
account. seems one person who did to complete a ppt had to face a
court martial the next day and get a "last warning"

Vipul · Post by **Vipul** » 28 Jan 2009 20:49

Its not just the Pre-sales guys but some more senior level like engagement managers who are getting fired.I know of one who was managing two big clients for Infosys on the east coast who lost his job last week.Poor guy was frentic as he was in the last stage of GC (on EAD).

Rajesh_MR · Post by **Rajesh_MR** » 28 Jan 2009 21:10

Sasken pay cut for folks on bench is true. Pay reduced to 3 days a week instead of 5
INFY sending presales/sales folks home in US is also true. They might start cutting down locally hired consultants who are between projects if they are not flexible on location of new assignment.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 28 Jan 2009 21:23

some of my wife's friends in various fields over the last few years have
gone off and working in places like Ghana and some other stable african
nations.

Ghana is not a pushover - it was the seat of the richest and most
powerful african civilization of the ancient area, who left behind
masterpieces in gold. its no surprise to see this civilizational base
make them prosper while other areas like sudan and somalia are in
perpetual crisis and strife.

its a question of pure survival now, luxuries like GC, settling in some
dreamy town in Massa in a state of choice with kids cycling down main
street, white picket fences....all best be forgotten, those times are gone
and will not be back. even those who made it past the gate might have
to crawl back if things keep heading south the way there are - but could
land in more fire here.

sum · Post by **sum** » 28 Jan 2009 22:18

Singha wrote:word on the street has it sasken imposed 40% pay cut on people in the bench and around 10% general paycut and 20% for top management.

can anyone find out?

Yes,it true( as confirmed by my undercover agents in Sasken

)...
Not just on bench, even freshers and new comers have been subjected to this. Also, the paycuts have been different for different groups.

They also started a 3 day week but seem to have moved to a shift system for few groups where working hours are from 10AM-2PM for one shift and next 6 hours for other shift or something like that!!!

Howz the scene in Gorilla, Singha-sir? Heard that its reaching heights of cost cutting with pay freeze, no freebies etc?

We have a few days shutdown every quarter as cost cutting(no pay) and pay freeze also. The semi-con industry seems to be staring down the barrel!!!

sum · Post by **sum** » 28 Jan 2009 22:22

Even big-daddy TI laying off 3000 people(1200 of them as VRS for 50+ aged people) after their effort to sell off their Wireless div came to nought!!!

CalvinH · Post by **CalvinH** » 29 Jan 2009 02:38

Sasken, TI, STM...ya allah...these were the companies you so deperately wanted to get in during campus....

Vipul wrote:Its not just the Pre-sales guys but some more senior level like engagement managers who are getting fired.I know of one who was managing two big clients for Infosys on the east coast who lost his job last week.Poor guy was frentic as he was in the last stage of GC (on EAD).

Sad..but EM are not senior level guys in Sales stream...in fact for sales ,EM and Relationship Manager is the starting point. A pre-sales guy and EM (if both based onsite) can be at same level in organization (not in salaries though).

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 29 Jan 2009 08:47

Who's left in Wireless now...TI gone, Freescale gone...only Qualcomm?

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 29 Jan 2009 08:58

broadcom, ZTE & Huawei

they have strong lines of credit from chipanda. TI is not gone, just reducing. freescale is much more "gone" in that sense.

industry here is lobbying GOI to put curbs on vendor financing and giveaways that Huawei is indulging in to grab market share in India.

1200 of them as VRS for 50+ aged people

if this in eng?....... these are probably the most knowledgeable
people in TI with lots of unspoken stuff in their heads.

sum, gorilla's review cycle is in april. 1-1 discussions are slated for
feb-march. for sure there will be pay freeze this year if not more. few
years back they had already put in place the rule that promotions and
grade changes do not automatically mean a payhike because the pay
bands overlap

with no money to hand out, ESOPs gone perhaps
they will be more liberal with promotions atleast no?

sum · Post by **sum** » 29 Jan 2009 09:53

The hits keep on coming:
Link

Uncertainty clouds the Sun, employees gloomy

Deepa Kurup

150 staff in city retrenched; more jobs on the line

BANGALORE: Employees at Sun Microsystems, the leading computer products company, logged in to work on Monday here to find many of their colleagues were removed over the weekend. About 150 of 850 employees have been retrenched.

Sources in the company HR confirmed that several projects and divisions had been disbanded and a certain percentage of employees removed from every team.

Official sources, however, refused to commit to any numbers. Employees who escaped the sack this time say there are rumours that two more rounds will follow.
Ominous forecasts

Last week, several big names in Sun’s league announced massive job cuts and issued ominous forecasts. Sun announced in November its plan to “eliminate redundancies” and retrench 6,000 employees globally — 15 to 18 per cent of its workforce. Employees in its Bangalore office have been on the tenterhooks ever since.

Sources said at least three software products divisions have been shut down. For instance, the division working on the Spark machine, which is reportedly doing bad business, was disbanded on Friday. “Employees with work experience ranging from three to 17 years were sacked,” an employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told The Hindu. Nearly 35 employees working on the virtualisation software, and those in the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) team were sent home, they said.

A mid-level executive from the software division, who was retrenched on Friday, said although his team was intact, he was forced to “voluntarily” resign. “In September, we were told that there would be cost-cutting and optimisation. I did not expect this since my team was already short-staffed,” he said.
Bad market

With almost all of Sun’s competitors facing similar crisis, there were no jobs in the market. “In 2000, when companies laid off, there were jobs available even if the pay was less. That is not the case anymore,” he said.

Those who survived this round of pink slips claim they have little reason to celebrate. “The company is spreading it thin with existing projects. So our work hours will increase and there will be constant pressure to perform or quit,” a project manager said.
Cold comfort

Those retrenched get a severance pay of three months’ salary plus 15 days’ salary for every year of work experience.

“The package is decent, which is why those with 10-15 years of experience are not complaining,” said an employee. The HR team tried to place several staffers by sharing resume databases and even arranging interviews with companies like Yahoo!

Pravir Arora, Director-Marketing, Sun Microsystems India, said the company was reducing annual costs globally by approximately $ 700 million to $ 800 million. Maintaining that the impact on India would be “minimal”, he said: “India is an investment destination and growth engine.”

Sun’s management persisted in its optimism and pointed out that its largest developer base — over 7,80,000 — was in India. Its Open Source software strategy, where it offered free access to its Operating System (Solaris) among several other products, distinguished it from scores of hardware and software firms in the city.

So, does this strategy work better in these times of cost-cutting?

Mr. Arora pointed out that during the recession, the market would look more towards adopting “open source innovation to escape proprietary vendor pricing”.

“Customers continue to tell us of the opportunities to decrease spending and drive efficiency via the adoption of open source products,” he added.

pradeepe · Post by **pradeepe** » 29 Jan 2009 10:04

BRCM and QCOM's cash situation is pretty decent. They recently bought pieces of AMD/ATI's handheld business.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 29 Jan 2009 10:07

how is pmc-sierra doing? it framing & channelization chips are a darling of csco and jnpr hw teams.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 29 Jan 2009 10:09

http://blogs.siliconvalley.com/gmsv/200 ... p-ibm.html

AOL, SAP and IBM.

IBM says it doesnt have to reveal numbers even though 1000s are being
let go.