Showing posts with label IT-in-India. Show all posts
Showing posts with label IT-in-India. Show all posts
SOA in India
businesstechnology.in run by S&S Media (people behind JAX conference) interviewed me on the state of SOA in general and in India in particular.
No Fresher Jobs? Don't despair.
Let me guess, your parents spent a fortune on your engineering education in the hope that you will land a software job with one of India's top IT companies. To your credit, you actually managed to secure just such an offer. Except that your coveted offer is now on hold, deferred until 2009? Don't despair.
http://www.myjobs-india.com/
http://fresherjobs.in/
Do a Google Blog search for fresher jobs.
indian-startup-jobs/ . Of course, startups are often not keen to hire freshers unless you can demonstrate your skills.
The best thing about being a computer geek is that you just need a PC (or laptop) and internet to learn and do stuff. Here are some assignments to try at home. The skills/knowledge acquired by doing these will help you during interviews.
Now if someone asks you "Do you know technology xyz?" during an interview, you can simply provide a URL (link) to the application you have developed.
Expand your horizons. Look beyond the companies whose names you encounter regularly in the newspapers. Good luck.
* By 'big' company, I mean a company that has more than a thousand employees. Mostly, a company this size in India would be a services company (doing projects for clients). Startups are generally software product companies (though the product may be delivered as a service) and would typically be around ten people strong.
Where to Look?
Here are some lesser known sites that carry job postings for freshers in India.http://www.myjobs-india.com/
http://fresherjobs.in/
Do a Google Blog search for fresher jobs.
Start small
A job offer from a big* software company is nice but after ten years in this field I can say this: such big companies are not the best place for your first job. You won't learn much and your mind will go numb doing some brain dead work. Big companies only provide an illusion of job security. A company that is doing well in the stock market (even this is not true at present) is not necessarily a great place to work. I know it feels nice when your relatives ask where you work and you reply with the name of a reputed organisation (Very good beti/beta, I am sure they will send you to USA in a year, hehe). But believe me, you are missing out on a lot of learning and fun. Instead, join a small company or better still, a startup - that is where you will learn the most and have fun. Keep a watch here: http://www.pluggd.in/category/Prepare for the interview
When that elusive interview call does come, the least you can do is to be well prepared. More unconventional advice follows:The best thing about being a computer geek is that you just need a PC (or laptop) and internet to learn and do stuff. Here are some assignments to try at home. The skills/knowledge acquired by doing these will help you during interviews.
- Develop a Firefox extension.
- Create and host an application on Google App Engine.
- Develop an application for the Facebook platform.
- Develop a mobile app using Apple's iPhone SDK. or Google's Android SDK.
- Create a mashup using Yahoo pipes.
- Add more programming languages to your portfolio. Try Ruby, Python, Erlang, and Haskell. All these are free and open source.
- Try to keep yourself up to date. Follow the sites below. Never mind if you don't understand all the content. Google for it. Lookup wikipedia.
http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/
http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/
http://www.techcrunch.com
http://news.ycombinator.com/
http://www.reddit.com/r/
http://www.techcrunch.com
http://news.ycombinator.com/
Now if someone asks you "Do you know technology xyz?" during an interview, you can simply provide a URL (link) to the application you have developed.
Expand your horizons. Look beyond the companies whose names you encounter regularly in the newspapers. Good luck.
* By 'big' company, I mean a company that has more than a thousand employees. Mostly, a company this size in India would be a services company (doing projects for clients). Startups are generally software product companies (though the product may be delivered as a service) and would typically be around ten people strong.
Survival of the hungriest
ThoughtWorkers are always up for a robust debate :-) A recent one was on why India is a IT powerhouse. Some commonly offered reasons were demographics, cheap skilled labour and conformance to quality standards. I ventured that it perhaps is also because of the culture of free overtime that is very much the norm in big IT service companies here. That led someone to remark something to this effect: "The amount of voluntary free overtime a workforce is willing to put in to meet delivery promises is a measure of it's hunger for the customer's business".
Fair enough. Now, it appears that Indian IT is acting less hungry than the IT workforce in countries like Vietnam, Russia and Poland. Wage inflation and a strong rupee are threatening to make Indian IT less competitive. On the other hand, the nouveau rich IT class of India has tasted the good life and is loath to put in free overtime. This raises questions about the future of Indian IT. The "Survival of the hungriest" theory posits that the survival of Indian IT is at stake because our workforce is just not so hungry anymore. I foresee an Indian edition of the book from the Pragmatic Bookshelf, "My job went to Vietnam". This is a dismal theory (though it may unfortunately be true). Staying competitive by relentlessly focussing on operational efficiency (and free overtime) is a zero sum game. Eventually, all life will get sucked out.
There is a way out for businesses that don't want to get caught in this vortex of staying hungrier than the rest. Up your game. Innovate! Keep figuring out the next big thing. Clearly, easier said than done. But that has to be the model for a smart consultancy. A smart consultancy makes money during the first half of the hype cycle. A volumes based consultancy makes money during the latter half. Clients that engage smart consultancies typically do so for competitive advantage. Clients that engage a volumes based consultancy typically do so for reasons of cost savings. "Survival of the hungriest" only applies when all other things can be considered equal. Innovation, by definition will never be a commodity. A smart consultancy can escape the trap of this theory by relentlessly nurturing innovation.
One might argue that a smart consultancy can continue to command a premium even in the second half of the hype cycle. There is a class of large, complex business software that has always been difficult to build and evolve. A smart team can, in theory, perpetually continue to add value by writing supple code, releasing early and often, following user centric development and always thinking from the point of view of the customer. Clearly, this is a proven model.
However, I have seen this model run into trouble. The first problem is that of under appreciation. When everything is going great with a big piece of software, client executives sometimes fail to appreciate that things are good because of the smart team behind the software. Instead, they think, "Things have reached steady state and this smart consultancy is charging me a bomb to steer a trouble free ship. Let me bring in some competition or persuade them to reduce rates." This is the beginning of the downward spiral.
The second problem is that of intangible benefits. It is possible to get a quotation for rescuing an unmaintainable legacy codebase. However, it is very difficult to convincingly project the savings that accrue out of a well written maintainable codebase. So, it is a wasted effort in the eyes of decision makers who don't understand software. Also, the time period over which well written software pays off is greater than several financial reporting cycles and sometimes greater than the tenure of client executives. It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to say that paying for well written software seems to be at odds with reporting quarterly profits. These factors make it vital for a smart consultancy to constantly highlight achievements to decision makers. Just letting the results speak for themselves can be tricky.
Conclusion: A combination of a first-half business model and a highlight-achievement-savvy second-half business model can help a smart consultancy steer clear of the "hungrier than thou" spiral.
Fair enough. Now, it appears that Indian IT is acting less hungry than the IT workforce in countries like Vietnam, Russia and Poland. Wage inflation and a strong rupee are threatening to make Indian IT less competitive. On the other hand, the nouveau rich IT class of India has tasted the good life and is loath to put in free overtime. This raises questions about the future of Indian IT. The "Survival of the hungriest" theory posits that the survival of Indian IT is at stake because our workforce is just not so hungry anymore. I foresee an Indian edition of the book from the Pragmatic Bookshelf, "My job went to Vietnam". This is a dismal theory (though it may unfortunately be true). Staying competitive by relentlessly focussing on operational efficiency (and free overtime) is a zero sum game. Eventually, all life will get sucked out.
There is a way out for businesses that don't want to get caught in this vortex of staying hungrier than the rest. Up your game. Innovate! Keep figuring out the next big thing. Clearly, easier said than done. But that has to be the model for a smart consultancy. A smart consultancy makes money during the first half of the hype cycle. A volumes based consultancy makes money during the latter half. Clients that engage smart consultancies typically do so for competitive advantage. Clients that engage a volumes based consultancy typically do so for reasons of cost savings. "Survival of the hungriest" only applies when all other things can be considered equal. Innovation, by definition will never be a commodity. A smart consultancy can escape the trap of this theory by relentlessly nurturing innovation.
One might argue that a smart consultancy can continue to command a premium even in the second half of the hype cycle. There is a class of large, complex business software that has always been difficult to build and evolve. A smart team can, in theory, perpetually continue to add value by writing supple code, releasing early and often, following user centric development and always thinking from the point of view of the customer. Clearly, this is a proven model.
However, I have seen this model run into trouble. The first problem is that of under appreciation. When everything is going great with a big piece of software, client executives sometimes fail to appreciate that things are good because of the smart team behind the software. Instead, they think, "Things have reached steady state and this smart consultancy is charging me a bomb to steer a trouble free ship. Let me bring in some competition or persuade them to reduce rates." This is the beginning of the downward spiral.
The second problem is that of intangible benefits. It is possible to get a quotation for rescuing an unmaintainable legacy codebase. However, it is very difficult to convincingly project the savings that accrue out of a well written maintainable codebase. So, it is a wasted effort in the eyes of decision makers who don't understand software. Also, the time period over which well written software pays off is greater than several financial reporting cycles and sometimes greater than the tenure of client executives. It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to say that paying for well written software seems to be at odds with reporting quarterly profits. These factors make it vital for a smart consultancy to constantly highlight achievements to decision makers. Just letting the results speak for themselves can be tricky.
Conclusion: A combination of a first-half business model and a highlight-achievement-savvy second-half business model can help a smart consultancy steer clear of the "hungrier than thou" spiral.
(Hype cycle image: courtesy Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Gartner_Hype_Cycle.svg)
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)