Wake up now…

Last few months have exposed the insecurity and instability of ‘the reliable businesses’ like never before. Year 2008 saw giants from Investment, Banking and Capital markets going down in no time. Lehman brothers, Merrill Lynch, Washington Mutual and many more. The wave of crunched economy spread across the globe like an avalanche and affected multiple sectors. Investors and traders witnessed some real tough times when stock exchanges of almost every nation took long lasting downturn. By the end of the year, no matter where you were and which occupation you were in, everyone on the planet felt the heat directly or indirectly.

Economic recession, defined as a decline in the country’s gross domestic product growth for about two or more consecutive quarters in a particular year. Recession is the key word, buzz now a days. There is very close relationship between ‘recession’ and ‘depression’. Wisely put together in words by a gentleman “When your neighbor looses the job, it’s recession. When you lose the job, it’s depression”.

Well, came 2009 with the hopes that this new year will have better to offer. And really what an amazing start. How can I forget that Tuesday night - 7th of January. I reached Chicago around 9pm for a training. From the airport, on my way to hotel, got a call from Hyderabad, had usual talks, everything looked pretty much ok. It was around 11 pm, we just finished our dinner and then one more call from Hyderabad. This time, it wasn’t the usual call and things were definitely not ok. Something that happened in couple of hours, brought forth largest India IT company down to its knees. Drop of 78% on company’s stock value also took entire Sensex down by 749 points and a loss of around INR 10,000 crores to stake holders on that black day. Satyam Computer Services Ltd was all across the news. And that’s the same name that I was carrying on my Identity Card. That night and throughout the training next day, I don’t have the count of calls I got, with one common question ‘what will happen to you now?’ Do you think I had the answer to that question? All I could feel at that point was things were just not in my control. Someone whom I have never met, changed everything in and around me in couple of hours.

Since then, after waking up each day the first thing I was doing - look for the news. News about ‘my company’ that will decide which road I will walk for coming months. And I was following the same routine again on January 22, when I woke up and had my eyes on laptop for the NEWS. I thought I am still asleep when I read the headline saying ‘Microsoft laying off 5000 employees’. By that time, though I was used to start my day with frightful news but this one was alarming. But then, I thought this is just another news and went on to start my day not thinking much about it. There were talks about the news in office too as people looked nervous. And within an hour, we came to know that MS employees have got emails from the corporation stating trueness of the news that I read earlier. That day we had a production release, so I got involved in the work and forgot about all this news. It was just like another busy day of release till evening. At around 5 pm, there came a big shock. There was a list of MS employees laid off, people with whom I have worked. Can you believe MS firing people with just the notice of an hour? And, the people in the list were not new to Microsoft, some of them worked for 7-10 years.

This was totally an eye opener. I always use to think, for employees of Microsoft, it is more than just a job, it is a status symbol too. To put in simple words, employee of MS = Stability. But then, all you own is nothing. It was big time realization that in corporate life, no matter which designation you are in, you do not have the authority to decide your future. Higher paying jobs are exactly like a luxury apartment, you can never own it. This is the fact that most of us hardly realize because we are satisfied with monthly salaries and incentives and feel secured about it. What an irony!!

This all takes me back to the words of Robert Kiyosaki (author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, the #1 New York Times bestseller) who says “I would rather prefer to earn $100 from 10 sources than to earn $150 from a single source”. Diversification is the key. Look for the ways you can diversify your source of Income. And today, I feel blessed to be a part of the system that gives me the opportunity to grow in an environment which is totally recession and inflation proof. It’s an excellent opportunity to diversify and create a strong secondary income in your non-productive time especially in an economy like this. To know more about it, please browse through http://www.suprworldwide.com/

IT Storm: A reward or a point of concern for Indian youth

It has now been over a decade since the IT boom has shown its bigger picture in India – the land of farmers. The country’s agriculture has shown tremendous increase with the introduction of new crop called “S/W Engineer”. The impact of IT is easily visible, let it be the rise in national economy or as the biggest consumer of fresh graduates from various institutes across the nation. Today IT is absorbing nearly 63% of Indian Engineering students even before the completion of their degree. And this number is increasing year by year.

But what exactly this boom is offering? If we look at the outer picture, the decision by Congress govt way back in 1991 to enter into the world of Globalization has done wonders esp. in the last few years. It has injected the fuel of Foreign Direct Investment to the thirsty Indian economy. India fully capitalizing this opportunity made a new entry in the global market as one of the leading BPO and IT Service Sector. And, today IT sector is standing tall as one of the leading sectors in Indian market. What more would the govt hope for? This seems to be the perfect choice offering huge employment resulting in larger amount of tax, and building infrastructure of the nation.

As always there is other side, the other view and the other perspective. So let’s see the inner picture of this grand gala of New India. Let us take a small ride into the life of a “S/W Engineer” and try to find out what these white collared executives are actually doing in their day to day life.

Here are few of the facts based on small survey conducted over some of the s/w engg from various companies:

Ø Satisfaction with working culture – 60%
Ø Satisfaction with the perks – 50%
Ø Satisfaction with the opportunities available in near future – 50%
Ø Satisfaction with the nature of work – 30%

Now note the fourth point and imagine the joy and enthusiasm in the life of a person who is 70% dissatisfied with his/her nature of work. What do you think could be the reason for such high percentage of dissatisfaction?

To begin with, IT industry is broadly divided into two categories

Product based (company initiated)
Service based (User initiated)

Companies which produce and launch their s/w (products) in the market come under first category. They take the initiative and develop the product that they think will suit the user’s requirement. Whereas, when the user raises a request and the company provides service to fulfill those requirements, these companies come under the second category.

India is a big market of Service Industry. And the major part of Indian market deals with the projects of Support and Maintenance. Now to have some idea of the kind of work in such projects and the expertise required, it is sufficient to look at the basic requirements to get into any of these MNCs. Have you ever wondered that for engineering students why the branch/stream is not a criterion for most of the companies or why even BSC students are being absorbed in Multi Dollar Projects?

The fact is that at the starting of your career you just need to be a human machine which once trained will perform the similar job again and again. A perfect robot directed to work and behave as per the processes and rules enforced. The worst thing about these projects being you not finding any place for the work of your interest or your out-of-box thinking. This creates high dissatisfaction towards work. There is nothing in this world that can give you as much satisfaction as the quality of work you do rather than a good rating in appraisals or one onsite trip.

The condition becomes miserable when we look at the situation in the colleges of the country. People rushing blindly towards the fascinating job profiles offered well within the campus of the institutes. This rush is killing the thinking of the students to go beyond and they finally decide to flow with the current.

Having said all this, the concerns here are not to reflect the negatives of these glittering careers or to divert the thoughts against this. The only idea here is to bring into light the initial phase scenarios of this Hi-Tech career and to provide the overall picture that might help in finding the ways out to the desired destinations for aspiring fresher.

The key is to find out the area of interest from the bottom of your heart ignoring the noise of external views and comments. And finally, having the passion and the courage to go for it, even against all the odds. Never ever settle down until and unless you fall in love with what you do. The real test of being yourself is when you don’t stop loving even after being rejected.

Have the hunger and foolishness enough to grasp the food of thought. Stay Hungry, stay Foolish……….World is all yours!!