Thought of posting this here, as this is the place my friends can read & get some food for thought - have I really left any food for you folks to think about ;-) ? Lemme know - the comments area is OPEN !
Is my company ( Infosys ) a good place to work ?
Yes it is !!!
... and this not a kind of the answer that you get when you ask anyone , "How're you doing ? " And what you get "Fine :-(" - doesn't matter as to what is really going on with their life, but everything is FINE ;-)
Prologue:
Someone asked me today, "Who do you work for ?" and my proud answer was 'I work with Infosys ' ! (notice the difference beween 'with' & 'for') "And what does Infosys do ?" My generic answer was "Software consulting" . Now, he generalized it more by saying, "Oh, so you are contracted to someone for a period & then you go to another company ... is it the way you work ?" . This is when I thought about the real question more, & came up with a brilliant answer (in my opinion ;-) ) , "Infosys doesn't have contracts with its clients, however we have relationships. This is what sets us apart from what you think we do ! Almost 85% of our clients like & trust the way we work & make things work & make them go on. Thus, they remain with us for very long times, doing repeat business all the time. I hope even the TCS, Wipro & Satyam folks folks feel the same about their firms - we are all competitors, however we ought to project the large organazations (MNC's) of India in the right way. I hate people thinking of us as mere contractors :-) ... we are not ! We are the brand ambassadors, we are the relationship executives & managers for our company & the client. I hope all of you have the right representation as well as within our country, India. Talk to me (through comments) if anyone differs .
Most of the times, people don't move to another project because the contract ended, however they tend to change because they got bored of similar work for 2-3 years in a row ! GS (Goldman Sachs) is with Infosys for more than 8 years, Schlumberger is with us for about 9 years, Aetna is one of the largest & oldest accounts, Apple, Citigroup, NY Life, Bank of America, Nordstrom are building up for more than 6 years . The point here is once we are into the customer relationship, our customer doesn't want to get out ! It's the quality of work, the knowledge, the capability, the responsiveness, understanding of finer details and ability to instigate measurable trust - that keeps the clients with us for long times. In short, we don't like being called as contractors. Those are the people who really HAVE TO change their client / type of work / location every now & then (3-8 months) because their contract ended or the client got his /her task done. I remember IKON didn't have any distinction between the Infosys or IKON's staff, however our recent client does - they don't even issue convenient badge holders to non-employees ... which is plain funny ; forget about other things they try :-)
After all, we will still hold on to our Indian patience & wait for the right word to go around, so that people can make out a difference between an Infosys employee & a real contractor.
I stick to Infosys because of its great culture, the values, the simplicity of the way it works - there's so much transparency that I could bump into Mr. Murthy in our canteen & talk to him ; or I could even walk into his cabin & discuss an issue ! I don't think this happens at many other places. 3 cheers to Infosys ! Long live Infoscions !
Music of the night : Sathiya ye toone kya kiya (Movie : Love ; Music by : Anand Milind ; Sung By : SP Balasubramanyam, Kavitha Krishnamurthy ; As sweet as a song can be ... once I hear this one, it doesn't stop echoing in my mind & on the lips for next 2-3 days :-) - fun to sing & play on my Yamaha synthesizer)
