10 years down the line ....

I was having a discussion with Suman (my partner in crime and business) as to what will be the scenario of companies like TCS, Infosys and Wipro. The rate at which these companies are recruiting people and training them in "IT", I guess we will be able to match the strength of Indian Army. From what I observe, year after year, WITS (Wipro Infosys, TCS and Satyam) has been recruiting a record number of graduates. Wipro kicked off with its campus initiative called WASE. Infosys is tying up engineering colleges. This has become a boom for the engineering colleges as the tie up will ensure that the engineers are "employable" when they graduate. But what I see is the loss of quality. I believe that in quality and timeliness of work lies customer satisfaction. A streak of innovativeness goes a long way in building a good relationship with the client. But with the kind of work these companies are taking onto themselves, I sometimes pity the engineer who is supposed to work on them. From what I see, standard maintenance projects for banks and billing and network maintenance projects from telecom companies is the main source of revenue for the IT companies.
WITS is now claiming to provide end to end solutions. They say that they are a partner in business of the client and understand what the client needs exactly. I agree to a certain extent with this view but these companies have no clue at large. There are managers in the system who take a project and execute a project in any manner. These companies claim to be SEI CMM - 5 and a 6 sigma certification. But from what we have seen from the inside, its all a hogwash. There are too many processess and very less of actual engineering. Engineers are meant to solve engineering problems and provide better solutions each time for the same problem. Here I see there are very few real engineers at work in these companies. Freshers who get recruited from engineering colleges are promised some work and are put in something else. I cannot understand how can a person from electrical department of a REC get into embedded software system group and how does a person interested in Operating systems end up doing SAP. But some how the managers are able to execute a project and deliver "production quality code" to a client. I pity the client too.
I have seen many people on the bench, wasting away like vegetables. Instead of that, if these guys are allowed to work on some projects of their own choice and are allowed to interact with professors from IITs and IISc, they can develop something new. Who knows the next Google can come from Infy bench.
Looking 10 years down the line, I see a lot of people having the same exact skillset and balance of power tilting to organizations in the demand and supply game. I believe that every engineer has to read up and get to know about the latest developments in his / her field of interest. 10 years down the line, if you are not distinguishable then you will be a nobody. This article I guess will help you more to understand about the importance of stuff 10 years down the line ..

--Vishal