Issues in India’s IT Sector (guest post)

Issues at IT Employees level

1) Several cases of illegal firing and layoffs . Employees are typically called to a room and asked to sign in 15 min on a voluntary resignation as a one time offer failing which they would be terminated and would not be given experience letter or a relieve letter stating termination as a reason for release.

2) Wrong planning / execution of SEZ, resulting in overloading on infrastructure of the area. Commute time becomes double, real estate sky rockets, pollution goes up . SEZ could have been spread across more cities and more areas within same city . SEZ should have been made operational upon meeting the criteria of enhancement of Public Transport Capacity .

3) Impractical Notice Periods of 3 months. Employees accepting jobs outside India have serious difficulties as most markets do not entertain 3 months joining period. This is also an issue for employees wishing to take up higher studies as they may not get admission confirmation with 3 months lead time. The notice periods need to be regulated.

4) Extremely stretched working hours without compensation in several IT companies leading to health impact in long run. The sedentary life style and stretched work hours lead to life style diseases of Heart and Diabetes.

5) Broadband speeds in India are 5% of developed countries. This leads to a very wide impact across many industries (these are common to several segments) –

a. Education – Video Conferencing is not effective, hence experienced and accomplished Professors cannot teach across Cities and Institutes and students cannot interact with them.

b. Education – MOOC – There are several MOOCs (Massively Open Online Course) from Top Universities and Non Profit Players like Khan Academy which India is deprived of , due to poor broadband Infrastructure .

c. Companies shy away from operating from small cities as broadband is a critical infrastructure and broadband in small cities is even worse

d. International Business relies heavily on VOIP currently, (Voice over IP , which can be interpreted as Video over IP also in current times ) . Communication is an integral part of Business . Poor Communication infrastructure makes it difficult to conduct business with overseas clients who rely on VOIP a lot

e. There are several business domains such as Online Tuitions which rely heavily on good broadband and Indian participation in those businesses is limited because of that

6) Several IT employees work late and Cities Infrastructure caters very poorly to late workers

7) Skills Enhancement is very important for Competitiveness of India in international market. Cost of training in advanced areas can be reduced by implementing an economy of scale in the training

8) It is high time that the Income Tax Slabs rationalization takes place due to inflation. Most of the slabs were set about 30 years back . Though this issue is not specific to IT sector , they are relatively worst affected as they have very little scope of Tax Savings unlike self-employed professionals like lawyers, CAs , Doctors etc .

9) In Real terms , the IT sector employees are suffering from continuous decline in salaries

Issues at Fresher level

1) Companies are widely practicing concept of Letter of Intent Rather than Job Offer during Campus and Off Campus events. Candidates may get the call after one year under such arrangement and they are in a perpetual waiting state.

2) High level of Unemployment , several Engineers remain unemployed after 1-2 years and change career track

3) Poor internship intake by large companies

4) Unethical , illogical and exorbitant service bonds for 1-2 years

5) High gap between academia and industry , most of the students end up learning Java etc from NIIT, SEED etc . The programming languages get a scant attention in Engineering and most of the courses are theoretical and do not relate to Indian job market . Even after study of 4 years of Computer Science , it takes about a year for a fresher to ramp up to minimum productivity level in an Organization

(This post was written by Mr. Sandeep Jain who managed and mentored me at IBM India. I’ve learned few memorable things from him which made me a better professional. Follow him on Twitter,add to your circles on Google+ or add as a connection on LinkedIn.)