Soller thoughts

A 'clever' blog of a 'free' mind

Posts Tagged dilbert

Recession, economic downturn and how reality bites ! – Part 1

Feb 10

Posted by Swapnil in Mind thoughts | No Comments

Today was more of an uncertain day for me. As there were discussions going on around for the project to be ceased and a new contract to be formed with the company for continuation of the same, under a different umbrella, but nothing was really coming out and it was really making people here in office bit nervous about the future in project. Call it economic downturn, credit crunch or recession, we were first time getting directly affected by that and so many things were happening that was making life rather uncomfortable around for everyone, with regards to the jobs assurances.

Some of the direct impacts that were seen were in the form of a few colleagues of mine who have been asked to leave the UK and go back to India to work there. Quite a few senior resources who have been in the UK for over 5/6 years also have been asked to go back and this was kind of shock to all of us. Probably reality bit somewhere, somehow of how bad the times are currently indeed !

We were a group of 10-15 good office colleagues and the group is now shrinking fast. Some colleagues are leaving this weekend, some at the end of the month and some will be off to India by mid of next month. Whilst, some have chosen to go back, some of them will be mandated to go back due to company requirement and cost savings to the company.

As per the mandate of the customer’s organization the ratio of offshore:onshore people strength was already 90:10 and today itself I had heard that that will further be pushed to 95-98% in favour of offshore working and with a nominal onshore presence for managing escalations. I am not sure if this will actually come as a new requirement and we will be required to implement that going further, but who knows, we doubted the previous 90:10 movement as well and well, it was a success.

Meanwhile, enjoy Dilbert’s latest strip on recession that probably explains my state of mind !

dilbert_recession

 

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Top 5 myths related to application support domain

Feb 5

Posted by Swapnil in App Support thoughts | No Comments

Did you ever notice that in a multi-service oriented IT organization, that delivers new projects / products as well as provides IT support services to customers, more focus is normally given to delivery of products than providing high quality maintenance & support services? Well, if you have, then you are not the only one!

What I have seen at least in the Indian IT companies is the poor comparison given to the professionals working in the IT service support domain than to the professionals working in delivering new functionality to the customers. I suppose the roots of such unfair comparisons are in few myths that are present in the IT area.

  1. Call centre perception – Yeah, most of the people I spoke with did not have any idea when I asked and interviewed them about working in support projects. I asked them ‘What do you think working in support means for you?’ The quickest answer I got back is ‘I think it’s like working in a call centre, you need to be on phone all the time and answer customer queries. I am not interested in becoming a phone operator!’ Well, to a certain extent they are right. If you are providing support services from an off-site based location (Offshore or nearshore locations) then yes it does involve lots of speaking on phone. But if you look the way IT is working, speaking on phone, joining conference calls etc., has become just the way of work.
  2. You do not learn much when you work in support - This is the most common excuse given by professionals (at least young professionals) when they are asked to work on support projects. They feel that working in support does not offer them opportunities to enrich their skills in technical area. I certainly do not agree with this! In my view, working in the support function just gives you an opportunity to view at things differently and gives you a closer and practical look on how projects work on production platform and how a product is used in practice. You get to know the project and products from a close angle and you are always on the edge to keep the software / service working. Imagine how it would be like to have an outage on a banking site!
  3. You do not feel enough challenged while working in support – This is another common myth that makes house in the minds of fellow software professionals. They feel that working in support projects does not offer enough to challenge their intellectual wits. They feel that the work is repetitive and routine and thus they would get bored after some time in working in the project. I certainly do not think so! Ask this question to the people who support the online trading on bank website, or stock market website where even a minute’s outage may mean you lose millions of dollars in business. Is this not a challenge to keep them running?
  4. My professional growth will stagnate – Lots of people whom I interviewed for projects often complained to me that if they join the support project, their growth opportunity will be limited and they would get stereotyped for rest of their career. To the certain extent I agree with later part (i.e., stereotyped) but definitely do not agree with the first argument. The growth of the individual in an IT organization depends on how the person senses opportunity and makes use of it and not on what project he or she works on. After all, you are likely to get a better recognition if you save a bank site from falling over than writing a piece of software!
  5. My value amongst my peers will go down! – This is one of the silliest excuses I have ever come across; indeed I did come across this. The person who was telling me this was saying that he will feel inferior compared to a person working in a delivery and writing Java code. Fuf.. ! I did not have any answer for this, but all I would say is the inferiority is in the mind and depends on confidence of one rather than natural capability.

Interesting enough right? Let me know if you have come across any more myths about professionals saying no to work in support.

As earlier, pasting here a fantastic Dilbert comic strip that gives perfect example of how the world perceives of the Tech / Application support !

dilbert-tech-support

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Performance Appraisals – are they really the reflection of your performance?

Feb 4

Posted by Swapnil in Career thoughts | No Comments

If you are a corporate employee you must have undergone the performance appraisals or the end year appraisals and its equally possible that you would have, sometimes, wondered at the outcome of the result ! 

In most (or all) organizations, the performances of the resources are categorized as per something like Excellent, Very good, Good and Needs improvement etc or A+, A, B+, B, C categories that should ideally reflect the performance done by the resource over the year of measurement of the appraisal.

However, what pisses me off is the fact that in most of the organizations they keep silly rules that are nothing to do with the work you do or the project you work on and still could potentially affect your appraisal.  Few of them I think are as follows,

  • Unnecessary points awarded for attendance (come on time and go on time)  -  For God’s sake, we are in a corporate world where the output and outcome of the work matters and not the time someone enters into a building and leaves the building !!!
  • So called corporate trainings – If you would have read my earlier article about trainings, you would probably have guessed that despite the actual training having a little impact on the outcome of the project work or resource efficiency, the simple tick mark of attending the training makes you earn points against your appraisal.
  • Performance levelling across group, organization – According to me this is one of the most bullshit of the rules used in the performance appraisal.  If a person is brilliant in the given environment or scope, there is a likely chance that he is equally brilliant in the bigger environment. The scapegoats of this rule are the people typically working and delivering small scale projects or the projects having less financial or strategic importance to the organization. In an ideal world, the comparison should be done against the actual objective of the project and individual’s contribution to the same, no matter how much money the project is earning to the company.
  • Percentile factor for promotion cases – If there are many proven fantastic team members, if if they actually are excellent, no rule in the world should stop them to earn their own right of having a good appraisal result. However, mostly the management needs to choose only some percentage of top performers to promote and often leaves many of them demoralized !
  • Goals that were set at the start of year – Another pretty useless thing that is part of the annual appraisal process. The goals should always be revised every quarter and should be short term and achievable in the form of proven results.  The misguided and misleading goals that are often set for management also gives a case to cut points off your appraisal.

Finally, the Dilbert comic strip that truly reflects the appraisal process ;-)

dilbert-appraisal1

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