Dark Times Ahead

The IT slowdown is now hitting software shops operating solely in the domestic market. We have all heard horror stories of programmers in the US who are on the bench or have been sent back to India. The same phenomena is now occurring in software companies operating wholly in the domestic market, that is, with no export revenues. The following stories are typical.

Akash (not his real name) graduated in English, acquired a computing diploma and joined a local software company as a marketing executive. His salary soared to Rs 20,000 per month. The company was on a roll and hefty bi-annual increments were routine. Now the company is on the skids and Akash has not been paid for six months. He cannot get another job and also knows that he can say goodbye to his dues if he leaves his current job. The managing director of the company recently called in four marketing executives and gave them a unique proposition–they would get a commission of 50 percent on any large orders they obtained. This commission would go towards the settlement of arrears. The only catch in the offer is that there are no orders in the market.

Rekha had a steady job developing VB applications with a consultant. She applied for a job as a Java programmer in a hot-shot start-up. She had no real knowledge of Java but managed to fudge her way through the technical interview. As luck would have it, the first few projects that came her way were executed in VB. The start-up has no work now and she has not been paid for the last three months. The management now states that she had misled them about her Java skills. She has been told that she will be paid only when she manages to pass a Java test conducted by the company. Needless to say, she has the jitters because it is a simple matter to design a test that no one can pass.

Still worse are the stories of people employed by the IT industry in non-programming or support capacities. IT companies hired accountants and HR people at huge salaries. These people are now whiling away their time and are waiting for the axe to fall. Similar are the stories of training course counselors, instructors and courseware and content developers. Training institutes have little use for coordinators when enrollments are falling by 50 percent or more.

Will the situation improve? My guess is that it will improve only for people with genuine skills. The industry is filled with programmer aspirants who can’t follow simple logic, DBA aspirants unable to do simple queries and people marketing MIS/ERP systems with no understanding of simple double-entry accounting. There is little hope for such people. They should either acquire some tangible skills or lower their sights. On the flip side is the fact that talented and disciplined developers are still in demand as are people who can keep critical infrastructure running.

I have never been able to understand how companies could use HR/placement consultants to recruit technical staff. Many corporates have hired dozens of programmers based on a vetting of resumes done by consultants. The modus operandi employed by the consultants was to simply rank the resumes and start making offers based on this ranking. No attempt was made to map the actual skills of the applicants. The net result was an organization staffed by technical incompetents. I think that employers got what they

deserved.

The bottom line: To repeat a cliché–tough times never last but tough people do.

Gautama Ahuja runs a turnkey software company,AHC Infotek