Friday, January 30, 2009

Recession and Indian Mangers

I was watching someone wait in the queue to collect his bowl of cut fruits. Soon it arrived and he asked, "Oh! Can I have some honey?" Immediately came the reply from the shop keeper, "Recession Sir". I could not control my laugh. He barely was able to pronounce the word and he takes that as an excuse. Such is the situation everywhere, not many are sure how tomorrow is gonna be. My friends say, they have butterflies flying when their Manager or HR calls them for a meeting. 

India is a cost effective development center for many MNC. But the crisis is so bad that even the cost effective centers seems costly. So each companies handle recession in their own degree. 

- Layoff Employee. Clean up unwanted workforce even though they are completely in control of their economic position. 
- Have mandatory unpaid in a month. 
- Going Green.
- No free food or lavish party or Sal hikes.
- No allowances for travel, internet connection and hardware.
- Shutdown or Suspend projects. 

I heard an interesting case, where few employees are selected in their organisation. Each one is given mini project (may be a research enigma) and asked to complete it in 30 days. In successful completion they get a chance to stay with the company, else they are laid off. :) I was wondering what great ideas people get. 

One other situation is where, they know that the employee will not quit his job since the situation is bad everywhere. So they decide to take everything out of him/her in this period. More assignments and stringent dead lines. Remember: If you can write a component in 5 days, it never would be possible to build the same in 2 days since we are in recession. (It will take 10 
months to deliver a baby). Hoping on Obama's bill for some improvement. But we are sure for a rough 2009. Hope this will pass away. So I asked Sankaranpillai for some advice to improve the situation.

Me: Mr. Pillai, how can we improve the situation?
Pillai: Ask every to mangers to code if they are not already doing?
Me: Ah! :O Can you tell more about it?
Pillai: Kanna, well its simple. Allocate 50% of managers time for coding. Ask them to cut the meeting that they were doing all the time. So 2 managers is 1 developer. More workforce at the same cost.

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2 comments:

Ramana KV said...

Funny.. Mr. Pillai seem to have the right solution :)

Vijesh said...

Welcome Ramana :-)