I have had the opportunity to work in different sizes of software companies through my career. Big, Medium, SmalI, Very small. And currently, I have a startup right from scratch.
I learned quite a bit of each company's perception towards software, their indian-ness, their attitude, their project management, and numerous other stuff. And understandably, a company's perception is the underlying boses's or team's perception.... the team's perception is most often a consolidation of each members perception. We won't go into what a person's perception is based on, that would be a book to write.
Every often I think about the industry that made India standup from its stigma to show-off to the world, the software industry we are talking about... I only feel dissappointed.
For the potential every human brain has, that of the Indian also, for the number of people who are into software in India (every 1 in 2 educated youth you catchup in India will be into software).. the Indians could pull off something really really big almost every week in software. But its not happening.
Problem : Attitude
Current status : Slowly building up.. but long way to go.
Resolution : Needs regular attitude boosters.. and big guy speeches...
Always Developing
Like India is always a developing country in the mind of the Indians... I am afraid Indians have similar attitude with respect to growth in the software industry also. That its always someone else who has to do the big job, and I will always sulk with what I have. They call this attitude 'modesty' back here in India.
Every company I have worked for, every team I have worked for, I have experienced sparks and shocks from atleast one person in the team, which has had an effect in developing my own sparks (or shocks) over the years.. Every one of these guys (unfortunately including myself) feel very uncomfortable to shackle up and get out of box to do something bigger other than working on some outsourced project supporting / improving some old age technology.
And "old technology" here doesn't mean Fortran or cobol.. but any project that doesn't have any innovation involved.. something that is developed only to meet the current day demand of the customer without any foresight of future use scenarios.
Dreaming...
In my dreams I thought big companies all do great software, in all the latest technolgies.... until I got employed into one such big company in chennai, india to see that most projects were like maintaining or testing old products and improvements until the US or UK customer migrated to a better technology and platform.
I have always wondered and discussed with friends, that, 'Looks like Americans and London'ers are dumping all their old technology projects on us because nobody else in their cities would love to do it'.
Also, I ponder over questions like 'Are Indians trying to stick around something called proven ground most often, than making a ground themselves'.
Job Security
Job security is a word I read in all management books. I didn't know earlier that there was this term for the idea of keeping your job only because you have a good understanding with people in your office, and that they aren't probably thinking about firing you in the near future. The term clearly sucked any ideals and respect a person should show to his career which is the only thing that can justify his existence.
The first thing my mom tells me when I tell her I am shifting jobs is 'If this company you are already in keeps you happy, then stick around, why risk going to a new office new people new environments, you never know!'. After the first two times of hearing this, I only mentioned my shifts after I made them in my next companies.
I am not sure who is to blame for the stigma still sticking around with job security. The family seems all the time thinking about steady fund flows rather than words like aimbitions, achievements... the self has its indian attitude to make you always think like 'one step at a time' and still conservatively make only half steps.
Anyways, dreaming again about how things can be... if Indians and many many Indians for that matter destroy stigmas, and leap out of the box making differing with the traditional indian attitude or modesty thoughts.
While these things stand as introduction to the subject of this post... we will dive into what could be done in India to make many indians shackle out of the box... in software atleast.
I will keep it short:
For Big companies:
If companies like Infosys, Cognizant, Wipro, Satyam, .. at the least allocated 10-15% of their employee base into product development, stay there and be focussed, India could be making big names in software business.. to equate with Adobe, Google, Microsoft and the likes. Currently, its only like all these product giants (google for web based products), have their bases in india and use the potential of indians here... while infosys, wipro and every indian company there are only most of the time only doing IT services or ITEs, and not even 10% of their revenue share links to any product sales.
One exception could be Infosys's Finacle software, but after that even Infosys seemed to have nothing more to do in products.
For Small companies:
If small companies spend time automating themselves and their processes or services, rather than all the time doing applications and services for clients...they could make a foundation for their growth.
I have learnt from experience that clients like to see their demos live as the product is developed (if its web), or like to see weekly or bi-monthly packages to see how things are coming up. and actually some of my clients liked to invest twice or thrice more than what was planned at first communication, because they liked what they saw with the work happening and the progress levels.
And when a small company doesn't have the delivery systems and communication systems to do this, their is a damp feeling in the project until its release which actually could get delayed or never happen because the damp feeling sweeps through quality levels in the project. When we say delivery/communication systems here.. we definitely don't mean email and chat software for these purposes. Email or chat software only should be used for brief notes and more often to make pointers / give links to the actual formal document communication or product packages.
For Small / Mid-size companies:
We can assume that this suggestion is already implemented in big companies.
I have also learnt from mistakes my own and that of my employers, that, if companies, mid-size or small-size, recruited employees regularly rather than recruiting based on new projects and short-term profits coming up... then such companies are more probably to be on a steady track of growth.
An analogy to understand this would be 'Financial investment planning'. If you invested regularly from an early age you get to reap its fruits much better and you grow better.. and re-invest better. If you invested based on the stock market charts or to make short-term profits, either you rise up on luck, or drop down to collect yourself up taking a while.
