Exit interview at Infosys

Today was my exit interview at Infosys. I worked in Infosys for four years. I had some
good times and bad times, as life usually is. Anyways, How did the exit interview go
today? Pretty much the dumb way. He asked me a few questions on where I was going
and what I was getting, and why I was going. Except what could Infosys have done to
retain me? Well, it was put in a different fashion. What are the things that you like to see
as change in Infosys? Well, there are a lot of changes one would want.

The first and foremost - stop building eccentric buildings. Buildings are meant to be
rectangular. Not conical, oval, pyramids or lotus. (Stop building swimming pools because
I do not know swimming). I prefer buildings to be 10-20 storeyed than the three floor
buildings that are constructed in odd shapes.

Then, we have something called the relative ranking system. Relative ranking system
pitts one employee against another. It grades an employee into three or four categories
based on relative performance. If I get a rating of 2, and I approach my manager, why I
was not given a 1, the answer I get is that we are a very competitive organization, and
that 50% employees have performed better than me. And there is this farce called
appraisal system that is supposed to measure the employees absolute performance like
task rating, and parameters like schedule variance and so on. The point that I am making
is that rating should be absolute and not relative. Rating is tied to compensation hikes as
well as promotions. So it is kind of important to have it a bit more rational.

The third change I like to see is on technology. Though Infosys is supposed to be a

technology company, it relies unduly on freshers from college to perform the majority of
the work. And once the work is completed, he or she may be moved to some junk work in
a totally different technology area. The idea behind that is technology does not matter;
Milking the customer does. I cannot choose to work on a technology area for extended
periods. Working in the same technology area can lead to stagnation or bad attitude in
Infosys.

In any way, Infosys is a great company. These are just a few shortcomings that does not
suite me. Infosys will continue to do well for the investors. As long as investors are
happy, so are the employees. Because most of them invest heavily in Infosys shares.
However, the general rule is investor happiness is reversely proportional to employee
happiness.

Some of the good things in Infosys is great infrastructure, repeatable and scalable
business processes (not technology process, sorry), great colleagues, good IS
applications, decent managers, and inclusive work force (read good-looking women)

EXIT INTERVIEW IN WIPRO

Sairam (name changed for security purposes) was a very sincere and brilliant student who was recruited by
Wipro Systems in 1996 from JNTU College of Engineering. Sairam was admired by everybody in the college
because he was bright, friendly and yet humble. He completed his studies in June 1997 and reported at
Wipro Bangalore on 7th July, 1997. He was given training for two months in Bangalore and transferred back
to Hyderabad in September 1997. Sairam was ambitious but he had no day dreams. He wanted to stick to
Wipro just like his father sticked to IOB. In the first week of his reporting at Wipro Hyderabad, he observed
Deviprasad Rambhatla having a verbal argument with Nathan in a computer lab. This created a bad
impression for Deviprasad in Sairam’s mind. Later, Sairam was made part of a group which was being
monitored by Deviprasad to assist Nathan for pooling a team for IBM Japan’s Daikoku project. We were
given one month time to learn JAVA and one fine day Deviprasad (Deviprasad Rambhatla) conducted a
written test on JAVA for the group. Everybody in the group copied the answers from Sairam and Sairam still
assumed he would be rated number one choice for the project. Against his expectations Deviprasad
announced Sairam as the last choice for the project which hurted Sairam, but still Sairam kept quiet thinking
Deviprasad is cheating. Later the team shortlisted for Daikoku project was introduced to Nathan and the
other senior members. The junior Daikoku team was kept in a lab to create a demo and learn the Symantec
IDE. On the first day in the lab, Deviprasad again interfered and forced Sairam to work on user interface
inspite of Sairam’s request to involve him in backend. This again hurted Sairam but Sairam kept quiet and
developed a code generator which talks to backend for generating DAO, VO and Constraint JAVA classes.
Since Nathan was not accessible Sairam disclosed this innovation to junior Daikoku team. The idea was not
appreciated by Viswanadham in the junior team. Losing no faith, Sairam then showed this code generator to
Srini, a senior member in Daikoku project. Srini appreciated this idea. One day Nathan was not in office and
Anil Pillai called Sairam to pay a visit to Nathan and his wife in a hospital. Sairam went to hospital twice
along with Sridhar to give mental support to Nathan.

The next day Sairam heard Nathan was out of Daikoku project because he had no project plan and creating
a demo was not IBM’s expectation on the client’s visit to Hyderabad. Sairam was informed that Deviprasad
was elected as the PM for this project by the senior management. That day morning Deviprasad approached
Sairam and enquired about his code generator. Sairam then did not realize that Nathan was not informed
about his code generator and Deviprasad is manipulating the facts to climb the corporate ladder. Sairam
then used to fine tune his code generator as per his team members’ demands, also develop new customized
ui components for the project, also bring the project out of deprecated situations with his code parsers and
generators, deliver modules in the project where there was no documentation and only word of mouth. As a
whole Sairam was doing 3 people’s job. This happened till December 1997. Meanwhile, Deviprasad used to
consistently make false promises of hiking Sairam’s salary or send Sairam and Viswanadham to Japan.
Later one fine day Deviprasad declared that he is going to send Viswanadham alone to Japan with his usual
way of demoralizing Sairam in the team meetings. Later Viswanadham announced he has no passport and
then Deviprasad approached Sairam to go Japan. Since Sairam too had no passport Sairam expressed his
inability to go Japan. Sairam also had a troubling family problem to stop him from going to Japan. Later
Sridhar from Daikoku team went to Japan in January 1998. The team was kept under immense pressure to
deliver as we were reaching some unknown or unannounced delivery dates. We were working late nights
since the beginning of January 1998. Sairam was one day in January 1998 working late till 9 pm at Wipro
office and his dad called him to come home immediately. So, Sairam seeked Deviprasad’s permission to go
home and Deviprasad sarcastically denied his request. This has upset Sairam and he used some bad
language against Deviprasad after going back to his seat. Sairam went home later and forgot about it in a
week. Somehow, IBM Japan forced Deviprasad to come Japan in February 1998. After this incident Sairam
was abused on his face by everybody at JIPC Wipro starting from third week of February 1998. Meanwhile
Deviprasad sitting in Japan used to change the requirements of Sairam’s deliverable modules everyday
back and forth. Since, there was no configuration management tool then Sairam had to always struggle to
keep upto speed. This tons of work pressure from Deviprasad and abusive comments from fellow
colleagues in JIPC broke Sairam. Sairam submitted his resignation to KGK and Dakshina Murthy M. Hope
you realized how badly Sairam was manipulated by Deviprasad. Sairam did not even know that Deviprasad
behind this bad phase in Wipro and simply came out of Wipro without uttering a single word against anybody
in the exit interview of Wipro.

Wipro wired Sairam and bullied him for past 10 years. They spoiled his public relations by sniping at him
with voices in his head every second for past 10 years and making him react to it while he lost control on his
senses due to the continuous sniping. Since, then Sairam had hearing voices problem where ever he lived
or worked. He could not sustain his relationships with any person or organization. Sairam was
365x24x60x60 tortured between 1998-2003 without letting him to smile for a moment. Sairam was forced to
commit suicide in March 2002. I could say Sairam saw hell because of being associated with Wipro and
Deviprasad. I the other form of Sairam, sent several mails to Azim Premji and Vivek Paul to seek justice.
Unfortunately, the hearing voices problem is still hurting me and making me live in an unreal world. So, pl.
do justice to me by making Wipro compensate me, give permanent cure for my hearing voices problem and
punish the wrong doers in my/Sairam’s life.

Tags: premji, azim, fresher, software, wipro, employee, rambhatla, deviprasad, it, suicide