I really pity any fresh engineer who joins an Indian IT organization and happens to reports to the most common breed of managers, THE UNINSPIRING ONES.
I pity them because these fresh engineers learn the work way of life observing their manager. For most of the engineers, it leaves a lasting imprint on them. They will start affecting those they will lead in future as well.
If we don't break this chain, we will end up with more uninspiring managers, generation after generation.
I think it might be too late already as we get to see the clear signs of that in our industry.
Attrition is at an all time high and is totally out of control. People keep changing jobs. You see more traffic between the organizations of same level than JFK airport. :)
It looks like only a recession can curb this trend.
Organizations are finding more and more difficult to place the right people for the right job. To top it off, the right people who are already in the right job don't want to continue any more..
Customers of these IT companies don't find any value other than cost benefits. Frustrated with the so called CMMi service of the companies , they start their own development centres. Increasing presence of MNCs in Bangalore's Electronic City & on both sides of IT Highway in Chennai are the testaments to this fact.
What will happen if this trend continues?
Indian IT companies will be reduced to the level of sub contractors who gets to do all low intellect jobs or survive being worker unions..
It is not difficult to figure out how we got here in the first place. All credit should go to our managers, the uninspiring ones.
The uninspiring ones treat every team member, just as a resource and the loss of a team member for them is more to do with loss of billing than anything else. "Giving stick" is a very common phrase in their vocabulary.
The T-rex of this uninspiring breed are the ones who sincerely uphold the notions of profitability that are so very prehistoric.
It was a rude awakening for me when I had to work with such dinosaurs who treat customers & high billing activities as "Cash cows" and for whom "customer value add" means anything that increases the project's profitability.
When you loose the focus on service and look for money in everything, you tend to become defensive, better ideas take back seat and so does the team's attitude towards work.
Value creation becomes a far cry in such teams.
Organization should device ways to identify these uninspiring ones and take away people responsibility from them. They must put these dinosaurs out to pasture.
In their place, we need empathetic leaders who foster the individuality of members and harness the collective energy of the team towards the singularity of project purpose.
In teams, dissent should be regarded in the same breadth as consensus.
After reading this post, if you think I am dreaming, so be it. Such dreams provide welcome escape to me.
It keeps me sane.
