Employee Retention

IT has evolved alot during the years, the process of Software development and design has evolved with it. It's evolved to such an extent that, it's more like unskilled labour now, maybe not all IT but definitely the Software development part of it.

1. Starting from recruitment, Engineers from all disciplines can get into IT (atleast in India, where the opportunities in specific trades are very less). Even non-engineers, Science grads apply for jobs in IT and make it as developers.

2. Everyone of them is then put to a standard training session, simple basics. After all the basic is same across all languages.

3. Project assignments are not based on how good a person is after training, it's based on how many should be 'billed' for the project.

4. Code to be delivered for a project, goes to stringent reviews, documentation and the end result of which is 'deployable working code' for the client.

5. The recruitment process continues and fills up a 'bench' of replacements for the developers in various projects. Trainings in specific products and disciplines will be taken up by the 'competency'

6. Every developer is expendable and every developer has a replacement. A developer if he's good, he'll be able to find new jobs, better roles and better pay. There is never a shortage of developers, but there definitely is a cost for a 'good' developer.

So I guess now I've justified that a developers job in an IT company is slowly becoming unskilled labour. People are expendable, so what is the 'Employee Retention' programs in IT companies. And how effective are they?

Is it cheaper recruiting from outside than retaining your talents from within the company?

What ensures that an employee who is retained will stay even after a raise or a promotion?

What's the number of employees retained in an IT Company?

I don't feel like it

What's it? Why do you need to feel like something in order to do the work? They call it work because it's difficult, not because it's something you need to feel like.

- Seth Godin.

He might be the biggest 'gas bag'/'gyan dad' in the whole world, but this line actually did make sense. 'They call it work because it's difficult'.

Everyday I go through this, 'I don't feel like going to work today?' phase in the morning. I work in a project which is in the support phase now. The work is boring, you will have lines of logs and trace files of failed transactions to analyse. Annoying mails to reply to. Design a hotfix for a issue. Hack an existing process flow to fit in 'an exceptional' scenario in their business. It's tough, it's boring, it doesn't have the jazz of the normal development phase. This line has given me a different perspective to the way I look at my work.

But there is this other kinda of 'working' IT guy especially, a species found in typical Indian Outsourcing firms. The ones who fill up an 'imaginary' bench, waiting their way to another project. What would inspire him to go to office. Do his time, check his feeds and have lunch and go home. He/She also 'goes to work', what would inspire him to go to work. This line would not work for him for sure. There is nothing to feel like... there's no WORK!!!

Permanent

It's anyway was not our permanent residence, but we slowly started liking it. It never score a 100 on the her scale, but I bet there were times when she started thinking of it as her own. I'm totally devastated, never saw this coming. What do I have to lose, I have an apartment for myself, I have two great roommates to share the place with. Then why do I feel like I have some big weight on chest.

I wouldn't have felt so bad if it was somebody whom I was not this close. We are not related, we don't even come from the same place. We've not studied together anywhere, but coming to think of it we basically would have the same blood type. I know how hard it was them for them to shift from Pune to Hyderabad. Though I know the place was no where near to a place, next to what they had in Pune, it kills me to see them have to go through the whole exercise again. If it was happening to me, it would have been fine, what do a guy who lives out of a suitcase care about leaving a place, but not them for Christ sakes!!!

It's been sometime... a longtime... since I prayed, sometime since I opened a Bible. I feel like I lost a Wimbledon to Nadal. I feel so not in control of what's happening around me. I feel that I'm being made aware of something cruel, strange and powerful controlling all of us...

OK. I give up, you win... again... but why don't you win FOR me for a change...