13000+ e-separate Infosys in 1 month

Infosys gets a wakeup call, when over 13000+ headcounts, walk out of the lush green campuses across the country, that too in just 1 month. This exodus marks the wakeup call for the elite senior management, board of directors who have been in denial mode for last 4 years. Denial of what? Well denial of strategically well planned, but most deadly executed headcount (UN) friendly policies. Policies such as

a) Internal mandatory certifications. This most illogical mandate rolled out somewhere in 2006, hit many road blocks right from day one. Reactive and run time changes were implemented. Management who created this with a vision to mark it as one of the USP's of Infosys in already bleeding software outsourcing market. With a vision to take a lead from its #1, 2, 3, competitors - Wipro, TCS, CTS etc.
The hardest hitting shot was, when it got tied with the compensation and promotion of a headcount through the CRR cycle.

b) CRR - well not sure where it was copied from, even though management claims to have inherited and improvised it after a huge research on companies which had somewhat similar appraisal parameters. Believe me, this is most ridiculous way of getting people rated for the performance. BTW not directly, but in relevance to some of the most morons you might have in the parallel groups. And you end up being rated as good as your manager can represent you.This has parameters coming from across not only performance. Everything gets overridden by your adherence to the non relevant certification (a) to even the progressions and promotions as per new iRace.

c) iRace - Performance DOESNOT matter - yes, it’s a race, a hapless race mandated with shrewd bullyness in a typical top down approach. # of years of experience is what governs your designation. Only designation, yes, because in Infosys, the culture has been such that you will be appraised as per your designation, but soaked as per the one level up, because that’s the role you play. If you are a fast tracker, mind you there are many levers that will pull you so that you cannot win in the (i)race

Recently, Mr. NRN, was addressing a gathering and to his sudden surprise, he was showered with the cruciatingly hard fact based questions. First as usual to a big corporate guru, he jumped into the denial zone. But when he couldnot weather the storm, he took refuge in accepting a little bit and saying that senior management needs to investigate there seems to be an issue.

Just a few days later, the corporate HR head - Nandita Gujar, wrote some kind of blog in infy intranet, which was thronged by a very very hard hitting almost 3000 headcounts. The fact is that unlike NRN, they didn’t take a refuge in any anonymity, but rather used their very own names, designation and employee id's.

O yeah this reminds me to a funny incident which will culminate the mentality within middle management as well. I was a part of this very middle management and was working closely with my offshore peer. One background, I was a fast tracker and he is a veteran of over 16 years at infosys.But we were peers. Don’t conclude yet...please read below

There arise a little argument during our discussion and when he couldn’t question the authenticity of my logic he asked me "What is your employee id"?

I was stunned to irrelevancy with the discussion. It was just like the mapping of certifications with the designations of headcounts.

Anyhow, I told him but counter questioned why? The answer I got is "I wanted to know how long you have been at Infosys".....no wonder his is the kind of people who can stay and survive the hypocrisy which prevails inside the fake brand name, for which people like me fell.

Before i close this post:- Latest update:- Infosys has created 9 tracks to do "research" into the issues in each of the illogical policies which got implemented and thus resulted in huge exodus. These tracks are like a democratic country creating a committe for any cause of revolution.