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I have a technical interview with this company next week. Anyone want to fill me in on the good the bad and the ugly of being a programmer at a company like Inf

by novia 9y ago

I have a technical interview with this company next week. Anyone want to fill me in on the good the bad and the ugly of being a programmer at a company like Infosys?

ap46 9y ago
For the love of god just get into any product shop, take eLitmus or AMCAT & leave BigIT. There's every less to learn, high restrictions on taking up choice assignments & so many more reasons. You can read up so many answers from Quora.
- novia 9y ago
  I am a US citizen just graduating from a college, I haven't been in big IT yet. I'm just starting out with computer science.
  - iamalchemist 9y ago
    Join a Sofware product company. You will have a lot more exposure IT products than in IT services.
  - raverbashing 9y ago
    There are many, many better choices than that company But to each one their own, I guess
- mobutu 9y ago
  Yeah join Google, Facebook or Apple instead!!
leoharsha2 9y ago
I highly recommend you NOT to join this company as a programmer because you'd have no growth and also, they pay you peanuts and earn millions. They treat you like shit. You'll be just another fish in the sea. The only good thing about joining this company is good work-life balance as there is no much work for you to do.
- abhi152 9y ago
  I find it weird when people curse Indian IT companies which were once their employers. Is it not true that once upon a time you were only fit to join them because no one else would have employed you.
  - kamaal 9y ago
    I find it really strange that people are down voting this comment. Not only do these Big IT companies hire in mass, they also spend insane amounts of money and time training students who come out of college without exposure to real work. Yeah they pay peanuts and yes you would be just a face in the crowd. But they likely give you the biggest break of your life. People need to show some gratitude.
    - nu11p01n73R 9y ago
      Gratitude for what? Training? 1. The training is useful only if you are allocated to the project in the same domain. 2. You are trained in some relevant tech so that you can look for jobs else where. Both of this is not the case. Mostly everyone is trained in mysql, language(Java, C# etc) or maybe mainframe systems. What extra are you getting over a self taught programmer. (You would get very less in real because the later has some experience working with some project where as you have none). You are then allocated to some support project where you don't get a chance to write a single line of code.
      - kamaal 9y ago
        Did not understand what you are complaining against. There is no university education or any kind of training for life. My entire experience in tech is learning a new piece of technology every few years. Any company that is likely to hire can only give you base set of skills, beyond this its on you take it forward from there. Also in my experience these companies have routine training for most bleeding edge tech. Not many people sign up for it. During my time there, very few people had the inclination or appetite to take on technically intensive work and bulk of the crowd was in only because they needed a job and it was easy to get one here. Plus the motivation of many people was getting easy abroad travel opportunities and ability to get by life doing low intensity tech work at a good monthly pay.
giis 9y ago
As someone who worked with outsourced IT services companies, I highly recommend you to join product based companies. Most of the work done by Indian body shops are not great,they focus on managing legacy codes and some maintenance works. If I get a time-machine, I'll go back in time and avoid the mistake of joining services-based IT companies. :-)
_jgdh 9y ago
As an American your experience might be different from the thousands of Indian grads that are hired every year. But I wouldn't bet on it, and I'd stay as far away as possible if I could. It's a body shop and the office politics are insane.
known 9y ago
Infosys is making money by selling software engineers, not software to USA/EU :(
- unlivingthing 9y ago
  Yes, and they sell the worst ones! This leaves a negative impact on our (Indian) image globally.
  - samfisher83 9y ago
    They have like 200k employees. You can't make a statement like this. Not everyone can come to the US. They give an opportunity for a lot of people to get out of india. Everybody can't work for facebook or google. Many companies don't even want to deal with hassle of immigration and they give you an opportunity to do that.
bgdam 9y ago
If you are passionate about writing software, this is a company best avoided. Recruiters in India make it a point of stating that the company they are hiring for is 'not like Infosys'. That should give you a good idea of just how terrible an employer they are.
sumedh 9y ago
Just keep in mind that the replies you will get will most probably be applicable to their Indian offices not the US office.
- nonamechicken 9y ago
  This is true. Americans will most likely get royalty treatment (my observation having worked on both sides). They will treat Indians like they are nothing. You complain, they ignore you or put you in bad projects.
arjie 9y ago
Either work for a company building their product or consult with someone to build them their product. Don't work for a company that consults for someone to build their product.
- MrBuddyCasino 9y ago
  >> Either work for a company building their product That can get boring in the long run. >> or consult with someone to build them their product So freelancing? Hard to get interesting projects that way. Also, you'll have to travel, won't have colleagues and need to do sales. >> Don't work for a company that consults for someone to build their product. It can be alright if you're in the high-end, boutique consultancy market. New challenging project every x months, like-minded colleagues, fast skill growth. But yeah, avoid the body-shops like the plague.
nu11p01n73R 9y ago
> Being a programmer at a company like Infosys I worked with a person who asked me what PHP was. If you are still not convinced, 1. There is a very small chance that you will be working on what you were promised when hiring. 2. Your interests or background doesn't matter(More true if you are fresh out of college). You know in and out of Java. Doesn't matter, go send emails for rest of your life. 3. I am not saying that there are good projects. There are but very few and the resource pool is very big that your chance of getting a good project is very small. If you have contacts, then you can get tagged to some projects based on their requirements.(This works only if you have enough experience) If you really want to improve your career as a programmer, join a product company or a startup. You will get chance to learn a lot and work with awesome people who can motivate you to be a better engineer.
- yo7 9y ago
  As some one who has worked at startups, product companies and bluechips, if you are starting your career, then an established firm for a year or so is best. Why? Cause you learn process and quality from experienced ppl who have time. At product firms and startups that is rarely the case. You will learn a lot there but mostly the hard way and the wrong way.
mikekchar 9y ago
Disclaimer: I know nothing about Infosys, but I've worked in "body shops" before. IT service companies are difficult places to work. Normally you have very little control over what you're going to work on. Where I worked, I came in as a C++ programmer and I was sent out for COBOL jobs. I ended up navigating myself away from the COBOL jobs, but it takes a fair amount of political finesse. In the end, I quit after about 7 months and they sued me for breach of contract :-) (Luckily, they backed down after my new employer offered me legal assistance). The thing is that these companies have sales people whose job it is to land contracts -- any contract. They get paid based on landing the contract. So you may find yourself teaming up with a sales person and being told to say whatever you can to land the contract. This is unpleasant (and if you are lucky you can avoid that work, especially if you don't have much experience). Next, once the contracts are landed, people are assigned to the contract. Square pegs, round holes... these are details that your manager doesn't want to worry about. The contract needs people. You are a person. OK, we're good to go! Next (despite what you may have heard), most companies don't outsource interesting work. Big companies, especially, have permanent staff. If they outsource the good stuff, then the permanent staff will leave. Because they want to outsource something (to "save" money), it's the crappy, under-specified project that is guaranteed to fail anyway (i.e. no manager wants to touch it). That's what you get to work on. Now, this can be good or it can be bad, depending on your point of view. When you are working in a body shop, you can pretty much suck horribly and not that many people will care. If your project fails miserably, you will be shuffled off to the next project -- because you're a person and project need people (Yep, we're good to go!) Of course, your manager will be shouting at you. The sales person will be shouting at you. The person overlooking the project from the contracting company will be shouting at you. But, you can pretty much rest easy in the knowledge that since your main credential for being on the project is that you're a person, then you probably won't be fired. Except... if you do something stupid -- like sign off on a code review and accept responsibility for something. In that case, your manager will love you. They will kiss you on the head as they boot you out the door, promising to name one of their children after you. After all, you have fallen on the sword and protected them from the same fate. Yeah... I don't recommend working in a place like that...
- Akonkagva2 9y ago
justin66 9y ago
You will be working with some of the dumbest people on Earth and most of your clients will hate you. You might think I'm exaggerating...
- kumarvvr 9y ago
  Very true. Key point is "some" I have seen exceptionally brilliant people and people even dumber than rocks. Taking my own example, I was interviewed for IBM, fresh out of college. Qualifications for getting up-to the interview part : >5.9 CGPA, a bachelor's degree in any stream (Electrical, Civil, Mechanical, Aero, Computer Science, etc.) Selection process : 1. Written test that is mostly aptitude questions, toughness of questions well below that of GMAT. So if you can manage to score a 400+ in GMAT, this test would be a cake walk. A few questions on programming, mostly C. 2. A Technical interview round, comically out of context to the needs of the current job. The interviewer was a guy, no more than 5 years older than me, asking questions about a few math puzzles, a few logic puzzles, etc. 3. An HR interview, mostly checking communication skills I guess. It went like this. Q : What did you do yesterday? A : Watched Lord of the Rings trilogy at home. Q : What is the movie about? A : [All my days of binge watching F.R.I.E.N.D.S made my English a bit fluent and, I guess smooth] Explained the whole trilogy, blah, blah, blah. [ Note, I'm not a native English speaker, and this happened in 2007 ] End of the interview. I truly felt that If this is what they are asking everyone, then they are not here for recruitment, but just to fill up some positions with people.
- nonamechicken 9y ago
  If they put dumb people to work on your project, either your company don't really care about your project or Infosys don't really value your business.
gigatexal 9y ago
Research the conditions of sweatshops ;-)
praneshp 9y ago
Depends on your alternatives and your current level (of experience). For a brand new grad, if you can get into any product company, you're better off than going to Infosys, simply because of your next options. If your other options are TCS/CTS/Wipro, I don't know if Infosys is much worse than those companies.

by novia 9y ago

I have a technical interview with this company next week. Anyone want to fill me in on the good the bad and the ugly of being a programmer at a company like Infosys?

ap46 9y ago

For the love of god just get into any product shop, take eLitmus or AMCAT & leave BigIT. There's every less to learn, high restrictions on taking up choice assignments & so many more reasons. You can read up so many answers from Quora.

novia 9y ago
I am a US citizen just graduating from a college, I haven't been in big IT yet. I'm just starting out with computer science.
- iamalchemist 9y ago
  Join a Sofware product company. You will have a lot more exposure IT products than in IT services.
- raverbashing 9y ago
  There are many, many better choices than that company But to each one their own, I guess
mobutu 9y ago
Yeah join Google, Facebook or Apple instead!!

leoharsha2 9y ago

I highly recommend you NOT to join this company as a programmer because you'd have no growth and also, they pay you peanuts and earn millions. They treat you like shit. You'll be just another fish in the sea. The only good thing about joining this company is good work-life balance as there is no much work for you to do.

abhi152 9y ago
I find it weird when people curse Indian IT companies which were once their employers. Is it not true that once upon a time you were only fit to join them because no one else would have employed you.
- kamaal 9y ago
  I find it really strange that people are down voting this comment. Not only do these Big IT companies hire in mass, they also spend insane amounts of money and time training students who come out of college without exposure to real work. Yeah they pay peanuts and yes you would be just a face in the crowd. But they likely give you the biggest break of your life. People need to show some gratitude.
  - nu11p01n73R 9y ago
    Gratitude for what? Training? 1. The training is useful only if you are allocated to the project in the same domain. 2. You are trained in some relevant tech so that you can look for jobs else where. Both of this is not the case. Mostly everyone is trained in mysql, language(Java, C# etc) or maybe mainframe systems. What extra are you getting over a self taught programmer. (You would get very less in real because the later has some experience working with some project where as you have none). You are then allocated to some support project where you don't get a chance to write a single line of code.
    - kamaal 9y ago
      Did not understand what you are complaining against. There is no university education or any kind of training for life. My entire experience in tech is learning a new piece of technology every few years. Any company that is likely to hire can only give you base set of skills, beyond this its on you take it forward from there. Also in my experience these companies have routine training for most bleeding edge tech. Not many people sign up for it. During my time there, very few people had the inclination or appetite to take on technically intensive work and bulk of the crowd was in only because they needed a job and it was easy to get one here. Plus the motivation of many people was getting easy abroad travel opportunities and ability to get by life doing low intensity tech work at a good monthly pay.

giis 9y ago

As someone who worked with outsourced IT services companies, I highly recommend you to join product based companies. Most of the work done by Indian body shops are not great,they focus on managing legacy codes and some maintenance works. If I get a time-machine, I'll go back in time and avoid the mistake of joining services-based IT companies. :-)

_jgdh 9y ago

As an American your experience might be different from the thousands of Indian grads that are hired every year. But I wouldn't bet on it, and I'd stay as far away as possible if I could. It's a body shop and the office politics are insane.

known 9y ago

Infosys is making money by selling software engineers, not software to USA/EU :(

unlivingthing 9y ago
Yes, and they sell the worst ones! This leaves a negative impact on our (Indian) image globally.
- samfisher83 9y ago
  They have like 200k employees. You can't make a statement like this. Not everyone can come to the US. They give an opportunity for a lot of people to get out of india. Everybody can't work for facebook or google. Many companies don't even want to deal with hassle of immigration and they give you an opportunity to do that.

bgdam 9y ago

If you are passionate about writing software, this is a company best avoided. Recruiters in India make it a point of stating that the company they are hiring for is 'not like Infosys'. That should give you a good idea of just how terrible an employer they are.

sumedh 9y ago

Just keep in mind that the replies you will get will most probably be applicable to their Indian offices not the US office.

nonamechicken 9y ago
This is true. Americans will most likely get royalty treatment (my observation having worked on both sides). They will treat Indians like they are nothing. You complain, they ignore you or put you in bad projects.

arjie 9y ago

Either work for a company building their product or consult with someone to build them their product. Don't work for a company that consults for someone to build their product.

MrBuddyCasino 9y ago
>> Either work for a company building their product That can get boring in the long run. >> or consult with someone to build them their product So freelancing? Hard to get interesting projects that way. Also, you'll have to travel, won't have colleagues and need to do sales. >> Don't work for a company that consults for someone to build their product. It can be alright if you're in the high-end, boutique consultancy market. New challenging project every x months, like-minded colleagues, fast skill growth. But yeah, avoid the body-shops like the plague.

nu11p01n73R 9y ago

> Being a programmer at a company like Infosys I worked with a person who asked me what PHP was. If you are still not convinced, 1. There is a very small chance that you will be working on what you were promised when hiring. 2. Your interests or background doesn't matter(More true if you are fresh out of college). You know in and out of Java. Doesn't matter, go send emails for rest of your life. 3. I am not saying that there are good projects. There are but very few and the resource pool is very big that your chance of getting a good project is very small. If you have contacts, then you can get tagged to some projects based on their requirements.(This works only if you have enough experience) If you really want to improve your career as a programmer, join a product company or a startup. You will get chance to learn a lot and work with awesome people who can motivate you to be a better engineer.

yo7 9y ago
As some one who has worked at startups, product companies and bluechips, if you are starting your career, then an established firm for a year or so is best. Why? Cause you learn process and quality from experienced ppl who have time. At product firms and startups that is rarely the case. You will learn a lot there but mostly the hard way and the wrong way.

mikekchar 9y ago

Disclaimer: I know nothing about Infosys, but I've worked in "body shops" before. IT service companies are difficult places to work. Normally you have very little control over what you're going to work on. Where I worked, I came in as a C++ programmer and I was sent out for COBOL jobs. I ended up navigating myself away from the COBOL jobs, but it takes a fair amount of political finesse. In the end, I quit after about 7 months and they sued me for breach of contract :-) (Luckily, they backed down after my new employer offered me legal assistance). The thing is that these companies have sales people whose job it is to land contracts -- any contract. They get paid based on landing the contract. So you may find yourself teaming up with a sales person and being told to say whatever you can to land the contract. This is unpleasant (and if you are lucky you can avoid that work, especially if you don't have much experience). Next, once the contracts are landed, people are assigned to the contract. Square pegs, round holes... these are details that your manager doesn't want to worry about. The contract needs people. You are a person. OK, we're good to go! Next (despite what you may have heard), most companies don't outsource interesting work. Big companies, especially, have permanent staff. If they outsource the good stuff, then the permanent staff will leave. Because they want to outsource something (to "save" money), it's the crappy, under-specified project that is guaranteed to fail anyway (i.e. no manager wants to touch it). That's what you get to work on. Now, this can be good or it can be bad, depending on your point of view. When you are working in a body shop, you can pretty much suck horribly and not that many people will care. If your project fails miserably, you will be shuffled off to the next project -- because you're a person and project need people (Yep, we're good to go!) Of course, your manager will be shouting at you. The sales person will be shouting at you. The person overlooking the project from the contracting company will be shouting at you. But, you can pretty much rest easy in the knowledge that since your main credential for being on the project is that you're a person, then you probably won't be fired. Except... if you do something stupid -- like sign off on a code review and accept responsibility for something. In that case, your manager will love you. They will kiss you on the head as they boot you out the door, promising to name one of their children after you. After all, you have fallen on the sword and protected them from the same fate. Yeah... I don't recommend working in a place like that...

Akonkagva2 9y ago

justin66 9y ago

You will be working with some of the dumbest people on Earth and most of your clients will hate you. You might think I'm exaggerating...

kumarvvr 9y ago
Very true. Key point is "some" I have seen exceptionally brilliant people and people even dumber than rocks. Taking my own example, I was interviewed for IBM, fresh out of college. Qualifications for getting up-to the interview part : >5.9 CGPA, a bachelor's degree in any stream (Electrical, Civil, Mechanical, Aero, Computer Science, etc.) Selection process : 1. Written test that is mostly aptitude questions, toughness of questions well below that of GMAT. So if you can manage to score a 400+ in GMAT, this test would be a cake walk. A few questions on programming, mostly C. 2. A Technical interview round, comically out of context to the needs of the current job. The interviewer was a guy, no more than 5 years older than me, asking questions about a few math puzzles, a few logic puzzles, etc. 3. An HR interview, mostly checking communication skills I guess. It went like this. Q : What did you do yesterday? A : Watched Lord of the Rings trilogy at home. Q : What is the movie about? A : [All my days of binge watching F.R.I.E.N.D.S made my English a bit fluent and, I guess smooth] Explained the whole trilogy, blah, blah, blah. [ Note, I'm not a native English speaker, and this happened in 2007 ] End of the interview. I truly felt that If this is what they are asking everyone, then they are not here for recruitment, but just to fill up some positions with people.
nonamechicken 9y ago
If they put dumb people to work on your project, either your company don't really care about your project or Infosys don't really value your business.

gigatexal 9y ago

Research the conditions of sweatshops ;-)

praneshp 9y ago

Depends on your alternatives and your current level (of experience). For a brand new grad, if you can get into any product company, you're better off than going to Infosys, simply because of your next options. If your other options are TCS/CTS/Wipro, I don't know if Infosys is much worse than those companies.