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Who uses outsourcing firms like Wipro (government agencies)? What do they do? It seems to me, living in the bubble of haute tech, that the only things you ever

by lainga 8y ago

Who uses outsourcing firms like Wipro (government agencies)? What do they do? It seems to me, living in the bubble of haute tech, that the only things you ever hear about these firms are (a.) they exist and (b.) they are very large.

redleggedfrog 8y ago
I wonder if it's because it's multiple layers down the "company stack." Company A hires company B hires company C and C uses Wipro.
- apoph3nia 8y ago
  It's a fun sight when all of the subcontractor of subcontractor of subcontractor recursion chains form a beanstalk into the heavens /peanutgallery
gowld 8y ago
non-"tech" companies use Wipro etc for their websites and internal IT tools. All the stuff that's too boring or custom for Microsoft and Google etc.
- freehunter 8y ago
  A lot of places also contract out their server administration or firewall administration to places like Wipro. A fraction of a shared resource is a lot cheaper than several full time employees. I've never seen anyone happy with the arrangement, management is merely satisfied by the cost savings. Quality is far (far) lower, but price is far lower as well.
gav 8y ago
Wipro has over 1200 clients worldwide. From their Q4 FY18 presentation: https://www.wipro.com/content/dam/nexus/en/investor/quarterly-results/2017-2018/q4fy18/wipro-investor-presentation-q4-fy18.pdf https://www.wipro.com/content/dam/nexus/en/investor/quarterl... Supposedly they are used by 150 of the Fortune 500.
- chris_wot 8y ago
  I hope that this will start reducing over time. They clearly lied and dissembled in that conference call.
ragona 8y ago
The area I see these firms get a ton of work is in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) work. TONS of companies run their HR / Finance / Sales / etc departments on things like Salesforce and Oracle and whatever, and there are huge numbers of consultants whose jobs are to build custom installations over and over. I've never worked in the field, but my wife did. It's definitely reaaaally different from the way that the rest of the software industry works.
- pm90 8y ago
  Its also a hugely lucrative ones for people who like working in Software as a job as opposed to Software Developers who like programming, enjoy the craft etc. Not to say that such people aren't good at their craft; just that they're more vocational: they understand certain technologies and know many different ways to configure them which is what businesses need and pay them good money for. It can also be a stressful one if the tech you're familiar with goes out of style. Lots of re-training involved, years of experience is basically worthless, etc.
  - ragona 8y ago
    Yeah, when I first encountered the field I was quite confused. I’d interview developers who had worked for years, but only knew about really weirdly narrow areas of SAP or whatever and definitely couldn’t display the kinds of skills that we usually evaluate for. It’s so different as to feel like a completely different field; we just happen to share titles.
perch56 8y ago
A few years back I met with a few engineers working for Wipro. They were designing the dashboard electronics behind the new BMW 5 or 7 series. I was shocked to find that out at the time. Found some news about it here in case someone is curious on more info: https://www.wipro.com/newsroom/press-releases/archives/wipro-joins-car-connectivity-consortium/ https://www.wipro.com/newsroom/press-releases/archives/wipro...
__david__ 8y ago
A company I worked at bought Firewire driver code from them (this was 15-20 years ago). The code was really, really terrible and we eventually had to replace it with our own code (which was 20x shorter, faster, and more spec compliant). In retrospect, and as much as we in engineering hated their code, it was probably worth what they paid for it just because it got us 75% there and took pressure off the team while we created the replacement code.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
korethr 8y ago
One of the things they do is man the call centers in which the call agents are only allowed to: a) open tickets b) follow a script intended for people who didn't do basic troubleshooting before calling tech support c) be very sorry that your business is losing money due to the service interruption d) give you vague non-answers as to when the team with the authority to actually fix things but which is not allowed to interact directly with customers will actually get around to working on your issue, and e) ask you to kindly rate them highly on the customer satisfaction survey that you will be automatically connected to after this call. Another thing they do is supply you with an endless cascade of developers who rotate in and out of your dev team on a 3-month basis. In those three months they will a) tell your IT team that they need a newer laptop because their current one gets slow when trying to run 3 instances of Visual Studio concurrently b) wonder why hard drive failures are correlated with rough handling of the laptop c) ask IT to troubleshoot their compilation errors d) only save their code locally instead of to a shared repo e) get upset when 3 months of said locally saved code, which IT was never told about, gets lost when the laptop, previously issued to the dev they replaced, is re-imaged before redeployment as per company policy/standard-procedure f) thereafter dodge turning in laptops to IT after their rotation ends, instead giving it directly to their replacement, causing IT's stores of deployable laptops to get depleted, and thus causing IT to come hunting after the never-turned-in laptops, because the next wave of 3-month devs is coming and hardware to issue them is needed, and finally g) treat company-issued laptops so roughly that when IT eventually does them back, what was brand shiny and new 3 months prior is now chipped, cracked, scratched and covered in grease and crumbs, and has a full kitten's worth of fluff accumulation in the cooling fan. Okay, that last one was a bit hyperbolic, but every single point there did happen, and more than once. Yes, I have been embittered by contractors from these large Indian IT firms, both as an end user 'supported' by them and as a co-worker supporting them. My experience with them has not been a positive one.
- technion 8y ago
  That c) particularly hit home. I had a contractor insist a T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM is usually caused by a RAM fault and sent people to replace hardware.
  - 8y ago
Spooky23 8y ago
People who do RFPs for projects.

by lainga 8y ago

redleggedfrog 8y ago

I wonder if it's because it's multiple layers down the "company stack." Company A hires company B hires company C and C uses Wipro.

apoph3nia 8y ago
It's a fun sight when all of the subcontractor of subcontractor of subcontractor recursion chains form a beanstalk into the heavens /peanutgallery

gowld 8y ago

non-"tech" companies use Wipro etc for their websites and internal IT tools. All the stuff that's too boring or custom for Microsoft and Google etc.

freehunter 8y ago
A lot of places also contract out their server administration or firewall administration to places like Wipro. A fraction of a shared resource is a lot cheaper than several full time employees. I've never seen anyone happy with the arrangement, management is merely satisfied by the cost savings. Quality is far (far) lower, but price is far lower as well.

gav 8y ago

Wipro has over 1200 clients worldwide. From their Q4 FY18 presentation: https://www.wipro.com/content/dam/nexus/en/investor/quarterly-results/2017-2018/q4fy18/wipro-investor-presentation-q4-fy18.pdf https://www.wipro.com/content/dam/nexus/en/investor/quarterl... Supposedly they are used by 150 of the Fortune 500.

chris_wot 8y ago
I hope that this will start reducing over time. They clearly lied and dissembled in that conference call.

ragona 8y ago

The area I see these firms get a ton of work is in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) work. TONS of companies run their HR / Finance / Sales / etc departments on things like Salesforce and Oracle and whatever, and there are huge numbers of consultants whose jobs are to build custom installations over and over. I've never worked in the field, but my wife did. It's definitely reaaaally different from the way that the rest of the software industry works.

pm90 8y ago
Its also a hugely lucrative ones for people who like working in Software as a job as opposed to Software Developers who like programming, enjoy the craft etc. Not to say that such people aren't good at their craft; just that they're more vocational: they understand certain technologies and know many different ways to configure them which is what businesses need and pay them good money for. It can also be a stressful one if the tech you're familiar with goes out of style. Lots of re-training involved, years of experience is basically worthless, etc.
- ragona 8y ago
  Yeah, when I first encountered the field I was quite confused. I’d interview developers who had worked for years, but only knew about really weirdly narrow areas of SAP or whatever and definitely couldn’t display the kinds of skills that we usually evaluate for. It’s so different as to feel like a completely different field; we just happen to share titles.

perch56 8y ago

A few years back I met with a few engineers working for Wipro. They were designing the dashboard electronics behind the new BMW 5 or 7 series. I was shocked to find that out at the time. Found some news about it here in case someone is curious on more info: https://www.wipro.com/newsroom/press-releases/archives/wipro-joins-car-connectivity-consortium/ https://www.wipro.com/newsroom/press-releases/archives/wipro...

__david__ 8y ago

A company I worked at bought Firewire driver code from them (this was 15-20 years ago). The code was really, really terrible and we eventually had to replace it with our own code (which was 20x shorter, faster, and more spec compliant). In retrospect, and as much as we in engineering hated their code, it was probably worth what they paid for it just because it got us 75% there and took pressure off the team while we created the replacement code.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

korethr 8y ago

One of the things they do is man the call centers in which the call agents are only allowed to: a) open tickets b) follow a script intended for people who didn't do basic troubleshooting before calling tech support c) be very sorry that your business is losing money due to the service interruption d) give you vague non-answers as to when the team with the authority to actually fix things but which is not allowed to interact directly with customers will actually get around to working on your issue, and e) ask you to kindly rate them highly on the customer satisfaction survey that you will be automatically connected to after this call. Another thing they do is supply you with an endless cascade of developers who rotate in and out of your dev team on a 3-month basis. In those three months they will a) tell your IT team that they need a newer laptop because their current one gets slow when trying to run 3 instances of Visual Studio concurrently b) wonder why hard drive failures are correlated with rough handling of the laptop c) ask IT to troubleshoot their compilation errors d) only save their code locally instead of to a shared repo e) get upset when 3 months of said locally saved code, which IT was never told about, gets lost when the laptop, previously issued to the dev they replaced, is re-imaged before redeployment as per company policy/standard-procedure f) thereafter dodge turning in laptops to IT after their rotation ends, instead giving it directly to their replacement, causing IT's stores of deployable laptops to get depleted, and thus causing IT to come hunting after the never-turned-in laptops, because the next wave of 3-month devs is coming and hardware to issue them is needed, and finally g) treat company-issued laptops so roughly that when IT eventually does them back, what was brand shiny and new 3 months prior is now chipped, cracked, scratched and covered in grease and crumbs, and has a full kitten's worth of fluff accumulation in the cooling fan. Okay, that last one was a bit hyperbolic, but every single point there did happen, and more than once. Yes, I have been embittered by contractors from these large Indian IT firms, both as an end user 'supported' by them and as a co-worker supporting them. My experience with them has not been a positive one.

technion 8y ago
That c) particularly hit home. I had a contractor insist a T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM is usually caused by a RAM fault and sent people to replace hardware.
- 8y ago

Spooky23 8y ago

People who do RFPs for projects.