Tata Consultancy Services

[barely_pointless]

bodyshop, had 4 of their people on my team last year (DW Business Objects), 1 very good, other three did not know their a4se from their elbow, felt sorry for them, they are brought from India, Client is charged 1200 a day, they are paid about 200 aud a day, share a house with 12 other Indian Batchelors....you get the idea.....

They are primarily motivated by fear and arbitrage, fear of losing their job and arbitrage of the currency so that they can send 100 dollars a day back to their families in India. Hence they work all hours god or Shiva gives them

Not a real nice setup and I would certainly not work for them.

[Ardesco]

Like any other indian outsourcing company really.

You will have one or two guys in the team that really know thier stuff (these are invariably the guys that they send out to client sites around the world) and about 40 who are completely clueless or have such a small area of specialisation they are worthless.

My favorite memory of working with Tata Infotech was pull a dev down to a test lab and saying:

"Look this system doesn't work, despite the fact you assured me it would."
(The process was importing a CSV file)

50 minutes later after the guy had modified the config files and frigged the code a bit he finally got it to import the csv file and turned round to me and said:

"See not a problem, it's working"

He then proceded to head for the door... I pulled him back tore a strip off him, had a few words about version control and suggested he go and fix it properly. Two days later it (after next release) it still wasn't working properly....

Not to say it is all bad, but I wouldn't pay them to do anything for me.

[King Cnvt]

I know Tata engineering made the naff city rover

HTH

It takes some doing to make a "Rover" that's actually more naff than a Rover.

[Numptycorner]

It takes some doing to make a "Rover" that's actually more naff than a Rover.

I'd say a 90s rover is better than a 90s ford. A reasonable 'does what it say on the tin' car 6/10

[KackAttack]

I've worked with a number of TCS consultants over the years. They are locked into a contract with TCS, after a while they realise that they are worth more rupee on the open market.

A few abscond, and I was told that the company magazine publishes pictures of the absconders along with a reward for capture.

[Buffoon]

A few abscond, and I was told that the company magazine publishes pictures of the absconders along with a reward for capture.

Is the reward the same if they are dead or do you have to return them alive?

[DodgyAgent]

There can be no worse indightment of the contractor fraternity when companies prefer to pay unskilled Asians £1200 per day instead of paying "professional contractors" say £700 per day. The fact that these companies would trust people like TCS ahead of using UK contractors is a very sad reflection of their perception of the UK contractor market place.

So many of you come onto this site and behave in such away as to suggest that the clients are lucky to be employing you, and that you are somehow worthy of red carpet treatment, and that society not only owes you a living but an extraordinarliy affluent living at that.

We see a lot of contractors moaning about agents, moaning about clients, and moaning about just about everything. Until you people begin behaving like businesses whereby your clients are treated as customers, then the use of cheap poorly skilled foreigners will continue to increase.

If a client is prepared to pay twice as much for a poor communicator/poorly skilled individual, than a so-called highly skilled contractor than what does that say about contractors?

[Euro-commuter]

Like any other indian outsourcing company really.

You will have one or two guys in the team that really know thier stuff (these are invariably the guys that they send out to client sites around the world) and about 40 who are completely clueless or have such a small area of specialisation they are worthless.

Sounds not unlike a very large western "consulting" firm to me.

[Euro-commuter]

If a client is prepared to pay twice as much for a poor communicator/poorly skilled individual, than a so-called highly skilled contractor than what does that say about contractors?

What does it say about clients? That they don't want to buy (or rent) a body directly, they want to buy a solution. That's why they'll pay a fortune for "consultants" from a big consulting firm, even if the individuals that gets them are not as good as the contractors that they could have for half the money.

And that's what it says about contractors too: that clients don't see them as solutions, just as bodies.

I am unsure whose fault that is in all cases, if indeed it is a fault.

[barely_pointless]

If a client is prepared to pay twice as much for a poor communicator/poorly skilled individual, than a so-called highly skilled contractor than what does that say about contractors?

It says more about the client than it does about contractors, but you know I can't help feeling that we used to say about TCS
"9 women and 1 month does not a baby make"
is so so true.

and besides, it's down to simple economics, these guys learn the stuff by rote, they do a clear and simple job, there is no creativity , there is little agility of thought or design, they are cheap and you can have lots of them for one experienced caucasian clear speaking consultant.

I have just recently has the pleasure of talking to a sub continent "Data Modeller" who insisted that the design of a DW must fit the model of a BO Universe and who then it turned out could not write a simple sql statement to join two tables together, I'm all for helping people out but when they start taking the pi55 , I let them fall into their own traps, and don't even get me started on that large "red" country with it's huge workforce and it's coming tech revolution, if you want to see how loss of face and significant cultural, actually let me rephrase that, alien cultural differences can be unworkable then I suggest you get a few outsourced projects up and running in China.

we have indeed seen nothing yet ..........