Why is work from home option, not available in India ?
Today I am in a good mood to write.. So let me punch in few more lines on this blog after which its pure source code..
There has been a debate in my office shuttle about why work from home option is not available in India. Its available in few companies.
So here is my take on the so called topic.
Work from home is a superb option when the work we do actually adds to the client's business. You may sit at office or at home but still the client wins because you help him with your solution, which you churn out from your home.
But in most (so called) software companies, adding value to client's business is far far away. Not sure we actually add value, but we sure add loads of TIMESHEETS / INVOICES at the end of the month.
Each individual working from office is billed in the timesheet at a particular rate (say 25-30 USD per hour).
So if work from home option is provided, and if the client becomes aware of this ( yes he will, he will only have to provide for the infrastructure of course), he will tell the company to cut down on the billing rate per hour.
Yes, per hour billing is inclusive of AC / power / biscuits / water / tea etc etc. So work from home drastically reduces billing and therefore loss of business.
Yup, I re-iterate, here in India business means sending timesheets to clients for approval.. Whether your work adds any value to the client or not, seriously takes a back seat or may be the BABY Seat :)-
So work from home option is strictly NO NO in companies which only do business via TIMESHEETS.
Secondly managers (who get paid a lot) hardly involve in any technical stuffs and are more interested in doing contractor kind of jobs like asking status to developers would end up being JOBLESS if all developers start working from home...
Thirdly some bare basic infrastructure cost which company hates to invest !
Cheers ,
PS - Some companies have work from home option available.. Kudos to them :)-
Disclaimer.. All of this post is only my opinion. Any co-incidences is regretted
There has been a debate in my office shuttle about why work from home option is not available in India. Its available in few companies.
So here is my take on the so called topic.
Work from home is a superb option when the work we do actually adds to the client's business. You may sit at office or at home but still the client wins because you help him with your solution, which you churn out from your home.
But in most (so called) software companies, adding value to client's business is far far away. Not sure we actually add value, but we sure add loads of TIMESHEETS / INVOICES at the end of the month.
Each individual working from office is billed in the timesheet at a particular rate (say 25-30 USD per hour).
So if work from home option is provided, and if the client becomes aware of this ( yes he will, he will only have to provide for the infrastructure of course), he will tell the company to cut down on the billing rate per hour.
Yes, per hour billing is inclusive of AC / power / biscuits / water / tea etc etc. So work from home drastically reduces billing and therefore loss of business.
Yup, I re-iterate, here in India business means sending timesheets to clients for approval.. Whether your work adds any value to the client or not, seriously takes a back seat or may be the BABY Seat :)-
So work from home option is strictly NO NO in companies which only do business via TIMESHEETS.
Secondly managers (who get paid a lot) hardly involve in any technical stuffs and are more interested in doing contractor kind of jobs like asking status to developers would end up being JOBLESS if all developers start working from home...
Thirdly some bare basic infrastructure cost which company hates to invest !
Cheers ,
PS - Some companies have work from home option available.. Kudos to them :)-
Disclaimer.. All of this post is only my opinion. Any co-incidences is regretted
Why are non technical managers billed in a software company ?
Disclaimer - this post comes out of my own head, and any co-incidences with anything, anyone is mere fictional.
In a software company each individual is billed based on the number of hours he puts in. Software companies can be generally of two categories (atleast two is what I know. there may be others which I do not know).
1. Product based software company.
2. Service based software company.
Product based company can be India based or it might be a company from other country which has set up a shop in India as a subsidary. Remember its a subsidiary, there are hell a lot difference between a subsidary and one headquartered in other country.
Service based company provide customized software services to clients on demand. external clients pay money to them to get the work done. Services can range from consulting, software design, development, migration, 24X7 support, maintenance, enhancement. (Honestly speaking, I have seen only maintenance and 24X7 projects in India).
What I feel the main difference between product based and service based is that, Product based companies have their own intellectual property, their own software (own stuffs) which they can install a 1000 times over 1000 different places and sell to 20000 clients and still no one questions them.
But in service company everything is owned by the client, including the source code. Whenever the client wants, he can shift from one vendor to a different vendor. (cost cutting I say ).
This post is all about billing, my main area of confusion is
" Why are non technical people in a project billed out of project funds "
I have seen this happen in both service and product companies and in some service based companies where it does not happen.
As we move up the career ladder (in India) we are mostly inclined towards a managerial role. Which means managers are people with more number of years of experience under their belt. Managers hardly do any project related work like coding, debugging, bug fixing. (Exceptions exist of course) They are more into project planning (using estimates prepared by developers of course), budget allocation (hardly you need a SSLC pass candidate for doing that mathematics), talking to the client and promising whatever comes to their mind, the developers being caught off guard (of course)
So what do these managers actually do after all these years of experience which actually adds value to the business. May be I have wrongly interpreted the meaning of business.
Business for me is how much value add we do to the client's business. like how much of our code goes into production and saves time and earns revenue. But for managers business means, how much billing happens for the company (where they work). They are hardly concerned about what value add we do to the clients. (well in most companies this happens, atleast in the last 7 companies I have worked for in the last 7 years this happens).
In case of 24X7 support / maintenance we directly add value to the customer. .but yeah..do you need an engineering degree to do that ? to change a single line of code over few weeks ?
If this is the case, why are these so called managers billed under project funding when they are doing NOTHING TECHNICAL WORK concerned to the project.
How a company manages its projects should be its headache. (I mean it should be at its own cost, not at clients fund). Why does the project funding gets eaten up by these people who hardly contribute.
Such is life. I hope we soon have a famous CEO like that of the 80's who used to fire people. Until then I crib I crib...
Cheers,
PS - I hope to remain technical in many more years to come.
I literally had a manager who used to stand behind people to see what they are doing. Oh yeah.. I forgot, once a lady said.. " They are actually paid to do that "... O really .. " You are the next (managerial candidate) I thought "
In a software company each individual is billed based on the number of hours he puts in. Software companies can be generally of two categories (atleast two is what I know. there may be others which I do not know).
1. Product based software company.
2. Service based software company.
Product based company can be India based or it might be a company from other country which has set up a shop in India as a subsidary. Remember its a subsidiary, there are hell a lot difference between a subsidary and one headquartered in other country.
Service based company provide customized software services to clients on demand. external clients pay money to them to get the work done. Services can range from consulting, software design, development, migration, 24X7 support, maintenance, enhancement. (Honestly speaking, I have seen only maintenance and 24X7 projects in India).
What I feel the main difference between product based and service based is that, Product based companies have their own intellectual property, their own software (own stuffs) which they can install a 1000 times over 1000 different places and sell to 20000 clients and still no one questions them.
But in service company everything is owned by the client, including the source code. Whenever the client wants, he can shift from one vendor to a different vendor. (cost cutting I say ).
This post is all about billing, my main area of confusion is
" Why are non technical people in a project billed out of project funds "
I have seen this happen in both service and product companies and in some service based companies where it does not happen.
As we move up the career ladder (in India) we are mostly inclined towards a managerial role. Which means managers are people with more number of years of experience under their belt. Managers hardly do any project related work like coding, debugging, bug fixing. (Exceptions exist of course) They are more into project planning (using estimates prepared by developers of course), budget allocation (hardly you need a SSLC pass candidate for doing that mathematics), talking to the client and promising whatever comes to their mind, the developers being caught off guard (of course)
So what do these managers actually do after all these years of experience which actually adds value to the business. May be I have wrongly interpreted the meaning of business.
Business for me is how much value add we do to the client's business. like how much of our code goes into production and saves time and earns revenue. But for managers business means, how much billing happens for the company (where they work). They are hardly concerned about what value add we do to the clients. (well in most companies this happens, atleast in the last 7 companies I have worked for in the last 7 years this happens).
In case of 24X7 support / maintenance we directly add value to the customer. .but yeah..do you need an engineering degree to do that ? to change a single line of code over few weeks ?
If this is the case, why are these so called managers billed under project funding when they are doing NOTHING TECHNICAL WORK concerned to the project.
How a company manages its projects should be its headache. (I mean it should be at its own cost, not at clients fund). Why does the project funding gets eaten up by these people who hardly contribute.
Such is life. I hope we soon have a famous CEO like that of the 80's who used to fire people. Until then I crib I crib...
Cheers,
PS - I hope to remain technical in many more years to come.
I literally had a manager who used to stand behind people to see what they are doing. Oh yeah.. I forgot, once a lady said.. " They are actually paid to do that "... O really .. " You are the next (managerial candidate) I thought "
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