Pros
Good breadth of work (relative to what is available in the Indian IT services industry); you can usually get the kind of work you are interested in if you are persistent Decent Training facilities & opportunities to learn Still a few good folks left (who can be useful role models to learn from) The Tata Brand
Cons
Poor Pay; Normally, the only reward for good work is more work! The recent global economic crisis (2008 - 2009) was cited as reason for reduction in variable pay and the freeze on salary increases & promotions (Even though these increases are not even that big given present compensation policy). Please check what kind of compensation & increase the top management received in the same period. If you are smart this will tell you a lot of things about the company & you probably won't have to spend any more time reading reviews !! A culture that encourages mediocrity; poor performance goes unpunished & great performance is unrewarded. Opportunities to travel on-site (usually the only way to be financially well-rewarded if you work as a developer in India) have sharply reduced in recent times. Although such on-site chances might still appear easier to get than elsewhere they require blessings from the "management" but building good rapport with the right people in the management usually involves playing politics, licking boots & a host of other despicable activities which no honest, self-respecting individual in their right mind will even consider Conservative policies which mandate "x years of experience" as a prerequisite for any kind of growth really lead to situation where top performance & productivity are not differentiated. Hence, career progression is painfully slow. This causes most of the good & talented people to leave the organization early. Consequently, the middle management is largely incompetent & filled with people with very little technical know-how, poor project & people management skills & sometimes awful communication skills too. Dishonesty: Tons of tall claims in its corporate manifesto. Case in point: "Respect for the Individual" is supposed to be a company 'value'. Employees are referred to as "Resources" & the way they are treated by the management & HR (actually the part of HR that assigns projects... You often see lines of people waiting anxiously for 20-30 minutes outside HR cubicles without even being taken notice of) and the corporate policies w.r.t. to compensation, performance recognition, transportation (even for those who work late nights),... and yes, even tea/coffee quality (purchased using coupons) will give you some idea of how much "Respect for the Individual" this firm has. Politics: Key words used to demand 60+ hrs and weekend work: 'Ownership', 'Responsibility', 'Key member', 'Critical Project' Office politics based on: Regional & linguistic ties, ability to indulge in sycophancy, ability to deceive & project the right 'image' (e.g. Claim to be busy working on some important task day & night while actually checking the stock market or surfing the web).
