Reputation is relative. Their reputation is good for what they do - cheap bodies who can scale up and down. Mahindra didn’t survive accounting fraud as an independent company. This could hurt Infosys too.
You mean Satyam?
Infosys shares drop to 10-month low as whistle-blowers target CEO
41–50 of 84 posts
Re: Infosys shares drop to 10-month low as whistle-blowers target CEO
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Doing it with the intention of underdelivering and ballooning costs and time to make more money is fraud though. And make no mistake, no outsourcing company goes to a tender intending to be on time and on budget. It’s not good business for them.
And just how commonly do we see such[1] fraud across any business or industry? Cough , pharmaceutical cos, doctors, social media & search giants, car manufacturing giants. Any of these ring a bell? [1]As in, the above (your) definition of fraud i.e. misleading customers, by deliberately under delivering and over promising. With this definition, many businesses and accepted practices are fraud. IMO, true fraud is what…
Theranos did with fake IP
Yes, I agree that Tata and similar companies are on the level of Theranos.
Re: Infosys shares drop to 10-month low as whistle-blowers target CEO
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a common problem across all big consulting companies, it's not specific to India. I think the real problem is that many of these corporates haven't realised how important IT is to their business. The idea that a bank should outsource development is ridiculous, most of their interaction with customers is going to be through these systems. If they want to differentiate themselves from their competitors then they…
> The idea that a bank should outsource development is ridiculous, most of their interaction with customers is going to be through these systems. If they want to differentiate themselves from their competitors then they need strong IT. I agree with this too. However, this arises 2 doubts in my head: 1. Is Apple outsourcing manufacturing to Foxconn any different from banks outsourcing their IT?[1] 2. Is hiring offshor…
Foxconn has a very direct impact on Apple's product, so any issues with quality would come back to them pretty quickly. Foxconn also has an ongoing partnership which I would expect to be worth a lot of money to them.
On the other hand, everything I've seen so far outsourced in IT in a standard way could come back in any condition. Worst case, it's unusable, but contractors get paid anyway and move to the next client.
Re: Infosys shares drop to 10-month low as whistle-blowers target CEO
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here is an anecdote which might help you understand why. One of my classmates joined infy out of college. His job for the first one year was - email the list of files changed in the day to the client. This friend was called newton in the college, one of the smartest person around. And he was doing one of the most boring job. Client was paying more than 3000 USD per month for this. Of course he automated the work on s…
If you consider overcharging (perceivably) to be akin to defrauding, then a lot more doctors, pharmacy cos. and lawyers are defrauding clients than outsourcing cos. Even though the repercussions of them defrauding their clients is a lot higher. Also it's a fraud because of the oaths they take, of which outsourcing cos. are obliged to take none.
Given how it's such a common thing that it doesn't surprise anyone on the engineering side of things, I'd expect that the corporate management would've wised up to this already. This makes me wonder if both sides of the deal are in on it, and are together extracting money from the larger corporate entity.
Re: Infosys shares drop to 10-month low as whistle-blowers target CEO
#45> The allegations “could severely damage the company’s pristine brand if true, especially in the IT services industry,” Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Anurag Rana wrote Bloomberg must have a different definition of "pristine brand" than a lot of programmers I have met.
It has a pristine anti-brand for me. Seeing InfoSys involvement is a signal to "stay away".
It's gotten really bad. There are whole swathes of companies that we deal with that are great if you can deal with their first-party people, but we're just part of a bundle of services provided to that company through a big Tata/Infosys/Cognizant/etc contract. And that part of it is incredibly toxic.
I think if I get another email with less than a sentence describing a problem, no screenshots, nothing, ending in "do the needful", or a high-priority meeting invitation sent at 7 am for 8:30 am, with no agenda or any indication of what is going to be discussed, I'm going to come unglued. The communication and organizational skills of the project managers I've dealt with leaves so much to be desired that I can't even express it, and there always seems to be such a swirl of people with ambiguous authority involved that just trying to mentally keep track of an org chart is a struggle.
I just groan when I see that we've gotten a new lead; it may pay the bills, but I'm not sure the grey hairs and indigestion are worth it.
Re: Infosys shares drop to 10-month low as whistle-blowers target CEO
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
And just how commonly do we see such[1] fraud across any business or industry? Cough , pharmaceutical cos, doctors, social media & search giants, car manufacturing giants. Any of these ring a bell? [1]As in, the above (your) definition of fraud i.e. misleading customers, by deliberately under delivering and over promising. With this definition, many businesses and accepted practices are fraud. IMO, true fraud is what…
Theranos did with fake IP Yes, I agree that Tata and similar companies are on the level of Theranos.
That's not what I meant, so you mean you disagree.
Sounds like a huge personal bias to me my friend. There's something about these firms which might have affected you directly. I feel sorry for you.
Also, Tata is not TCS. Tata includes Tata Motors which owns the British co. JLR.
Re: Infosys shares drop to 10-month low as whistle-blowers target CEO
#47Infosys and TCS remind me of Uber and Lyft: business models based on magical thinking-rooted exploitation. Engineers need to form their own worker-owned consultancy co-ops and eschew corporations to capture more of the wealth they generate for themselves rather than as underpaid servants of said large corporations.
Uber and Lyft are loss making experiments. Whereas Infosys and TCS are profitable corporations, responsibly hiring hundreds of thousands of people (which they do not plan to fire impulsively like Uber), bringing in huge volumes of trade revenue to India for over a decade. Uber and Lyft use contract workers, rather than getting people on their payroll. Infosys and TCS hire freshers on bonds at salaries that are not ve…
quality != quantity
Re: Infosys shares drop to 10-month low as whistle-blowers target CEO
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Uber and Lyft are loss making experiments. Whereas Infosys and TCS are profitable corporations, responsibly hiring hundreds of thousands of people (which they do not plan to fire impulsively like Uber), bringing in huge volumes of trade revenue to India for over a decade. Uber and Lyft use contract workers, rather than getting people on their payroll. Infosys and TCS hire freshers on bonds at salaries that are not ve…
quality != quantity
Fair enough, I never said that they were quality. Just that they're nothing similar to Uber or Lyft.
Re: Infosys shares drop to 10-month low as whistle-blowers target CEO
#49I see a lot of comments here attributing outsourcing firms to fraud. Let's remember that these cos. win contracts fair and square by taking advantage of myopic tendering processes. If there's something to blame then it's obsolete tender process that make it impossible for quality vendors to compete or for outsourcing firms to make realising proposals. Overpromising and underdelivering is not fraud. Fraud is what VW,…
If there's a knowingly broken process, both sides of it are to blame. One party for using a broken process, the other for exploiting it.
Imagine you own a store with broken locks. A thief learns of that, and comes one night, and plunders your store. Yes, you'd be to blame for being irresponsible and stupid. But the thief would still be liable for theft.
Re: Infosys shares drop to 10-month low as whistle-blowers target CEO
#50I see a lot of comments here attributing outsourcing firms to fraud. Let's remember that these cos. win contracts fair and square by taking advantage of myopic tendering processes. If there's something to blame then it's obsolete tender process that make it impossible for quality vendors to compete or for outsourcing firms to make realising proposals. Overpromising and underdelivering is not fraud. Fraud is what VW,…
If there's a knowingly broken process, both sides of it are to blame. One party for using a broken process, the other for exploiting it. Imagine you own a store with broken locks. A thief learns of that, and comes one night, and plunders your store. Yes, you'd be to blame for being irresponsible and stupid. But the thief would still be liable for theft.
By this example, fraud is rampant across business[1], not just outsourcing.
Facebook, VW, Theranos and many many more.