Recession: Really??

It looks like people are really spending money freely, and malls are again packed with foot traffic. Are we hyping about this recession? I think say last 6-8 years we have a tendency to hype negative news, especially after Sep 11, 2001, I think now also we are hyping about this recession. As per comscore, this year cyber Monday was second heaviest sales on record. May be NBER come back probably on December 2009 to declare that we are not in recession since December 2008, because it took one year to find out that we are at recession since December 2007.  

As of Stock market, it is going up and down like bi-polar disorder, with in minute’s changes from south to north. But clearly unemployment rate is soaring(mainly construction, manufacturing, finance) and house price is keep on plummeting, since both of these affecting people directly plus usual media’s negative hype, we are feeling more recession pain than reality. Sometimes I feel that this is the way it should be, we have to have some discipline with spending habit and reality check. In other words, people flying high 30000 feet above earth and thinking that is normal. But after coming down to earth (reality), feeling depressed and recession and all pain.  

Greatest example is Google,where free 3 times food, free dental, free medical,free massage, free car wash, 20% free time for thinking, free laundry, free movie tickets, free weekend games ticket, free yoga, free meditation, free internet, free phone connection and free gas. Now the name of recession Google going to cut all and people is going to scream and complain about recession. I don’t know for how long they want to enjoy free stuff in a public traded company and high capitalist country and 97% of revenue still come from online ads. It is laughable and illogic. 

But as a country this negative hype is not good. It creates reverse brain drain and reverse migrations. For example, during last recession in Silicon Valley, the same negative hype created some panic with in immigrants and they just left the country to Canada, Australia and to their own country. The major benedictory of this is India, because after the last recession, India boomed a lot because of available experienced returned Information Technology man power with fresh pool of youngsters. But this phenomenon was not well studied or documented. 

Heat on Outsourcing

Outsourcing/off-shoring is the 21st century modern global economy trends. It is something, sharing some work with other partner or company or an entity, which perhaps located other country/state from the main business location. The main purpose of outsourcing is to increase finance utilization and get more things done with less money. The main driver of outsourcing is currency inequality between two countries. After 2001/2002, tech bubble burst this outsourcing trend increased to several folds and more and more companies wants to “share” their work with foreign entities.

After 6-8 years, outsourcing IT industry losing steam for the first time, this company’s stock price and value started plummeting. Why is that? This should not happen? Is there something fundamental wrong?

1. Big mistake with human resource: The main asset of outsourcing company is brain. Unfortunately, nobody can make brain “out of the box”. It is naturally embedded with each human. So human is the main asset of outsourcing companies. How soon a programmer/engineer grasping new design/code and how soon he/she converting into meaningful document and how soon he/she transfer the knowledge to their peers and how soon they can deliver a work is the fundamental success of an IT outsourcing company. They all are young smart brainier professional, but as soon as these professional crossed ocean, out of their main work location for on site projects, their touch with HR would be reduced, literally no HR policy. No body cares about them, several HR violations; nobody asks some basic humanity needs; they are out of sync with their company. As a result, they try to jump in to other companies, de-motivated and always looking for other opportunities.

2. Business or domain knowledge: Growth is the main ingredient for business success but at the same time, domain knowledge is the main catalyst for sustainable business success. Lot of time outsourcing companies wants to capture market, they make lot of moves, didn’t allow people to be in same domain and allow them to become master of that domain. The excuse would be, hire a lateral domain knowledge candidate for that position, but reality is, that lateral candidate would take lot of time to adjust with culture to provide some value, by the time competitor take all business.

3. Politics: Workplace politics is okay, as long as all politics are for positive purpose. But with in outsourcing companies, politics range from state, language, color, region, religion, direction, social status, history, geography etc. None of these are positives, all are negatives and unbearable and highly unprofessional.