It’s been a good few months now since I switched from using a dual SIM Samsung phone to a Blackberry. I decided to jump onto the Blackberry wagon when Digi introduced their new BlackBerry plan. Suffice to say, I’ve been very impressed.

Here’s why:

• The speakerphone on the Blackberry Curve 8520 is amazing. I do a lot of work in conference calls and often have to talk to clients while I am at home or on the move. The beauty about the speakerphone on this device is that it is crisp and clear as well as extremely loud. I can put it on my desk and talk as per normal. This is a huge difference over my old Samsung D880 which didn’t have a good speakerphone.
• Being able to access my email over the phone has been a tremendous liberating experience. I used to think that BlackBerrys tend to destroy your work life balance. However, this phone has enabled me to be far more mobile that I had originally imagined. I get my mail seamlessly delivered (via the BlackBerry Internet Service) and can work from anywhere.
• Easy switching between Wifi and GSM connections has also been sweet while I have been away. It’s fairly easy to switch between the platforms and while you’re travelling avoids unnecessary expensive roaming data charges.
• Extremely good integration with Google Mobile Sync. Specifically what I like is the ability to synchronize my contacts with Google Contacts and Google Calendar. This is an awesome feature to have especially when shit hits the fan and your old phone is lost. For example, when my Samsung phone was corrupted, there was no way to retrieve my settings. With Google Mobile Sync, my contacts are synchronized every 2 hours and I know that if I ever lose my phone, I’ll be able to download a new contacts list in 5 minutes.
• It just works. I’ve used Windows Mobile phones and even a Symbian phone because and nothing defines

There is one thing however, that irritates me.

• The BlackBerry Internet Service has horrible support for the IMAP protocol. Services like Fastmail.fm for example, won’t work well because BIS has a broken implementation of IMAP to encourage enterprises to deploy the BlackBerry Enterprise Server .

In summary, the BlackBerry Curve 8520 is an awesome phone. It’s extremely value for money, even if it does not have 3G support.

One of the things I like about mentoring people is that you get interesting insights about yourself that you never realised before. In honesty, it really blows my mind away whenever people, sometimes older than me, come to me and say that they just want my opinion on their careers or progression. I am after all, a young and sometimes stupid guy who is progressing through the many stages of my career. In many instances, I’m just humbled. But a recent question that was asked of me really got me thinking.

Would you take a promotion, with significantly more responsibilities, even if you didn’t get a pay rise immediately.

The answer to the question was simple – YES. I have recently made a series of career moves that were promotional (or perceived promotions) in nature with no salary increments. But what was even more interesting was the fact that I needed to understand why I was accepting these roles. These roles were fraught with risks. More often than not, it was to take charge of a troubled organization, or, to deal with customer demands that weren’t always the easiest to meet. The reality is that I could sit back, take a chill pill, and do really well in my comfort zone. There still are times when I wonder whether it’s all really worth it and sometimes, I feel like banging my head against the wall for the stupidity of taking these additional responsibilities. Key to all of these questions about the state of my mind when taking on these roles is whether or not I was pissed off because I was being pissed on. Surely, a big giant corporation could afford to pay an upcoming talent delivering awesome value the appropriate renumeration.

If you could turn back the clock would you do it all over again?

It was surprising even to myself, but the answer was a straight, without a shadow of a doubt – YES. There are a few reasons for this.

The state of the world economy

Firstly, nobody can deny that 2008, 2009, 2010 and potentially even 2011 are years that are anomalies in the grand scheme of things. The reality is that we are living in messed up times and people need to recognize that shit has hit the fan all around the world. But everytime I tell my guys that this is the reality, I can see it in their eyes that they all believe it’s corporate yada yada yada. To some extent it is true, and sometimes, it pisses me off too. It’s difficult to comprehend that the system is recovering when there is so much growth within the region. However, the data never lies and the reality is that we are still hot in the tail of a global down turn.

The figures from the IMF report indicating where we are heading in 2010 is telling. We are only now beginning to start to see some semblance of normalcy return and it’s still early days yet. In fact from a manufacturing perspective, the dip has been so huge, that some companies honestly really are just purely skeptical about the current recovery trends we are seeing.

IMF also reported that the global output shrunk by 0.9% last year.  The exhilaration in growth seen last year in the Malaysian IT services industry was done in the shadows of the global growth numbers going into negative territory.

It’s the opportunities damn it

Secondly, I have it in my head to never ever say no to opportunities. I might have talked about this before, but there’s a story of stupidity I often relate to every time something like this pops up. I think I was 14 when it happened. It was the elections for job of the school Head Prefect. I remember being nominated and then I stood up, said I didn’t want the job and then sat down. Till today I wonder what would my life have been had I just gone ahead and accepted the role which I know comes with many of its own perks.

The incident  impacted the way I view leadership opportunities. Ever since that day I’ve never said no to opportunities that come my way. I remember being given a leadership opportunity to lead a team of over 90 people when I had zero people management experience by a great boss that took a chance with me. Today, I lead over 400. I remember being given the opportunity to take on board new projects which were huge and had my other colleagues saying that I was a mad person for accepting it. I had virtually no project management experience then. I remember attending meetings where I had no clue what the hell was happening, but cherished the fact that I was being given the opportunity to see how senior leaders dueled. I was literally just a huge (no pun intended) sponge soaking up the overall experience.

More importantly,  I’ve come to realise is that I have skills that not many 29 year olds have in Malaysia. I have worked with a multitude of Malaysian, British and American bosses. I have had both local and international people reporting in to me. I’ve worked in virtual teams and seen how global and local interests clash and need to be managed. I have been given opportunities to set the minds of people who work for me free and let them explore their full potential. Even more significant is the fact that I’ve been allowed to explore my ideas and try new dimensions in the workplace that would never have been possible had I not accept these leadership positions. I’ve also been able to groom a whole host of new leaders who are now doing other things in other parts of the organization. Which is all cool… except that I haven’t also got a pay rise in 2 years.

Meja says it’s all about the money

The reality is that I’m not doing all this because I’m the most altruistic person out there. I’m doing this because I know that the economy crisis will end some day. I’m doing this because I know this country has a huge talent void and that every little bit that I can do to give myself an advantage will propel me farther. I honestly believe that the delayed gratification will create a scenario where I become highly in demand. And the reality is, I see it slowly becoming true. The experience points that I have been able to clock over the last six years has resulted in a number of head hunters contacting me every time they have an interesting opportunity. I get huge kicks out of the fact that some of them get shocked when they see my age on my CV.

Isn’t it just frustrating to see the profit and loss statements really positive and you know you played a big part in it?

Yes it is. So I’ve chosen to channel the frustration to something that I know will give me better long term gains. I learnt a long time ago that there is no point in believing that a corporation or an entity owes me anything. I only believe in loyalty as long as the balance of benefits – the “What in it for me?” question – is fair. For now, because the learning curve far outweighs the pay, I’ve channeled my frustration to goals that I know is impossible under normal conventional circumstances.

There is no real “one-size-fits-all” method with dealing with the question of whether or not you should take bigger assignments without the dosh to follow. However, what I have found over the years is that, for younger workers, the potential to learn far outweighs the uncompensated short term stress. Opportunities only come once in a blue moon and forgoing it will only mean that you lose the opportunity to clock experience points.

For me personally, the only rule that I use is asking myself the question of whether or not I will regret the move if I die tomorrow. If the answer is yes, then I follow the path which lets me live, like I’m dying, and push ahead. Life’s too short to be pissed off all the time.

]]> http://sureshgnasegarah.com/?feed=rss2&p=407 1 http://sureshgnasegarah.com/?p=374 http://sureshgnasegarah.com/?p=374#comments Sat, 16 Jan 2010 22:17:11 +0000 Suresh Gnasegarah http://sureshgnasegarah.com/?p=374 Continue reading →]]> My old webhost, the now defunct SolidInternet.com, decided to die on me and ruin my site.  I’ve decide to move to another provider in the US.

Somethings will break, and over time I will fix them. Others will never be the same again.

“It is to keep out pornographic materials and bloggers who inflame racial sentiments. We need to maintain racial harmony. We cannot have full-blown democracy like in the United States,” he told AFP.

“This country must survive,” said the official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

[...]

The NSC official dismissed suggestions that the proposal echoed China’s aborted ‘Green Dam’ project (right), a plan to introduce Internet filtering software on all new computers sold in the country.

“It is not like China’s Green Dam nor is it a plan sparked by last weekend’s anti-government street protests,” he said, referring to a massive opposition-led rally against laws that allow for detention without trial.

Of course to add to the whole dialogue, the Malaysian Information Communications and Culture Minister said that he wanted to be the protector of all Malaysian children.

The information, communication and culture minister also took a swipe at “liberals” and told them to look at countries that had become “victims” of pornography.

“We cannot compromise on the protection of Malaysian children from pornography,” Rais said when questioned about the Internet filter as reported by The Malaysian Insider yesterday.

“Those who refer to themselves as liberals or liberalism should look to those countries that have become victims where child sex has happened, the moral of pornography has become widespread. So the government will look at ways to overcome this problem,” he added.

I mean who could argue with all of that. Surely we need our government to protect our kids from paedophiles. The conservatives in the country would be jumping for joy with the type of pro-active measures that the government is taking to protect our society. The reality however, reflects the poor understanding of technology that both our National Security Council and Information Minister have. There is one fact that remains that will forever challenge regimes who try to censor the internet – It’s impossible to censor the internet.

If you filter on the basis of keywords, people will use different keywords. When you catch up and filter the new keywords, even newer ones will be invented. If you filter based on IP addresses, servers will just move IPs and people will move on. If you use some proxies, people will use others. If you sniff all traffic, people will use Virtual Private Networks over the internet and bypass your filters.  If you choose to block everything, then no commerce can run at all and the country would got to the dogs. But this article is not about divulging techniques of bypassing filters. It is about making sure that the government realises that censoring the internet is an act of stupidity. It not only makes them look bad, it will also be detrimental to the whole nation.

The reality is that this country is at a crossroads. It’s facing a leadership crisis because the leaders are too old to “get” the younger generation. Malaysia is probably the only country in the world where a leader can be classified as a youth leader although he is 45 years old. Hence, these leaders don’t “get it” when the country overwhelming voted against them in the last elections. The root cause they believed was because the online media “influenced” our younger generation and the tradisional hegemony of controlling information via the mainstream press was now lost.

Shoestring budget websites like Malaysiakini.com have equal or even more influence than the government controlled websites. Such a feat was almost unimaginable in 2007.

The country is growing up. In the past,the ruling coalition could say that the internet was irrelevant because not everybody had access to the internet. Today, online newpapers bridge that gap by offering SMS updates pushed directly to your phone for only RM5.00 per month.  So yes, even if you don’t have the internet, you can get internet news pushed directly to your mobile phone for an extremely cheap fee. This changes the dynamics of the country significantly. Villagers who have no internet or broadband access can find out about initiatives and how people respond to decrees by government ministers will vary. If 10 years ago a Malaysian minister can declare a new initiative as being “good for the people” and get away with it, today, it will create a huge amount of debate in online circles and “spill” over to the mainstream media.

So the natural solution for many of these old ministers is to censor the internet. After all, if you remove the source of information, the problem should go away. The problem with the internet that regimes like North Korea, Iran and Burma have come to realise is that its tentacles are so widely spread that it is impossible to cover all your bases. People will find a way to get access to the online media because it is impossible to completely shut it out from your country. More importantly, censoring the internet will put Malaysia in the same league as these pariah nations.That is something we just cannot afford in these times.

In 2007, when I took over my current team, I promised them that I would leave the organization in 2009, stronger, efficient and baselined against world class standards. It’s been a bloody good ride and the team is as strong as ever. It does leave me though, in an interesting situation. What do I need do to keep my promise?

This is going to be a facinating period for me. When I made that commitment back then, I knew that I was forcing myself into a position. I had no idea though, that the economic crisis would be this bad. Which makes it all even more alluring. The last time I did a major career shift, it was at the tail end of the SARS virus. This time around, it’s  in the heat of the H1N1 scurge.  I’ve always like to live on the edge and if push comes to shove, I won’t starve for a good while.

Anybody have a job available for me, but can wait till Q4? Somehow the certainty of me keeping to my promise and the uncertainty of the way forward feels extremely cool. They say term limits are a good thing. I know this will be too.

Two weeks ago, I held a massive job interview session to hire young Malaysian talents to join my organization. My managers had made all arrangements and recruitment agencies were sending candidates my way. Because of the sheer number of people that turned up, I told my managers that I would pitch in and interview the candidates myself. Boy, was I up for a surprise.

I decided to interview the first candidate that was assigned to me. He was a nice chap, who graduated from a local university in the East Coast. He had a high GPA, but had some serious shortcomings in his English subjects.

Suresh : Hello. Thank you for making time to come to our interview session.

Candidate 1: Hello. My speaking not so good, but I’m extremely bagus in IT.

Suresh :  Are you aware that this job will require you to speak in English to our customers.

Candidate 1: Ya Boleh boleh. No problems.

Suresh : Can you please speak to me in English only please.

Candidate 1: My speaking not so good. But I can cakap with customers no problem.

I decided to end the interview there. I told myself that the candidate could have been the odd one out.  I interviewed the second candidate.

Suresh : Hello. Thank you for making time to come to our interview session.

Candidate 2 : Hello. Agency say must know English. But can speak Mandarin ah?

Suresh :  No, I need you to speak English.

Candidate 2 : But I cannot hor.

That was the second interview I ended prematurely. As the day went on, I started to notice a pattern that I knew all along. Because I hadn’t done interviews in a long time, I didn’t realise was that bad. From the 30+ candidates that showed up, we hired only 3. Why didn’t we hire more? The answer is simple. These guys had all the necessary technical skills required for the job. What was lacking was their inability to speak in the English language, which is a pre-requisite for my team because we deal with customers from all around the world.

It’s a huge huge shame for Malaysia.

]]> http://sureshgnasegarah.com/?feed=rss2&p=298 2 http://sureshgnasegarah.com/?p=282 http://sureshgnasegarah.com/?p=282#comments Thu, 05 Feb 2009 15:39:43 +0000 Suresh Gnasegarah http://sureshgnasegarah.com/blog/?p=282 Continue reading →]]>

Everybody I know is doing the “25 random things about me lists” on Facebook and I thought it was vital to jump on the bandwagon because I truly enjoyed reading what other people were writing about themselves. So here goes…

1. I have never been to any of my graduation ceremonies, except for when I was in kindergarten. So yes, the only photo of me wearing a graduation mortar board was taken when I graduated from Kindergarten at six years old. I will never ever attend another graduation ceremony unless I am adequately challenged during the course. The degree was easy, the masters was okay and the MBA is going to be okay as well. Maybe after I do my Law degree.

2. I am going to sign up for a Private Pilot’s License (PPL) that will allow me to fly a small single engine plane. The reason I want to do this is to be able to ask my dates if they want to go out for seafood and then if they say yes, whisk them away to Langkawi for a nice seaside seafood dinner in a plane that I fly myself. Cool no?

3. I really like my job and the place I work in. I never expected to have so much fun when I first joined the company. I didn’t know what a Helpdesk Analyst was and I didn’t expect that I would start to build a career in the Service Desk industry. Three years has passed and I intend to move on to another industry at the end of the year.

4. I enjoy dabbling in the stock market. I actually think the financial crisis has opened a lot of really nice opportunities for small time players like myself.

5. From time to time, I go into “non-thinking” mode. When I am in “non-thinking” mode, I do not do any streneous thinking and let other people take the lead.

6. I have religiously gone for every Rain Forest Music Festival since 2007.  I stay at a different hotel every year but always around China Town in Kuching. I love Laksa Sarawak. I intend to go this year as well and will be designating Tune Hotel as my base camp.

7. I rationalize everything, including religion. In my view, the heaven and hell approach taken by organized religion is no different from a carrot and stick approach by businesses. I do however believe that Karma is a bitch and if you screw around with people, it will come and bite you in the back.

8. I believe the number 8 brings good luck.

9. I used to be extremely kiasu with knowledge up till I was in secondary school. Then I went to University and realised that the more I taught people stuff the easier it became for me to understand stuff. I used to spend entire study periods teaching people. People would pose questions to me, I would research the answers and then teach them. The model worked so well, that it literally jumped started my first real job – I became a lecturer!

10. I have only been truly heartbroken twice. Everything else, was puppy love. And when I look back, I don’t think we’d have ever survived. These days though, the only women I tend to have crushes on are TV characters. Now, if only I could find a real life version of Lisa Cuddy and make her fall for me.

11. I believe wedding ceremonies are a waste of time. You’re better off buying an index fund in the stock market to and investing the money there. That way, you don’t have to worry about the kids college fund. Instead, I believe that all you need is a civil marriage registration, so that your spouse and children will get the necessary legal protection.

12. I don’t think I’ll ever buy a new car. Though, I really want to buy a BMW. Someday I think I will.

13. I enjoy eating dim sum in SS 2 on Saturday mornings or the famous SS 3 yong tau foo beside the Shell Station.

14. I have participated in 2 game shows. I was placed within the top 3 for both game shows, but have never won the first prize.

15. I have a weakness for good food. This explains my weight problem. I need to lose weight, but have come to realise that for that to ever happen, we need to get rid of all the good food in this world. So yes, there will always be more of me to love.

16.  I was in the brass band up till I was 12 years old. I used to play the clarinet and then later moved on to playing the drums because I thought playing the clarinet was too girly. My first brush with National TV came when I marched during the national day parade when I was 12 years old.

17. I want to buy a Dell Mini 10. I hear it’s coming out in Malaysia in March.

18. I want to go to Africa at the end of this year. I want to take a truck trip from Victoria Falls to Cape Town.

19. I think Dr. House rocks.

20. I think that Americans rock for voting in a Black President. However, Malaysia doesn’t need a Barrack Obama. Technically, we got our own version of Barrack Obama in the form of a Prime Minister who was of Indian origin – Mahathir Mohamed – more than 20 years ago.

21. I work really well under pressure. I like leaving things to the last minute because thats where I believe I can perform the best.

22. I have a fan page in Facebook! So yes, you can be a fan of Suresh Gnasegarah.

23. My favourite magazine is the Economist. I only read about 20% of every issue. Ironically, I used to hate reading it when I was in university. It’s been one of those things that I have begun to truly enjoy the last 5 years or so.

24. I really like working in Cyberjaya. I look forward to the drive to and from work everyday because there is no traffic and it’s a breeze all the way. Of late, I’ve started enjoying listening to Business FM (BFM) 89.9. It’s quite cool.

25. I ran out of things to write about right about the time I reached number 25.

What is Beating the Crunch?

So the reality has finally set in for Malaysian workers. The economy crisis is in its full swing and there is talk of up to 300,000 Malaysians losing their jobs. There is really only two ways to look at this. One, to moan about it. And the other is to do something about it.  If you are a moaner, I would advise you to stop reading. You are doomed to fail because whining and whinging isn’t going to get you anywhere. If you’ve decided to stop whining and whinging and have stumbled upon this article because you’ve decided you want to do something about empowering yourself, read on. Beating the Crunch is  a series of articles that are designed to help the average Malaysian to Control the Uncontrollable. It will talk about strategies that you can leverage to beat the current financial crisis and empower you beat the crunch.

Why should I care about the Credit Crunch?

The first step to dealing with any problem is to understand it. The reality is that many Malaysians don’t understand the crisis. They know something bad is happening. They know businesses are closing. But they don’t understand it.

In its simplest terms, credit crunch means that there is simply not enough money in the financial system for companies to borrow. This happened because over the last few years banks in America and Europe were lending money to people who couldn’t back it up with any collateral. In some cases they were lending money to people who had no income, no jobs and no assets. These became known as NINJA  or Sub Prime loans. What’s interesting about this crisis is that banks then repackaged these loans as “Structured Products” and sold them off to investors. Investors, thinking they were buying investment products that had their risks spread out, were actually sold products that had no solid foundation. It was a crisis that was just waiting to happen. The chips have fallen and things are now collapsing. Nobody wants to lend money for fear that they will lose it all. If banks become hesistant to lend money, people and businesses will not be able to make purchases (like buying a house or funding a new business venture).  This means that money won’t change hands and if that doesn’t happen, the economy slows down. This is exactly what is happening today.

The new reality is that the economies of Europe and America are now in big trouble. America is the biggest Malaysian export partner. If Americans buy less because they are worried about the economy, it will impact Malaysian jobs. For example, the recent drop in Christmas computer sales has resulted in the inability of Malaysian manufacturers who sell to American clients to generate sales. As a result of this, Penang is suffering because it is the hub of electronics manufacturing in Malaysia. 

Get An Education.

The first strategy to Beating the Crunch is to invest in yourself and get an education. One of the great things about the economy crisis is that it makes the opportunity cost  as a result of taking a course extremely low. During good times, taking a course might entail foregoing an opportunity to do extra consulting or even taking a vacation to an exotic place. However, when times are bad the chances of these opportunities occuring are greatly reduced. Hence, it becomes extremely enticing for people to sign up for courses. The silver lining in all of this is that the crisis has suddenly made the cost of  upgrading yourself a whole lot cheaper.

Of course, one of the first things that I get whenever I suggest this to people in IT is that Bill Gates was a college drop out. What many of these same people fail to realise is that while Bill Gates dropped out of college, he dropped out of Harvard. That means he was a very smart man. And even if I accept that he dropped out of college and wasn’t too bright, the question I often pose back is how many college drop outs do you see leading multi-billion dollar empires from across the world? 

But shouldn’t the burden of investment in training lie on the employer?

Personally, the answer to this question is a resounding yes AND a resounding no. Yes, because training is a huge retention carrot. It is also advantegeous for a business to have highly skilled, trained talents. All this is well and good during good times, but this is probably the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. So, No, because most of the onus on developing oneself also lies upon yourself. One of the reasons I believe the idea that only employers are responsible for training is prevalent amongst Malaysian employees from Generation Y is that they grew up with parents who always provided incentives for studying. From young, they were trained to believe that it needs to be provided by somebody else and that when you complete the course, you need to be given a reward. The reality is that the real world doesn’t quite work like the average Malaysian parent. Training is a privilege. It is a reward. It is not a right. We must change in order to ensure that we be practical in difficult times and continue to enhance our own personal value. 

So what’s in it for me?

Firstly, upgrading yourself during an economy crisis makes you more marketable. People often think they won’t benefit unless they actually get a piece of paper certifying that they have completed the course. The reality is that a tertiary education teaches you how to think differently almost immediately. Getting an MBA might be a certificate that takes 1 to 2 years, but doing a marketing strategies module gets you important skills after just 4 months. Multiply the effect of doing multiple modules over an average 4 month semester and you’re suddenly learning new skills at a rate never before imagined. This also means that you will suddenly be that much more valuable when your management team decides to cut costs.  Furthermore, many universities are now making it easier for people to manage the work-study balance. Whether it is studying using Distance Education Programs, Weekend Programs or Executive Mode studying, most Malaysian universities have something that will cater to the busy executive.  This means that while you most probably have to have less time for yourself, it won’t be a complete loss of “me – time”.

Secondly, doing a degree or other tertiary courses in Malaysia can actually be a money making adventure. The Malaysian National Higher Education Fund (PTPTN) allows people to take loans to do their Masters, Doctoral Degrees or Professional courses for interest rates as low as 1% (as of 2008) on an amortised basis if you study in a recognized education provider.  This means that the Malaysian government is technically paying you to study and upgrade yourself. Why? Our inflation rates today are far higher than interest rates that are charged by PTPTN. Furthermore, the duration in which you’re actually studying caries no interest and you only need to start paying 6 months after your loan disbursement period ends. Adding to all this is the fact that you can then stretch payments for up to 20 years (depending on your loan amount). All this of course is not counting the earnings you make because your management team decided to fire your colleague who wasn’t upgrading himself or if you did get fired, the earnings you will make beating the other candidates in the interviews you are attending.

Beating the Crunch

The global hunt for talent and creative workers needs to start with you. The financial crisis of 2008 has created a unique opportunity for Malaysians to upgrade themselves, ride out this economy and come out on tops in these tough times. The time to get an education, is now.

Beating the Crunch is a series of articles that is written by Suresh Gnasegarah. The objective of the series is to provide practical means for average Malaysian workers to beat the credit crunch. Get An Education is the first of these series. Suresh Gnasegarah is a young Malaysian manager bent on creating high potential Malaysian talents and controlling the uncontrollable.

I’ve always been intrigued by Satyam’s operations here in Cyberjaya. They hire hundreds of Malaysian graduates but leave them idling without work for months at a time.  Hence, it wasn’t too big of a shock to me when I read today’s New York Times article regarding how the CEO of Satyam had cheated his shareholders and the general public. 

Satyam Computer Services, a leading Indian outsourcing company that serves more than a third of the Fortune 500 companies, significantly inflated its earnings and assets for years, the chairman and co-founder said Wednesday, roiling Indian stock markets and throwing the industry into turmoil.

[...]

“This development is going to have a major impact on Satyam’s business with its clients,” said analysts with Religare Hichens Harrison on Wednesday. In the short term “we will see lot of Satyam’s clients migrating to competition like Infosys, TCS and Wipro,” they said. Satyam is the fourth-largest outsourcing firm after the three named.

In the four-and-a-half page letter distributed by the Bombay stock exchange, Mr. Raju described a small discrepancy that grew beyond his control. “What started as a marginal gap between actual operating profit and the one reflected in the books of accounts continued to grow over the years. It has attained unmanageable proportions as the size of company operations grew,” he wrote. “It was like riding a tiger, not knowing how to get off without being eaten.”

[...]

On Dec. 30, analysts with Forrester Research warned that corporations that rely on Satyam might ultimately need to stop doing business with the company. “Firms should take the initial steps of reviewing the exit clauses in their current Satyam contracts,” in case management or direction of the company changed, Forrester said.

The scandal raised questions over accounting standards in India as a whole, as observers asked whether similar problems might lie buried elsewhere. The risk premium for Indian companies will rise in investors’ eyes, said Nilesh Jasani, India strategist at Credit Suiss

The crisis might potentially have an interesting impact in Cyberjaya because Satyam has hired hundreds of young Malaysian graduates and is building a mega campus in Cyberjaya. If business confidence in Satyam drops tremendously and clients opt for other Indian service providers like TCS, InfoSys or MPhasis, then a lot of Malaysian Satyam employees could find themselves out of employment. On the other hand, it could potentially free up a lot of IT talent in Cyberjaya and provide opportunities for employers to expand their talent pool in a market that is currently facing a major shortage of skilled workers. 

More interestingly though will be to see the impact this crisis has on the confidence of the industy on Indian players in general. The fallout created by this crisis could be a blessing in disguise for countries like Malaysia and the Phillipines who are actively competing with India in the IT Services industry. The Mumbai terrorist attacks coupled with fraud some parties are comparing to the scale of Enron could rattle the entire IT services industry and change the entire landscape of competition for non-Indian players. Will companies ever fully trust their IT infrastructure on another Indian player?

These are extremely interesting times to live in.

These are must read articles!

The global downturn has been a brutal awakening for the youngest members of the workforce—variously dubbed “the Millennials”, “Generation Y” or “the Net Generation” by social researchers. “Net Geners” are, roughly, people born in the 1980s and 1990s. Those old enough to have passed from school and university into work had got used to a world in which jobs were plentiful and firms fell over one another to recruit them. Now their prospects are grimmer. According to America’s Bureau of Labour Statistics, the unemployment rate among people in their 20s increased significantly in the two most recent recessions in the United States. It is likely to do so again as industries such as finance and technology, which employ lots of young people, axe thousands of jobs. (Source: Generation Y goes to work)

THEIR defenders say they are motivated, versatile workers who are just what companies need in these difficult times. To others, however, the members of “Generation Y”—those born in the 1980s and 1990s, otherwise known as Millennials or the Net Generation—are spoiled, narcissistic layabouts who cannot spell and waste too much time on instant messaging and Facebook. Ah, reply the Net Geners, but all that messing around online proves that we are computer-literate multitaskers who are adept users of online collaborative tools, and natural team players. And, while you are on the subject of me, I need a month’s sabbatical to recalibrate my personal goals.

This culture clash has been going on in many organisations and has lately seeped into management books. The Net Geners have grown up with computers; they are brimming with self-confidence; and they have been encouraged to challenge received wisdom, to find their own solutions to problems and to treat work as a route to personal fulfilment rather than merely a way of putting food on the table. Not all of this makes them easy to manage. Bosses complain that after a childhood of being coddled and praised, Net Geners demand far more frequent feedback and an over-precise set of objectives on the path to promotion (rather like the missions that must be completed in a video game). In a new report from PricewaterhouseCoopers, a consultancy, 61% of chief executives say they have trouble recruiting and integrating younger employees. (Source: Managing the Facebookers)