google's new lab project Shared Spaces is a space where users can share their work spaces with others by sharing url and inviting them, first you need to select a gadget where you will be provided with a space to work with the gadget.This project is based on the previous google wave project (which is a web based platform with synchronous or asynchronous communication for real time collaboration and editing such as editing the same file at the same time or at different times from different computers depending upon your communication protocol) Shared spaces uses the wave gadgets where you can create and collaborate applications.
it has four main categories planning, productivity, polls and games like wave sudoku, a Draw board for creating maps and etc, there are fifty different gadget applications available so you can create your work group, space collaborate gadgets using either emails, chat, buzz and etc as the share options.
I couldn’t find a link to update stories so adding this comment
TCS historically has more freshers(<2) than experience people (3+) in each project. Also it has one of the lowest Billing Rates in the Industry. It has managed to maintain its good record by leveraging on the lower cost of using freshers.But now freshers count is significantly less than experience people, also there are more people eligible for ITA promotion now.In fact this is the biggest batch of ITA eligible people.
Then we need to consider that people from two previous batches(4+ , 5+) who got promotion to ITA dont have positions and are still team members and now one more batch (3+) is in the queue.
Meanwhile every project has been seperated,each WON has to show profit.
Basically billing is same for freshers as well as experienced people. ( Half the time freshers are given a fake profile and coached to act as people with experience), so freshers are more profitable to retain than experienced resources, as salary is around half of experienced people and the profit for a WON is calculated based on Billing – Salary Paid. ( Simple).
Even if experienced people are released from a project based on aging, RMG is not ready to take them as none of the projects will want to fill up with experienced resource if they can use a fresher. The basic motivation for each project is to show profit and it will be against their interest if more expensive resources are chosen. Its even worse for Fixed Price projects were the demand for freshers is higher 🙂
So what is the option?
Basically you need to replace experienced resources with freshers but what to do if there are no positions available to fill up the relased resources? TCS cannot start laying off people , what with showing the best performance in Indian Industry. It will totally damage the reputation of the company. At the same time people with 6+ experience have huge variable compensation and less basic compensation. If you take up all these ingredients , mix them up and try to cook up a solution, we end up with a devious result.
Solution is simple, deliberately send ineligible people and wrong docs so that rejection spikes for people with 3+ experience. Then send 6+ people to available onsite positions citing visa rejections as an excuse.It will make better financial sense to send these people to onsite instead of people with 3+ experience since the savings are more by cutting their offshore salary ( onsite billing and salary are fairly uniform and independent of experience).
Make sure 3+ people are retained till March-April using the carrots of promotion and visa etc. Then once freshers start arriving ensure that an atmosphere is created wherein people get frustrated and move out on their own.
Wondering why it's enough to retain till March – April? Because after that rules of notice period are going to change to three months.(Currently it's one month)
Already to reduce attrition once H1B was initiated for all eligible people so that they dont quit and then once it was too late or not productive for people to move out announce that H1B were not to be processed.
So all people out there who are holding up hope of better things ahead beware. A whole batch is being made a scapegoat here.
Fwd this info to all your friends and make sure they are aware of whats goin on.
Dont be cheated.
( If you doubt my numbers check Edelweiss report on TCS http://www.business-standard.com/content/research_pdf/tcs_070610_01.pdf It shows a chart as from 2007 how fresher count has reduce and only now they have made efforts to bring it back to initial strengths. Also just calculate earnings per employee for TCS it is the lowest in the industry. 3-4 years TCS decided on the strategy of bidding the lowest for new projects so as to expand market, unfortunately it has stuck to this strategy even now. The reason that TCS got such a jump in earnings this year is again because in times of slowdown whoever bids lowest will be given a contract. Increasing salary costs coupled with Dollar devaluation is bound to hit TCS the hardest)