TCS increases working hours and gives VA cut again

TCS – TATA Consultancy Services, has gone too low in these times not only in terms of Revenues but also in its HR values and ethics.  TCS is not  exactly a IT role model it has always used tactics to circumvent many laws and also extract more out of employees.

There was a time when TCS used to steal employees Tax refunds and was sued in US, only  then it  started giving back the money, So you know how much values count in this company. During the profitable times TCS never made company performance related VA component. But once its revenues started getting lower now it has started reducing the VA.

(VA – Variable allowance, a part of salary up to 25-50% which is supposed to be dependant on company’s performance and individuals performance)

TCS has become cash cow for TATA group, and funded some of the misadventures like Corus, Jaguar Purchases. Thats why the employees of TCS are suffering with paycuts increased working hours.  Many have jokingly said TATA Motors is launching TATA Nano at the expense of TCS.

The funny part about making employees working more hours is there are thousands of employees in Bench (means without projects / unallocated to any project) and the ones working in projects are getting crushed with more work (As projects released many associates to bench to show better revenues from individual projects). This is the result of greed of Managers,BRMs and GLs.All the managers want to save their positions and present a rosy picture to upper management, in turn crushing the developers and making them work for more hours.

I bet the cream or even mediocre employees now will look to jump to better managed companies as soon as opportunity presents to them. Most of the people who were loyal to TCS till now might think otherwise going forward.

India’s BSNL to offer 3G Video calls at Rs 2 (0.05$) per minute from April 2009

India’s Public Telecom operator BSNL plans to launch its 3G services in a full fledged manner from April 2009. The private operators like Airtel,Reliance and Vodafone are expected to enter market in early 2010 after the bidding process.BSNL also launched its 3G services yesterday in 10 major cities starting with Chennai.The National operator expects atleast 10% of its total subscribers to adapt 3G services.

3G data plans start from Rs 250 (5 $ US) . This also is a big achievement by the public operator which entered mobile market in 2002 and overtook all the private operators within few years.

Handset major Nokia is expected to launch its N97 in the same period. Already Nokia holds more than 70% market share in India which is one of its key markets. Incidently Indians in cities buy more Smartphones compared to couterparts in US.

Nokia introduces Nokia N86 8MP camera phone

Nokia introduced its most powerful camera phone  the Nokia N86. This starts a new generation camera phone series with slider CMOS sensor, Carl Zeiss optics, Tessar™ lens, up to 20x digital zoom  (This could be visualized as an update of N80 and N85 line) . The N86 packs GPS,a powerful battery, Nokia Music Player and Mobile browsing with Nokia browser. As with all Nokia NSeries phones this supports 3G.

Nokia N86 - Front View of 8MP Monster

The Camera :
The camera  is 8 megapixel camera (3280 x 2464 maximum) with Carl Zeiss Vario Tessar  lens (same as N93)

  • Image formats: JPEG, EXIF
  • CMOS sensor, Carl Zeiss optics, Tessar™ lens, up to 20x digital zoom
  • Autofocus with assist light and two stage capture key
  • Focal length: 4.61 mm
  • Focus range: 10 cm to infinity
  • Macro focus: 10-50 cm
  • Dual LED flash
  • Large and variable aperture: F2.4, F3.2, F4.8
  • Wide exposure range
  • Wide angle optics: 28mm
  • High speed shutter, max shutter speed: 1/1000 sec
  • n86 dexternights backn86_dexternights_siden86 dexternights back

    Data Network

    • CSD
    • HSCSD, maximum speed 43.2 kbps
    • GPRS class A, multislot class 32, maximum speed 107/64.2 kbps (DL/UL)
    • WCDMA 900/2100, maximum speed PS 384/384 kbps (UL/DL)
    • HSDPA, maximum speed 3.6 Mbps (DL)
    • WLAN 802.11b, 802.11g
      • WLAN Security: WPA2-Enterprise, WPA2-Personal, WPA-Enterprise, WPA-Personal, WEP
      • WLAN Quality of Service: WMM, U-APSD
      • WLAN wizard
    • TCP/IP support
    • Capability to serve as data modem
    • Support for MS Outlook synchronisation of contacts, calendar and notes