Microsoft to launch IE 9 in September 2010

Microsoft is preparing for its next big launch party, the next generation of its famous Web Browser Internet Explorer, Since the launch of IE 7 Microsoft has steadily rised in the Browser Games, with IE 8  MS started following the open standards in rendering moving away from its own implemenation.

With IE 9 Microsoft tries to beat Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome in terms of performance and native hardware rendered support for HTML 5. MS boasts of considerable performance improvement in Javascript implementation (Sunspider tests) , ACID tests (95%), CSS3 and HTML 5 rendering.

Microsoft has been target of  security critics prior to IE 7, but the criticisms have reduced and general stability and image of IE platform has generally been positive in the last few years.

Considering that IE is the only browser with a 64 bit version and Most of the new windows purchases are in 64 bit version, IE 9 can be expected to create considerable buzz.

You can test drive IE 9  here – http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/

Not so professional – Infosys Chennai

(This is a user contributed article -if you have any questions please leave a comment. Similar articles on Indian IT industry are welcome)

I am writing this here not to create any confusion among employees or to defame Infosys organization created by great minds like “Mr.Narayana moorthy”. I just want to stop the unethical and unprofessional practices followed in MCITY CCD department. I don’t want anyone to suffer anymore in that department.

I am an Engineering graduate with more than 80% from a reputed Chennai engineering college [Anna University]. I got placed in Infosys through on-campus interview. I felt so happy when I got selected. It was dream coming true for me. My days at Mysore training was so great except that extended training which we had to undergo due to recession. I completed all the streams successfully [generic, OS, mainframe] with CGPA more than 4.9. When we were eagerly waiting for our posting, HR informed us that we were put into CCD department. We were all shocked to death. We opposed their decision but nothing worked. After wasting our 7 months time in training, quitting was not a good option. HR told us that CCD would not be worse like we were all thinking. Then we underwent CCD training in Mysore and some of us got posted in Chennai – Mahindra city.



The First weirdest thing was when we had to call the CCD head “Sir”. Even if anyone calls him by his name, he would give them an odd look “How dare you to call me by name? You know who I am?” I don’t understand why we were told in my ILI classes that we should not use “Sir” and “Madam” in corporate environment. So then is CCD not a part of Infosys? Is it run by some local company? Please give the ILI sessions to this gentle man.

When we were introduced to our senior CCD employees, first thing they asked us “Why did you join this department? We are all trying to escape from this place.” We thought they were complaining about CCD department as there is no career progression. Later we realized they were referring to our Head and resource team Lead. I thought politics was common and if we work and exhibit our talents well, we could survive here.

The first assignment we were given was we had to go to all the user places and collect the employee details [employee ID, employee number and project code] , cubicle details and other s/w information. Note: Total capacity of Chennai, MCity DC is more than 10,000 and it s still increasing steadily]. If they really want this information, it can be retrieved by many easy methods. There is no need to go in personal and do it. Employee details can be easily retrieved from database system or from active directory by running a simple query in less than one minute.

Our CCD head and resource team lead blindly denied all our good suggestions as they were keen on sending us to collect these details as if they were no other work there to assign to us. And moreover cubicle details have to be collected by facility persons or H/W asset management team [resource team]. Another way is, if you drop a mail to all PM MCity distribution list for employee details and cubicle details working in their project, they will get it and will provide it to you. But what is the need that we, engineers who graduated with more than 80 % in reputed engineering college and got CGPA more than 4.9 should go and collect these details. These details [cubicle details] can be collected by even a 3rd class school student.

My CCD head and resource team Lead called this as a new initiative. [Here resource team lead means not human resource [HR] – laptop/desktop asset managing person.] Though she is not our manager, she thinks that she is our manager and acts like HR person. These practices are fully supported by our CCD Head. There is no limit for anything here.

Finally we went to user’ [employees] places and started collecting the details. This work went for more than a month. While my other batch mates who got into other units were coding, we were collecting the cubicle details. We spoke to our Head that we would want unit transfer as we were not interested in collecting user and cubicle details. He shouted at us and denied our request. Even at one point we planned to quit as a mass, but it didn’t go well. So we went to user’ [employees] place and collected the details.

In the first 6 months, we didn’t do anything good except calling employees on their extension and collecting their cubicle details. They gave us some work like account unlocking and other small s/w installations etc. After 6 months, they came up again with new initiative “port detail collection”. It is the worst of all. We have to go to user’s place and bend down the desk and collect port number located near the power plug point. The fun part is we were again asked to collect user and cubicle details as the data was expired over a time. Yes, these details change every day. Is this the feasible solution to maintain user details? If Infosys leaders don’t know how to maintain their employee details feasibly, then how are they going to maintain their client accounts? Are they going to send employees to their client places and collect their details manually?

The ultimate comedy is they called this as initiative. Nice initiative!! [Note: Our great Infosys Leaders like NRN thought if they give good ratings for initiative in appraisals,  people will be more interested to develop new, efficient and time saving  s/ws and methods so thought they introduced this.]  You know for initiatives there is good rating in appraisals. They put this task as a great initiative done in MCity CCD department and get good appraisals. When we put that in our appraisal as initiative, my head said this was not a good work and we got nothing in appraisal.
We were totally embarrassed many times when we went to users’ place and collected cubicle and port details. They would treat as like facility people and every time we would want to say to them “we are also employees of Infosys who finished engineering and Mysore training with good percentage but we were unlucky and so got into this work by fate. Otherwise we would be working like you only”.

Ok. These and all are some of the bad things happening here. I don’t want to write everything here as it would take another 20 pages. You may wonder how people work here. Actually nobody wants to work here and everyone wants to leave this place ASAP. Every month MCity CCD people quit Infosys. The Sole reason is they cannot tolerate stupidity of MCity CCD head and resource team Lead who is B.Sc Nutritionist graduate and she is unofficial manager of MCity CCD department. Even my PM would afraid to talk to her as she has strongly laid her foundation here.

I can hear people saying it is common everywhere. Yes. It is common everywhere. But there should be some limit for everything. There is no professionalism and work ethics here.[Other Infosys units are good only but except here . ] They are running their own empire here. Some time they behave like college senior and rag other junior employees. It is not fair. We really feel like we are working for some local dada[Rowdy] gang.

As I could not tolerate them anymore, I started searching for a job and got one too.
So I am quitting infy – my great Infosys.
While you people complain that you didn’t get onsite opportunity or CRR1 or for putting you into different technology, just look into our case. How pathetic it is! We were treated like facility people. I really feel bad that I could not do anything about these unethical and unprofessional practices.

Though Infosys’s slogan is powered by Intellect and Driven by Values, in our case is it true?
HR and other higher officials are not doing anything about this. They simply sit in their chair and close their eyes and create the policies. They always think about the ways to impress their boss and never think or look into employees’ issues.
If there is only requirement for facility, why did they recruit us? They could have recruited 10 th completed guys. Why did they recruit engineering graduates with good marks?
P.S: If you think, I am trying to catch attention or spamming here; you can ask anyone who joined MCity CCD department and verify the above information.
P.S.S: We are not supposed to sit and read newspaper in Lobby area because we are in internal support. What about other employees? They are also in support only but for external client so can they read newspaper in lobby area?
And we are not supposed to drink our tea/coffee in work place as our MCity CCD head don’t like it.
P.S.S.S: The incidents mentioned above are 100% true. 🙂

P.S.S.S.S: I m not saying whole Infosys is bad…It s really good company to work with. It provides world class training and teaches work ethics. You can never get such a good training anywhere in the world.

For every young man, Infosys training is a true dream.

HCL Infosystems bags order to digitise Census of India

HCL Infosystems has announced that it has bagged an order worth Rs 400 million from the Ministry of Home Affairs for digitising the data generated through Census of India project for the year 2010-11.

As per the project deal, the IT firm will collaborate with the government of India for digitising the data collected across the country including maintenance, indexing, scanning and storage at a central repository.
HCL Logo
J.V. Ramamurthy, President and COO, HCL Infosystems said the company has a legacy of partnering and implementing large nation building projects successfully over the years in the country.