Media giant questions Infosys working hours
By Techgirl

CyberMedia is the largest specialty media house in South Asia and amongst India's top five magazine publishers.  Its stable includes such respected magazines like Dataquest, PCQuest and DQ Week.  The group has 12 websites led by Ciol.com. Needless to say CyberMedia is one of the most powerful voices in tech India. 

Managers get huge promotions and salary increases based on one positive article in Ciol’s flagship magazine Dataquest.

Infosys HR boss Mr. Mohandas Pai rose quickly in the organization based on his managerial skills, ability to crunch numbers and the blessings of tech icon and company co-founder Mr. Murthy.  Mr. Paid is one of the hard men of Infosys and few dare stand up to him. The highly regarded CFO Mr V. Balakrishnan has won great respect within Infosys for standing up to Mr. Pai. 

Mr. Pai is positioning himself to step into the vacancy created by Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani who left to head the Govt of India’s UID Project.

So, what happens when the powerful CIOL Group wants to do an article titled ‘Is Infosys a good place only for freshers?’ They interview Infosys strong man and HR boss Mr Pai to get the company’s side of the story.

According to CIOL ‘Some of the major concerns are new roles introduced in the Infosys hierarchy, extended work timings and lower salaries than industry standards’. Many Infosys employees, on condition of anonymity, told CIOL that top performers are expected to work 12-15 hours a day and that their official working house were increased to 9.15 during the recent global recession.

Infosys HR boss told CIOL: “We recently promoted about 23,000 employees. And if any employee feels injustice, can directly reach to the top management through emails. The rules of mandatory attendance of 9.15 working hours have been around since 1994, and not as a response to the cost-cutting measure, so there shall not be any changes in these timings."

The CIOL article disagreed with Mr. Paid and mentioned: “This, interestingly, contradicts the information shared by the employees. As told to CIOL, by a Bangalore-based employee, who has been with the company for more than three years, the mandatory timings were 8.8 hrs until March 2008. He also said about another employee who sends letter of complaint to top management and has to face the ire of his superiors, who get offended by the negative words in the letters.”

How can anyone get simple facts of working hours wrong?  And the public would be thrilled to know more facts on how an Indian tech firm has ‘promoted’ 23 thousand employees.

Techgoss note:  Techgirl is a senior Tech journalist who reports on the IT, KPO and KPO Sectors for a leading media house.  In her spare time, she dabbles in satire in her blog http://techgirltalk.blogspot.com

(Techgoss had published the following on Jan 2, 2010)

Infosys: campaign to become CEO?
By Bala Shah

Early 2009, Infosys HR boss Mr. Mohandas Pai (whom many call ‘Quick Sack Murugan’) publicly labeled 2100 juniors that it sacked as ‘non performers’. Senior managers whose variable pay was cut were not labeled ‘non-performers’. Techgoss had then questioned why, like the laws of the jungle, only those who could not fight back were labeled ‘non-performers’.

After Techgoss published its first article on April 13, 2009 questioning the morality of humiliating sacked employees, British tech website The Register also picked up the Techgoss story.

Mr. Pai has not been heard making similar comments in the recent past.  In fact, in September, Infosys went on record to say they had actually ‘over hired’.

After rival Nandan Nilekani left Infosys, Mohandas Pai is positioning himself to become the next CEO. And possibly step into Nandan’s shoes.

Mr. Pai is taking up every opportunity to build a higher media profile.  In late Dec, 2009, Mr. Pai even went on TV to state that the ‘Infosys brand is bigger than its founders’. Probably a hint that unlike in the past, future CEO’s need not be one of the founders. Mr. Pai was not among the Infosys founding team. At another lecture at the end of December, he told the Indian Government on how it should give cash to poor people rather than subsidies.

Mohandas Pai has a BA (Commerce) from St. Joseph’s College of Commerce, Bangalore, and a basic law degree from Bangalore University. He is also a Fellow Chartered Accountant (FCA).

Although a very capable manager and a finance guru, Mr. Pai is supremely ambitious. According to Infosys insiders Mr. Murthy’s support of Mr. Pai ensured that he virtually had a free hand in the hiring process.

Apparently, the only person who stands up to Mr. Pai within Infosys is the current Chief Financial Officer, Mr V. Balakrishnan who succeeded Mr. Pai in 2006. Mr. Pai was the Chief Financial Officer till 2006 but was quoted as saying he wanted to move to HR to ‘give youngsters a chance’. Mr. Pai now heads HR, Finance and Admin in Infosys.  According to Infosys insiders, Mr. Pai hired new key HR people once he took over. At least two members of the Infosys Executive Council support Mr. Pai.

Everyone else is either scared of Mr. Pai or does not want to get involved in any confrontation.  The highly regarded CFO Mr V. Balakrishnan has won great respect within Infosys for standing up to Mr. Pai. 

One has always wondered why such a capable manager and rising star in Infosys sometimes has a cold hard streak.  The answer may lie in speech Mr. Pai gave in Bangalore on Dec 26.  Apparently, Mr. Pai was inspired by criminals and smugglers like Haji Mastan in his younger days.

DNA reported on Mr. Pai’s speech

“
Bangalore: It is highly unlikely to hear a corporate leader like TV Mohandas Pai, director (HR and E&R), Infosys, say that as a youngster, his role models included smuggler Haji Mastan.
 
Pai was delivering a lecture on "India at 2030" organized by the Institute for Social and Economic Change at Central College on Saturday.

"Smugglers like Haji Mastan were our heroes because they were rich. When I had just graduated in 1979, there were no jobs, no money, nothing. The angst of my generation is best captured in the film Deewar, where Amitabh Bachchan essayed the role of the angry young man. No one had predicted what India would be like by 2010," said Pai.
“

An Infosys source close to the Board told Techgoss that internally it is expected that Shibulal will take on responsibility of CEO of Infosys in next financial year. Mr. Pai has started his campaign to succeed Mr. Shibulal.