Few weak Tips for us
By Bala Shah

Regular readers of Techgoss are well aware that a large number of our articles are crowd sourced.  People send in tips, story ideas and even articles. Many of our contributors have full times jobs in IT-ITES, and so prefer using a pseudonym. Some of the Tips sent to Techgoss lack fact and perspective or are seething with anger and hatred, and so are never published.

Early in Dec, 2010, my colleague Techgirl had written an article on what goes into making a bad Tip.  A bad Tip is what cannot be used in any shape or form because it lacks substance.  In her cheeky style, she had used the example of an anonymous Tip left at Techgoss that Aegis boss Sudhir Agarwal was being sidelined.  I had given my own view of what I felt were half baked Tips sent in to Techgoss (Article republished below)

In the last few days, we have received a number of Tips which have the right intentions but lacked substance

The first Tip was: “CSC India is not getting many projects in Hyderabad. The CSC Hyd HR is allowing employees to leave the company if they are offered high salaries elsewhere or if they are on the Bench. It is advisable to join this company only for a short term. Sincerely, Ex CSC employee”.   As you can see there are no facts to substantiate this lack of projects Tip.

Another Tip was: “Want to bring to your attention the serious and shameless corruption that is going on in HPBMRACLE India (Am not publishing the real name of the company in this article). There is a corrupt woman manager who has taken business, bribe, and bed to a fine art level and the whole net is full of complaints about her. Where can we send the details? We are nauseated to know all, so will you be. We appreciate the effort of the IBM engineer (Referring to a recent article Techgoss had  published about an IBM techie who does great social work), can we get his email id? “.  This Tip has nothing to follow up and there was no email contact to correspond with.  Worse, it seems that this Tipster has not even read the article on the IBM techie who does social work as Techgoss had clearly published his email id in the article.

And then there were many more such Tips which cannot be used in any shape or form. Thus ends another lesson on how not to send Tips to media.  But there were many many wonderful Tips which blossom into full fledged articles.  And thank you for that.

(Tipsters, Big thank you for all your tips and photos. Do you have a story to tell? If you need to speak to us in confidence or write for us, email us at techgoss[at]hotmail. Or use the Anonymous Tip form at the top of our website. Anonymity guaranteed. We pay Rs. Rs. 1000 for 100 – 200 word snippets. Unfortunately, we cannot use any tips which are not backed up by enough facts)

(Techgoss had published the following on April 26 2, 2011)

Half hearted Tips for TG
By Bala Shah

Regular readers of Techgoss are well aware that a large number of our articles are crowd sourced.  People send in tips, story ideas and even articles. Many of our contributors have full times jobs in IT-ITES, and so prefer using a pseudonym. We offer absolute anonymity to our Tipsters, many of whom contact us in person once they begin trusting us.

Early in Dec, 2010, my colleague Techgirl had written an article on what goes into making a bad Tip.  A bad Tip is what cannot be used in any shape or form because it lacks substance.  In her cheeky style, she had used the example of an anonymous Tip left at Techgoss that Aegis boss Sudhir Agarwal was being sidelined.  I had given my own view of what I felt were half baked Tips sent in to Techgoss (Article republished below)

In the last couple of days, we have had more Tips which could have best served our readers if they were fleshed out with detail and evidence.

The first Tip was teasingly cryptic: “Verizon is coming up with a major hike ... expect upto 40% hike for 1-2 years experience”.  No details of which State, division or team.

This morning there was another Tip about a DGM at a major Pune based KPO who loves playing table tennis.  Unfortunately, we cannot use this Tip because the Tipster did not quietly take a photo of the DGM who is allegedly spending most of the time playing TT at work. 

(Techgoss had published the following on Feb 2, 2011)

Syntel half Tip
By Bala Shah

Regular readers of Techgoss are well aware that a large number of our articles are crowd sourced.  People send in tips, story ideas and even articles. Many of our contributors have full times jobs in IT-ITES, and so prefer using a pseudonym. We offer absolute anonymity to our Tipsters, many of whom contact us in person once they begin trusting us.

Early in Dec, 2010, my colleague Techgirl had written an article on what goes into making a bad Tip.  A bad Tip is what cannot be used in any shape or form because it lacks substance.  In her cheeky style, she had used the example of an anonymous Tip left at Techgoss that Aegis boss Sudhir Agarwal was being sidelined. 

Yesterday (Jan 31, 2011), we got an anonymous Tip which was strong on strong feelings and well written, but not backed up by enough facts.

Out Tipster railed on how “Syntel had degraded since Nitin has left the company” and that “Promotions are given to those who are good with managers and not those who deserve being moved up”.  The Tipster went along to complain “Once WNS was infamous for politics and now Syntel is, quite apparently because maximum of its KPO staff is from WNS”. 

And so on.  But there were no facts to back up the strong opinions. But there was at least one part of the Tip that could be used

“
The Food Vendor at Syntel never gives back change, and instead hands over his machine coupons which are not good to be used as cash replacement and binds one to get back to vendor to get value realised.
“

Tipster Sir / Madam, please could you send us some facts to back up your assertions of the best candidates being overlooked for promotion and WNS being a negative influence on Syntel.  Thank you.

While most of our Tipsters leave great Tips (Many, many thanks), we thought we would run a series of snippets to show on how not to Tip us.  This would ensure that Tipsters have a good idea on what can and what cannot be used.