Tag Archive: Career


To be credible or not to be

Spam is unavoidable, but sometimes its interesting. One such mailer I bumped into was a site called mumbex.com that provides fake experience letters. I’m not linking because I don’t want to send traffic to something illegitimate, but I’m sure most of you will still take the pains to key it in & have a look.  For such people I have embedded a tracker that will report your details to NASSCOM. For other obedient ones, here are some highlights from their website:

  • Our expertise‘ .. ‘Till date we gave certificates to 5000 candidates’ .. ‘Most of them are in middle management level in India and overseas’ .. ‘No Background verification failed till date’.. ‘Most of our customers came through referrals of our satisfied customers’
  • ‘We are here to provide you the total certificates, id cards and everything’.. ‘Just have a bit confidence in the technology you are keeping the experience’..
  • Companies know this Fact‘ .. ‘Almost all the companies know that 50 to 60 % of the staff kept fake experience in their resume’ .. ‘But they never think of this during the boom time, because they are in deadly need of employees who at least have confidence in their technology’..

The business idea seems strong from a monetization perspective, but its an epic ethical fail when offered as a service. They have loudly spoken about how companies compromise credibility in view of the demand and how resumes are shared with clients. This service helps whoever it does, but it destroys the  credibility of every Indian IT company & employee. And I’m writing because I feel affected.

This is the age of startups, View full article »

As discussed in my previous post about responsibilities of a product manager, product management continues to remain the less spoken about profiles in the  otherwise large Indian IT industry. With the growing number of products in the Indian webspace, the demand for experienced PMs is likely to peak in 2012-13. But there’s still time! For now, Product management in India is less concrete (in terms of the role), and holds huge potential as precisely summarized by Gopal Shenoy here. That post echoes the thoughts of quite a few Indian product managers. Here are my comments to few of the points:

@ #2:They manage products sold in the US

This seems quite obvious given the fact that a lot of product companies in India are either outsourced product development or developing enterprise products for global top companies and US/Europe are their biggest markets. Thus, most young PMs there will report to account managers or senior PMs posted on-site. Having said this, one cannot ignore the outburst of internet product companies catering to the local market, mainly into eCommerce & social.

@ #3: Too many titles for the same profile

Totally agree! Quite a few of us are left out of the product management mainstream because of varying titles conferred upon us: program managers, business analysts, software consultants, and what not. But no matter what how they’re referred to, they’re all doing the same thing – and some don’t even know they’re developing products (more on this, coming soon).

@ #4:Engineering & Proj Mgmt folks moving into Prod Mgmt

There’s more to it. Not just development folks, but there are freshers, folks from quality and even some from business who are keen to move in. Those who have understood the challenge & responsibility want to get at it on account of passion & enthusiasm, and not just a career ladder or salary booster.

@ #5: “They are confident, fearless and hungry

Courtesy: memorya-grinnes.blogspot.com/

Crayon Shin Chan

When I think of Gopal saying that to me, my reaction is not other than that of crayon Shin Chan when he says, ‘Don’t praise me so much’ (which sounds funnier in the Hindi dubbing when he says, ‘Itni taarif bhi mat karo!‘) But that goes without saying for all of us – we are all  way too passionate about our products!

Read the original post by Gopal Shenoy and some very interesting comments here: http://productmanagementtips.com/2011/02/09/india-product-management/

Goodbye L&T

Nature aborts vacuum

Today is a day in my life when I have taken a very tough call: something that is likely to shape my future. I have resigned from my post at L&T Infotech and decided to move on. L&T has been my first employer, and as always, the first cut is the deepest. The couple of things that can make you feel better in such parting is that ‘nature aborts vacuum’ and that ‘the organization is always bigger than the employee’. View full article »

prasadgupte | 1999-2012