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To: Johnny Canuck who wrote (45836)	8/28/2009 6:13:48 AM
From: Johnny Canuck	Respond to of 68252

Zero In India's Idle Tech Talent Sramana Mitra, 08.28.09, 06:00 AM EDT The downturn has ''benched'' thousands of workers at outsourcing companies. Sramana Mitra More By This Author I read an article about a month back on how the Indian outsourcers are making it through the downturn. It said that business has slowed down a lot at many companies, and employees are left with very little to do. Infosys, for instance, hired 18,000 new workers last year. When I first read the story, the number 18,000 really bothered me. I kept wondering what these "benched" people were doing. Many of them are young, fresh out of college, full of dreams. How uninspiring it must be to just sit around and do nothing! I asked the question on my blog: "I can't help but wonder what these 18,000 people are doing! Are any of you out there who can enlighten us?" A heated discussion followed. A reader, Kumar, wrote: "Yes, we need to be bothered by the kids on the bench. Multiply eight hours with around 100,000 engineers (the bench strength of the top eight to 10 companies), and it is a staggering 800,000 hours a day getting wasted." Article Controls EMAIL PRINT REPRINT NEWSLETTER COMMENTS SHARE YAHOO! BUZZ It turns out, that the large Indian IT companies always have 15% to 20% of workers on the bench and some companies bench up to 30% of their employees. (See Concerning Utilization Rates At Indian Outsourcers.) Santanu, an executive at a smaller outsourcer wrote this explanation: "One of our clients needs to rebalance their team size every two months--ramping up to 30 people for around two months and then ramping down to 10 people for the next two months. This is something they can't do using their own staff--you can't hire for two months, then fire for two months, then hire again for another two months. That's why they come to us. But to do the integration of their product we need people with domain knowledge and preferably knowledge of their product. So we charge the client for 20 people on average for six months. When two are actually working on the project, the other 28 workers get trained on the product but go on the "bench." They get brought in later, when needed. I don't see any other way to handle this." Indeed, the business reasons are unavoidable. Benching is a necessary practice in the outsourcing business. Still, shouldn't outsourcers make sure that their benched employees are engaged in meaningful and productive work, rather than playing computer games? In the absence of guidance, other opportunities or out of sheer frustration, some benched workers have turned to entrepreneurship. Trex08 wrote, "Well some of us are working hard on our dreams to become the next generation of innovators in India. Of course, outside Infosys." Real-Time Quotes 08/27/2009 4:01PM ET WIT$16.200.62% Get Quote BATS Real-Time Market Data by Xignite Vinay wrote: "I have been working on two products of my own outside of my regular job. I work 8 hours for someone else, then come back home and work for 2-3 hours every day on something I love. I have hired a person and pay him from my own pocket for the last 1.5 years to work on this. I may not become a millionaire with these products, but at least I will learn something and would not ever regret not having tried." Related Stories Private Equity Done Right Outsourcing Core Competencies Google's Chinese Music Box Roshni Nadar Is Not Intimidated The CIO And CFO Disconnect Stories Videos Rate This Story Your Rating Overall Rating Reader Comments Comment On This Story Vinay also has a message: "For all those people who are sitting on the bench and have nothing to do, join an open source project and start contributing. We are always willing to get things for free but hardly contribute to the open source community." And on and on the 55 comments go, some proposing constructive suggestions and some just venting frustration. My message to the 100,000-plus idle talent in India: Take control of your destiny. Otherwise, Infosys, Wipro ( WIT - news - people ) or TCS will control it, and you will be in splendid mediocrity all your life. Sramana Mitra is a technology entrepreneur and strategy consultant in Silicon Valley. She has founded three companies and writes a business blog, Sramana Mitra on Strategy. She has a master's degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She authors the Entrepreneur Journeys series of booksavailable from Amazon. The newest, Positioning: How To Test, Validate, And Bring Your Idea To Market, comes out in September.

To: Johnny Canuck who wrote (45836)	8/28/2009 6:38:04 AM
From: Logain Ablar	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 68252

Hi Harry: Been on vacation and from what I've seen in northern New England the recession is taking a toll on the vacation spots (at least the restaurants, golf courses, etc. where the consumer uses discretionary income.). I was off the beaten path, not near the top tourist spots so not sure how valid a sample. I doubt the consumer is increasing spending this back to school season but time will tell. I see the NYSE BP is now at 80 (this is the highest reading looking back on the stockcharts site going back to 1990). The COMP BP is at 72. Both still in x's but high. One would expect at least a pull back at some point.