Breathe in all that is...Infosys!

Friday afternoon, we were all excited to go on our daily excursion. Armed with a newly tailored suit, mirror-polished shoes, freshly pressed shirt, and a mind filled with an eagerness to learn, I was prepared to visit the pinnacle of all of our site visits in Mysore: Infosys. Arguably, this is where outsourcing began in India. This was the heart of India’s IT infrastructure. This is where we would see the world’s largest corporate training campus in action and see why companies such as Microsoft relied on this IT giant for much of its software development. Complete with awards such as “The Best Managed Company in India”, this was undoubtedly the country’s pride and joy.

From a purely physical standpoint, Infosys was everything that I thought it would be. The entire campus was reminiscent of a resort in Florida, equipped with lush, green grass, palm trees, a pool that looked like an island oasis, and an auditorium that was a spitting image of Epcot Center. This was definitely not the India that we had been staying in over the past 2 weeks. This was a tropical getaway with state-of-the-art facilities, fitness center, bowling alley, grocery store, pharmacy, and even its own on-site salon. Off in the distance, we could see a new building being erected. When asked what everyone’s opinions were on what the new building looked like, we all came up with the exact same answer; the Roman Coliseum.

Impressive? Absolutely. There was no doubt that Infosys was presenting an image of success. Infosys was proud of where it had started and what is has turned into today. As the tour began and our speaker introduced us to the company, I began to get a sense for what the company was all about. To be brutally honest, Infosys was my worst corporate nightmare.

I’ll preface the following by saying that this is my personal OPINION and I’m sure that Infosys has plenty to offer for employees of certain skill levels, personality types or expectations. With that said, if anybody is still offended by the fictitious narration of my personal Infosys perceptions, deal with it. We don’t have to agree with each other, we just have to mutually respect our varying individual opinions.

In contrast to our tour guide at L&T, the individual that was chosen to represent Infosys was uncharismatic, dull, and inexperienced with the company (2 years). He laid a heavy emphasis on technical development but glossed over the values and ethics that Infosys “marketed” through their introduction video. His answers to simple questions took 10 minutes and his answers to difficult questions took even longer. I think I heard about their 88,000 employee base poised for 30% growth and $3 billion net revenue statistics mentioned every 5 minutes. Both the presentation and facility tour seemed to scream, “This is Infosys. Breathe it in everybody, because we….are….awesome.”

The Mysore facility is geared towards the entry-level employee looking to make a career at Infosys. Infosys refers to their incoming classes as “batches” and these “batches” are on a rigorous 18 week training schedule. The end of this training culminates in the graduation and assignment of their new job as software programmer. These recent grads live, eat, and play on the Infosys site. After all, with all of the amenities they have, what need is there to ever leave? These robots, I mean, employees, are then taken to the Infosys lobotomy clinic where they have their brain removed and replaced with an Infosys issued hard drive void of feelings or emotions. Mandatory fun in the form of bowling and dancing comes at the hours of 9-10pm on Friday from where they must immediately depart so that they can plug themselves in at night through the serial port implanted in the back of their neck. Any Infosys employee caught in creative thought or having an individualistic idea gets shipped to the sandalwood factory, thrown in the sandalwood chipper, and subsequently becomes fertilizer for their award winning Infosys flower garden. Who knew that human blood was the key ingredient for healthy organic wildlife?

Ok. I may have made up the last part a little bit. But my point is that the entire Infosys campus and training methodology felt vacant and sterile. Case in point, the Infosys library was filled with nothing but scientific journals and books. I wonder what would happen if somebody asked for the latest edition of “Calvin and Hobbes”? The introductory training video ended with 3 short personal “experiences” of brain-washed Infosys grads who said things like, “At Infosys, I feel like I am in 7th heaven.” Not to be judgmental, but given appropriate context clues from the individual being interviewed, I seriously doubt if he even understood what the term “7th heaven” even meant. Short of holding a cue card complete with a Chinese-to-English translation, the testimonial couldn’t have been more scripted.

The Infosys website talks about how Infosys is helping to improve the world by making it more flat. And much of what it says does reflect what we have been reading about in our Friedman texts. So you would think that this would be a significant core value within the Infosys company vision, right? One of our classmates asked our tour guide a question pertaining to how Infosys was educating its employees and helping them to understand the concept of creating a flatter world. His response? A 10-minute deflection of how he was not the appropriate person to answer that question and that Infosys was continually creating avenues to expand the technical training of their employees so they could learn about different business divisions within the company.

All I can say is, “wow.” If the company culture of Infosys trickled down any slower, it would make an 85 year old man trying to urinate with gall stones look like a waterfall.