IT slow downs and dealing with on-bench situation- Part 1

Today read this article on Times of india, on the growing bench strength in the IT companies. Frankly, I wasn’t very surprised. Have been seeing this build all around for some time. Across the companies, where I know friends or relatives, things are slowing a bit. To put things in perspective, and give a clear idea, IT companies mainly depend on getting work (projects) from large business houses. Think about a simple situation. A chemist maintains all his finances in his books. Then his son, who Is studying computers, comes up with an idea. He creates a small excel sheet macro to have all the calculations done faster, more accurate and much more manageable. Similarly, he also writes small macros to help his father inventory all the drugs and mange other petty jobs. IT companies, too, work on the similar lines, just that they work on much larger scale. Majority of the services companies in india, do take any type of job, which the client requires them to. Starting from core development, to maintenance of the developed applications, enhancements to the applications from time to time and supporting the businesses run smoothly in terms of software issues, hardware scabilities etc. Primiarly, the larger companies run long term projects, tying up with client for longer and stronger relations. It works easier for everyone. Negotiating and bringing in new vendors isn’t good for business nor does it give them any tactical advantage. When economies are good, people are spending more money, business houses are making more money and competition is brewing. The competition drives them to find competitive edges. That also drives more investments towards their IT solution, which could help leverage that edge in the market. But when economies are down or there is nervousness due to global factor, like in today’s time, the same business houses become very cautious of their spending.  For your company, the project which you were hearing about, soon to start and may easily gulp down 50 resources now becomes a far dream. The only thing you hear is that there is a delay. Business houses, start looking to get maximum juice out of whatever number of people are already working for them. The timesheets become very important. Every additional hour is scrutinized. The work being planned is held upon. The pipeline freezes. They cut down their spending to bare bones, which could keep afloat. On the other side, IT companies do hiring based on some projections, depending on their projects in pipelines, prospects and strong leads. They also consider the lead time, which is time required by an individual to join the company and then get productive- essentially requiring you to learn about company’s process, project background etc. So when, the businesses slow down, all the hiring slows down as well. Essentially people who have been hired, due to a prospective project, are having not much to do, and are moved to ‘bench’. When I started my career, we often used to joke that being on bench means, you are made to sit on a bench, in a separate office, without having a computer to work with or pretty girls around. Partially true, apart from the fact, that ‘bench’ is not a physical bench but stands for the resource pool which companies have and there would be plenty of pretty girls who would be on ‘bench’ too. This resource pool, acts as a strong point for a company, when the going is great, but often can turn into a major liability when the road doesn’t look very good ahead. So who get impacted with slow-downs: Normally, not everyone would get impacted by the slow-down, though the ones who may be touched upon would be: People hunting for jobs in the market. The jobs may just suddenly disappear and it may look like an oasis in the hot sandy desert. People coming out of colleges. The on-campus jobs and offer letters and those booze parties, may be hung high n dry since the first thing companies do to manage themselves in tough times, is to slow down or stop completely on the incoming of more people. Common sense would tell you, that you don’t want to keep on-boarding people and rather want to see what you can do with the ones you already have. People working on a project, which are nearing their completion or get closed premature: The other set is of people, who have been working on a project is soon ending. In such a situation, rolling over to the next project may be a pain. Similarly, sometimes, a client may hang the current project until later. Both of these situations will yield out people, looking to move to the next project. So, if i have been able to make the point clear, the next big question is what do we do, when we are on bench. Please come back for Part-2 of this post, where i explain tips for making best use of your time on 'Bench'.

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