The new CEO announced the day he took over that he was surprised that we weren't as big in India as we were. True to his word, there have been two IT specific lay-offs since he took the reigns with a number of jobs and positions going to contract companies in Bangalore. Our reqs for full time employees were denied and will be fulfilled by one of these contract companies instead. In five years, I've been through four such layoffs because management can't seem to make up their mind how the organization is supposed to be structured so they experiment at the cost of talented employees. The "good 'ol boy" network is definitely in effect at the management level with a number of absolutely non-technical managers landing management roles because of their personal ties to someone up top or on the other side, technical engineers being forced into management because there's no other career path. Hence you have non-technical decision makers and technical decision makers with no desire to manage running the majority of IT. In five years, travel has been slashed so it only exists to a handful of people, training has been reduced to cheap/free online or local courses. Conferences either have to be paid for personally or it needs to be almost free. Employment appreciation day was done away with, the micro-purchase plan was reduced from $1200 every three years to $800 every three years but was eliminated totally for 2015. Several months ago, we closed one of our buildings and got jammed into an open office environment and lost of cafeteria. The coffee makers are always breaking or running out of coffee and the bathrooms are absolutely overrun at all times of the day. IT's unwillingness to put money into projects that are needed means they're dumping money into terrible products and services because it was the cheapest offer. No one is innovating, we're asking how other big companies are doing the things we're doing almost as a mantra.
