Open Systems International Reviews

Looking at the organization from a management perspective, there were multiple issues with the setup in India. - There was an artificial wall between the nascent India team and the global OSI organization. This wall made ramping up the product knowledge of the Indian team a painfully slow process. At the same time, customer expectations were high since they looked at the team in India as an in-house team closely working with product experts in US office. Little did they know that the employees in India did not even have access to the Intranet. - There did not seem to be any strategy for the India office for organization and competency buildup. Sometimes it felt as if the office was setup only to add an additional international location to the list. - The project management and execution team in India had zero authority for making any project decisions such as schedule, resource allocation, project travel, etc. Every “decision” which normally is taken by a first level lead in other organizations was taken by the management in US. The decision making is completely top down with no inputs from the levels below. We even faced embarrassing situations in front of customer because of this since no one was empowered to take any decision for the simplest of customer requests. - The policies for OSI India were not stable and adhered to consistently. Expense such as parking, mobile bill, broadband bill, etc. (which in other product based firms are reimbursed separately by the company) was sometimes paid, sometimes paid up to a limit, and sometimes completely denied. - There are no automated systems for any of the administrative management tasks. Everything from PTO to reimbursements is done via spreadsheets. There is a form and an approval process for almost everything including “flexible time”. - The salary brackets for most employees were not competitive with the industry, especially when the benefits given by other product companies are included. This would definitely cause an issue in retaining employees for a longer term. In addition to the setup, there were some issues related to basic etiquette: - All meetings were poorly planned. Senior management would come late for many meetings. Meetings would involve multiple employees and go on for hours. The decision almost always was “let’s come up with a plan and discuss in the next meeting”. - The all hands meeting were a show of bossism and cultural insensitivity. There was always a detailed mention of how employees should regularly take bath, use deodorant, use dustbins, etc. since the Indians generally have “body odour” and do not keep the office clean!!! There was also a regular mention of how Indians lack project management skills. The meetings were also an opportunity to let employees know that they could be fired at any time. The meetings usually ran over the allocated one hour. In fact one of the meetings got extended for so long that a prestigious customer – Power Grid – was kept waiting for 2 hours in a compact meeting room for an all hands meeting to finish. - There is not much respect for employee’s personal time. Employees are expected to travel or attend meetings at the drop of a hat. - Senior management does not have the decency to discuss openly any concerns that they have with an employee. It is normally discussed with other employees or in all hands meetings via indirect comments. Each employee is left to figure out for whom the comment is meant for and most of the time each employee thinks it is meant for him/her. - There is an unhealthy tendency of bad mouthing employees who have left, even those who were praised just a few days before submitting their resignation. - Even though some resigning employees worked for more than 6 months with no negative feedback, they did not get performance bonus in contravention of the terms of the offer letter. At around the same time, five senior employees resigned for similar reasons. Anyone wishing to join OSI India should join with their eyes wide open.