Pros
This is a review based on the fact that I was in the company for many years and now a former employee. This is a really fantastic company with a global presence and working in a wide variety of things. The fact that it has been family owned for over 165 years is ubercool. Some of the things that I absolutely enjoyed were - Work on innovative technologies and has a handle on many of the new tech innovations coming up both in Telecom and Fintech. - Has partners that are the who's who of the tech world from the bay area. - Good brand image especially in Europe - Has some really smart people both in India and across the world. - Working with different cultures enriches professional life. - Family owned company and the current group CEO is a gem of a person.
Cons
There are of course a lot of things that can be improved especially in the Indian subsidiary. I don't want to make it sound personal or share my angst but be objective in how I saw things in my long stay here. - Poor Salary structure. The people are paid a lot lower compared to the market in India. Salary increases are not as good as you would expect and you need to literally beg for any sort of increase. This is a major problem with tenured employees who get stuck in low salaries without any proactive correction done by the company. This has lead to really low motivation for a number of colleagues that I knew. I knew quite a few employees with 8 years of experience earning 8 lakhs p.a. and they quit because their salaries were never corrected and they got 60-80% outside. Worst part was losing them, their knowledge, hiring new folks and bringing them up to speed and by paying them atleast 60% more than the resigned employee. This is an absolute travesty which happens due to a non-existent local HR (I will come to it later). - Given the old culture of the company, power & responsibilities (especially in India) reside with a select few and not offered easily to outsiders. There is also a huge disparity in salaries from top to bottom. (Top Management makes 8 figure salaries but there are a lot 5+ year folks who just make under 8 lakhs p.a.) . Such disparity in salaries is simply unacceptable and unfair. - Old systems but finally in the process of moving to the cooler newer things on the cloud. However the Indian IT team is extremely understaffed which doesn't lead to adopting new tech quickly and becomes a laggard. This can be quite daunting especially in a post pandemic world. - High workload per person that will end up burning out a lot of employees. This is a problem across the globe and doesn't seem to have an end in sight. I worked 12+ hour workdays every day and sometimes 7 days a week for the last 2 years of my stay there. - No training opportunities in India and it's easier to get snow in Rajasthan than it is to get funding from the Indian HR team/ Management for even courses that are as low as 15-20k for a course. Again a HR problem. - Each subsidiary is independent therefore the work life balance and culture differs per region. The Indian subsidiary has always been extremely stingy in Pune and in my long association there was never any provisions for notebooks, pens, envelopes, etc and you had to buy these things on your own. This was very specific to Pune office only. Even during pandemic, only 400Rs were offered per month for internet and that too for only Junior employees (seniors were assumed to be "well off" to have internet ). There was no subsidies given for home office equipment either. Overall getting a dime out of the Indian management is a mission impossible. Additional monitors which help improve productivity is considered an additional expense and not even good quality headphones that can cancel noise are provided. Overall was a very cheap and "penny wise and pound foolish" mentality. I initially thought it was due to the notorious mindset of our ex-location head but still such things continue. - The Indian HR team is absolutely weak and almost non-existent. There is an immediate need to hire and build a strong HR team that goes beyond just recruitment. This includes learning & development, business HR, compensation benchmarking, behavioral trainings and so on. Currently there are ~4 people in HR team for an overall strength of 600 in MS India. The HR leader unfortunately doesn't have the experience nor the capability nor the stature to be leading the HR function. They could be a HR function manager at best. This is an absolute disaster and a reason for a lot of dis-satisfaction. There is an immediate to bring in an industry veteran who understands HR and builds a strong team that values employees, values building skills via trainings, values spending money on employees. - The performance review process is absolutely terrible. I came from a company that had a robust online performance management system and during my long stay at G+D, we ended up using an offline excel based system! There was never any kind of change or improvement made to that process. This was done globally no less!! The worst part I admit to is that the objectives were never followed through with my manager and just ended up putting scores on the last day based on how much my manager liked me. The whole process is done by first knowing the budget of salary increases and then distributing it to "perceived" good employees and then adjusting the scores. There is a no way to measure employee performance and that's a pity. There is no culture of having 1:1 meetings between managers and employees and there are no techniques or tools provided to managers on how to do their job. - Some of the BU heads in Pune are distant and not interested in talking to their employees. Many of them are incapable of being in their position and simply there because there is no culture of firing in the company.