The Eaton India Center in Pune is a engineering product development center for all the business segments of Eaton and has in past few years grown in numbers in addition to a new site with good infrastructure and labs.
While the center claims to transform from Engineering center to innovation center, nothing as such has changed in terms of content and scope of the work (primarily basic CAD, application engg and platform support) since the leadership remains the same with the same age old orthodox ways of management.
What works here is being politically in inner circle of a few global leaders. While the company pays fairly well, growth does not happen as a function of performance, but a function of the closeness to few decision makers.
A coterie of few experienced individuals (claim to be leaders) who are in the system for 10-15-20 years, manages the show. They act as opinion makers and a conduit to the senior management in providing the intelligence about what's happening on floor.
While they hire good talent (lateral, campus), they are not able to retain and groom the same due to - politics and poor quality of the overall work content that provides minimal learning and growth opportunities.
Managers mostly spend time in meetings or in preparing presentations for 2 level ups who use the presentations to keep further two level ups happy with glorified stories. Most of managers are operations managers, NOT engineering managers, and hence obviously the culture is to "manage" the show and not to "innovate thru breakthru technologies".
Mostly people decisions are taken based upon the collective perceptions of a few "inner circle" individuals and not based upon entitlement or performance.
While globally it's a great company with good products and technologies, the Pune center does not really reflect the same. If someone is very savvy and great at interpersonal relationship management, and upward management this could be a great place to work!
