No future in IT outside of Bangalore
Pros
Good pay, reasonable benefits but these are being reduced to save costs, good people
Cons
If you are an IT professional outside of Bangalore this is not the place for you. The vast majority of jobs are moving there. There has been a mantra from on high for years now: "We are not an IT company." The way things are now moving cost is the only thing that matters. People with real deep knowledge of how systems here work are being let go and replaced with new graduates in India. We are employing some really good people there but the message the business people pass back is they feel that IT does not care about them, just lowering costs. Apparently Shell makes so little money we now cannot afford to supply a selection of coffee/tea/hot chocolate for the coffee machines. The bins are emptied once per week. A mighty saving of $25k per year. Times are that tough even though we still make more than almost every other company out there. So much process is really killing the value we can add. Changing an index on a database table can take over a week because the person who knows what change needs to be made cannot do it. At least three tickets need to be raised then when a DBA finally responds you have to walk them through how to make the change. The extreme cost cutting has killed the value.
