Moving To TCS

I've been hearing this question one too many times. So, I'm going to take some time off to write the actual reasons behind my decision to move out of Oracle to TCS.

1. The work at Oracle was getting boring
Let me elaborate. I was initially working on a project called Ship and Debit. It was a pure development project. I had a loooooooooooooot of fun working on it. The learning curve was rewarding in itself. Things were going very well. Then, all of a sudden, quite a few people quit in my team, sequentially of course. This lead to a resource crunch, and since I was the only person in the team left with product knowledge, experience and expertise on a product called Sales Online (OSO), I was pulled out of the Ship and Debit project to work on OSO. I didn't exactly like this decision that much, especially since the OSO project was primarily into a maintenance mode and it wasn't exactly the most rewarding - or for that matter fun work - around.

2. The pay was not competitive enough
When I joined Oracle, I was amongst the top 10% of the highest paid employees in my batch. This was indeed a great ego boost. But, over the 2 years I was at Oracle, my pay got raised a meager 15%, whereas my contemporaries, in other companies of course, had their salaries revised to such levels that, the last time I checked, I was earning a good 30% - 50% less than they were earning currently. The icing on the cake was that freshers were joining Oracle at the same pay stacks as people with 4 or 5 years work experience. This was indeed a big blow to my ego.

3. Desire to move to Consulting/Service
I've always wanted to move into a customer facing role. Especially one that’d let me improve upon my sales and marketing skills. This is because - I've always wanted to move out of applications development into more buxom and hot areas like Marketing and Sales. My logic is - if I am in a role where I play a direct influence on the revenue of a company - they'll be more inclined to respect, keep me happy and reward me handsomely. Maybe my logic is flawed, but until I am proven otherwise, I am going to run with this logic itself!
Anyways ... Back to the main story. So, I learnt, after a lot of researching, that the only two departments, at Oracle, where I could do anything like I mentioned above were Sales and Marketing, and Product Management. Also, on digging a little more, I realized that Oracle doesn't exactly encourage developers to move into such roles. Atleast, that's what all the "contacts" I touched base with told me. Thus, when I realized that my career aspirations could not be satisfied by Oracle, I started looking for organizations that would let me move in the direction I wanted to. And what better industry than the service industry to help me in these aspirations.

4. Easy Referrals Available
Since I had decided to move to a consulting/service industry space, the companies I could move to were - Accenture, Wipro, TCS, Infosys, Satyam, Cognizant.
* Cognizant - My friend, Ravi Ramchandran, had got me a referral. But, that lil dimwit had got a referral for a walk-in event, and I just hated walk-in events (I'll talk about why in another blog!). So, that didn't exactly take off.
* Wipro - I'd be dead before I walk into that shit hole of a company again!
* Infosys - Although this was my dream company, I didn't like the concept of having to wear a tie to work. Plus, my friend Raj (who is a manager there) informed me that there were no openings for 3+ years Java/J2EE professionals at the moment (thanks to the Sub-Prime crisis and the depreciating rupee situations)
* Satyam - They were not even ready to match my current CTC.
* Accenture - I didn't have anyone to refer me here. Besides, I was told that they didn't have any overseas opportunities.
* TCS - Well this is where my friend Vineeth and Rohit helped me out. They got me a referral, and I was interviewing with the TCS tech panel the very next day at Cochin. Everything went well during the interview, and a few rounds of haggling with the company HR resulted in a satisfactory paycheck.

5. For My Parents
My brother had just graduated from college, and was staying with my folks for about a month before joining the Oracle work force. After he left home for Bangalore, mom kindda went into a slight depression phase. Now that both her kids were far away (a good 12 hours journey by train/bus), she just didn't take it that well. I just couldn't bear to see her that way. So, I realized the best thing to do would be to move closer to home so that she feels better.

6. Overseas Opportunities
At Oracle, it was assured that we wouldn't get to go abroad. Even in the rarest of situations that we did, Oracle didn't have a concept of per day allowance. So, since there was not extra money-making upside to the whole deal, as well as the downside that one would have to pay from one's INR savings for any and all purchases and incidentals while abroad, it was not in the very least bit a lucrative deal.
On the contrary, TCS has a much more attractive onsite, both short-term as well as long-term, with a potential upside of making a few (if not a lot) of extra dollars (or pounds, or yen, or whatever other currency exists for that matter).

7. Fatter Paycheck
TCS was offering me a better paycheck. Hike wise I was being offered a meagre 10% more than what I make at Oracle. But, since I would be staying at home, I would be able to save a lot of money (like rent, food, partying, etc). Looking at it from that sort of a holistic perspective, I would be able to save and additional 1 lak+. On that note, I'd say my pay hike was an "effective" 30%+.

8. Promotions
TCS was offering me a promotion. I wouldn't say this was a make or break decision criteria, as I am pretty sure that if I had stayed on at Oracle, I would've gotten a promotion there as well. But, since the TCS offer was giving me a promotion ahead of the Oracle promotion cycles, I must say, it served as an unearthly temptation.


Now, for all those people who had this question in mind, I hope your queries are cleared. Let me know otherwise (via a comment/mail/sms/call) and I'll try to help you out with it!