Nov 23, 2009 02:14 PM
18984 Views
(Updated May 07, 2011 02:45 AM)
I had posted my review under different QuEST company, I am refering to https://quest-global.com, it's office located on Whitefield Main Road, B'lore.
My Name is Phaneesh Murthy (name changed), I have served QuEST for about 5 years 8 months and quit in 2007 here are some points about this company.
The work content is good and recommended for freshers, can learn a lot in short span of time depending on the department you work. I recommend this company for all frshers (Rajeev_Vermacially BE mechanical)
Program Managers are very mercurial, efficient and knowledgeable, completely non nonsense people.
Experience based promotion is not there but skill based and merit based only, which is really good. Salary and perks are not best in the industry, even facilities are not good. Transportation is pretty bad.
Ambience is good, but has strict timings, late coming will attract deduction in salary, but senior staff is excluded from this harrasment. An half an hour late means you need to get approvals like in govt. department.
Admin is hard working but no funds, very stingy, they get quote from 10 people and negotiate even Rs.10 for buying a coffee vending machine. In II shift milk will not be available so no coffee/tea. At once QuEST ran their business using pirated softwares and was climisht red-handed by a client.
They recently laid off close to 100 people even though the company was very healthy with good pipeline of projects and with margin of profit more than 25%, many of whom who were laid off are my good old friends who were essentially workaholics.
Owned by Ajit Prabhu and Aravind Malligeri, the company literally has no transparency in accounting and balace sheets even though the company is 11 years old and a strength of 800 employees. Both Ajit and Aravind own huge number of properties in Hubli /Belgaum /B’lore / NewYork / Cincinnati/ Schenectady/ Greenville/ Connecticut and they invest heavily in other profitable businesses as well. Both are NRIs....and have superb appetite for risk and growth.
’Shares’ were given to ’high performing’ employees way back in 2003, but now it is 2009 and still QuEST remains controlled only by Ajit and Aravind. Almost all employees who held shares are no more in the company (about 100 employees) and the company is yet to become PUBLIC.
Once the salary reaches more than 5lac PA, you are under constant scanner (almost every week), you don’t know when you get fired for no mistake of yours.
The worst part is Human Resource department which is headed by one joker by name Natarajan Iyer (actually good at managing herd of Animals - no bad meant to shepard though), he claims to be IIM graduate but has actually completed his masters at Symboisis, Pune in distance mode. This man makes 9 lies for every 10 promises ( in open house forums ) he keeps saying many things but will never do. Natarajan is popularly known as joker in employees circle. All the HR employees are animals with no heart and basic courtesy. To get a relieving letter one may have to spend a week correcting english, details, dates in the letter. The HR department is very unfriendly and I came to know how they unleashed the lay-off excercise. Many senior employees were laid off for no good reason (all drawing salary of about 4-5lac PA ONLY). Many were not entertained at QuEST reception and on phone....i.e. after they were laid off on some or the other pretext, they never let ex-employees meet HR animals. Some people who confronted were told ’do whatever you want, you can’t meet any HR guys, come later’.
Many experienced employees were revised downwards during recession by 5 to 25%, forcing many to leave the company (indirect firing), man behind such idea is the HR head.
Few employees who managed to meet HR head to convey their grieveince, the HR head says 'My salary is cut by 60%, and I am here for next two months only, I am already on notice period' !! This man rides Toyota Corolla and owns two houses in Koramangala and HSR layout rRajeev_Vermactively !!
Another modus operandi of HR is to send series of mails to a targeted person if he comes late, later they ask the targeted person to take approvals and stuff like that, dozens were targeted like this by HR department.
Another method adopted by HR is hike a person’s salary very much and de-moralize his collegues, later even the guy with hike will be sent out...!!!
HR department has flouted basic labour laws by laying off people even though the company made 20-25% profit in the reccession period.
OVERALL THE HR BEHAVES WORST THAN RECOVERY AGENTS !!
Having said so much about HR, I should say the problem lies with selfish management who are minting money and throwing out people after extracting juice from them.
Though I don’t recommend this company for 4lac+ pa kinda guys...but very good for freshers..!!
UPDATE @ 25thMarch2011 ( feedback from my friends)
The quality of program managers have gone down partly due to fatigue and old ones with no new ideas.
I take back my recommendation for freshers as I came to know that they are recruiting freshers only to show the strength for customtakeouters, in reality they are on bench without work.
I heard the HR practices has now even worsened, mainly due to the curse of the laid off (mostly 1-2 years experience)
QuEST in a bid to eye wash senior management/employees is adopting methods to improve their working by morale boosting techniques. They will get some US citizen and introduce him as investor/borad member, they actually have no relationship with QuEST, they are friends of Ajit/Aravind, who are paid to behave like investors/board members. All employees think company is doing something good for progess and securing their jobs. That's Indian weakness, fascination for anything 'foreign'.
So the management is going from bad to worse, anyone joining QuEST think twice, it's not that great as it sounds. Talk to few employees/ex-employees before joining.
Thanks for reading !
Phaneesh
