Globsyn Business School in association with Calcutta Management Association (CMA) and Patton organized ‘Talkshop’ – a panel discussion on 29th April 2009 at its campus. The topic of the discussion was ‘Midcareer Choices for IT professionals’ where the panelists discussed the career options for the large number of tech guys present in the audience in this turbulent economic time. The eminent panel included Mr. Siddhartha Mukherjee (Former Vice President – Cognizant Technologies Solutions), Mr. Amitabh Ray (Vice President – IBM India Pvt. Ltd), Mr. Debdas Sen (Executive Director – PriceWaterhouseCoopers), Mr. Subrata Dutta, Mr. Rajarshi Sengupta (President – CMA), Prof. R. C. Bhattacharya (Vice Chairman & Director – Globsyn Business School), and Mr. S. A. Ahmed (Chairman – Nabadiganta).
The welcome speech was delivered by Prof. R. C. Bhattacharya where he explained the need to think out of the box. In his opening speech Mr. Siddhartha Mukherjee said it’s the time to introspect and opportunity to take stock. He emphasized that this is the perfect time to get oneself equipped with more education and upgrade them in the value chain. According to him if one continues to run in the rat race one day the person can become rat.
Mr. Amitabh Ray said it is not the time to relax as the clients are demanding more and our work life balance is getting affected by this. He pointed out that our biggest draw back is that we do not market ourselves correctly and advised that we should get rid of this mental blockage as soon as possible. As the high GDP growth in last few years has opened up opportunities in different sectors especially in Tier 1 & Tier 2 cities so we should try to reap benefits from that. Better networking is the key to success in this time.
As per Mr. Subrata Dutta there could be lateral movements between different industries especially between IT and BPO. He advised that people should try to understand the business and acquire domain knowledge which would help them to become successful in future. On the other hand Mr. Debdas Sen spoke about the opportunities in the off shored R&D centers of the Global giants.
Summarizing the discussion Mr. Rajarshi Sengupta said industries like Healthcare, Pharma etc. are doing well so there could be opportunity there and hoped that the current situation will be over very soon.
Delivering his valedictory speech Mr. S. A. Ahmed expressed hope that the IT industry will revive very soon as people have become used to with the use of IT. He informed that the demand for land in the Salt Lake Electronic Complex is still high which proves that more companies are interested to open their shop here. Since the companies are looking for engineers with managerial skills so more and more engineers are going for MBA to go up in the value chain. He concluded by saying that the market will not diminish and will revive soon.
