I was referred by an existing employee. The interview process was well planned and good learning experience. The Leaders who interviewed me came across matured and were interested in knowing the value that I bring in to the team. I was offered a good package. After joining the initial experience was good where there was adequate help and support to get things started. But slowly I realized the expectation from my role is way different from what I had been explained. The work was mostly creating excel Dashboards and was often in silos. I initially though this is the initial phase and soon the real work would start. But I was allocated work like copy pasting numbers from PDF and I was part of the senior management. My manager had little consideration for personal time and work life balance. Within a month a was getting frequently dragged into unplanned meeting with unrealistic deliverable timelines. Weekends were rare and almost all Sundays I woke up to messages with deliverables for Monday. My manager made it a point that I never got beyond the myopic world of data points. No end to end view of Analysis and he/she had almost very little or no contribution during the analysis. He/She would take my commentary and pass on to management and bring their queries to me. I have taken phone calls while attending to medical emergency and needless to say almost all plan holidays came with the disclaimer that if there is work I will call you and you have to do it. The worst part was it was recommended that I apply for leave even when I have worked on holidays and a couple of occasions I was told I am being immature to expect that I can log time for the week end work or holidays as this was suppose to be the culture. When things becomes unbearable I reached out to HR who inturn gave bookish replies like you should escalate and policy is their for compensatory holidays etc. I also reached out to the head of Department with the issues I faced and the direction I got was resolve it among yourself and absolve me from it. I realized I had no other choice but to resign which I did. I had spoken to the Senior most person of the Indian HR team but what I realized is they are well meaning but they have limited accountability and simply can’t go against the business even when they have reasons which clearly violate policies. My resignation meetings were mostly about which company I am leaving for and what is my plan and not about anything else. May be I am a corner case but when I spoke to some of the other employees I realised they have had similar experiences and have received very less help. Many of them have left and some of them have adjusted their life style. Some of them had good experience also but they are working in Departments where work is less and planned. All in all my recommendation if you hear the word GDS don’t join. If you are joining the consulting arm I don’t have any experience to guide you. If you can concede to the mindset that I will work with the wimps and fancies of the boss and will get paid accordingly go for it.
As an employee who was referred to the organization by an existing employee, I was excited about the opportunity to work with this consulting organization. The interview process was well-planned and provided a good learning experience. The leaders who interviewed me were mature and showed a genuine interest in knowing the value that I could bring to the team. The offer provided to me was also very competitive.
However, after joining, I realized that the expectations for my role were significantly different from what I was initially told during the interview process. I found myself primarily working on creating Excel Dashboards, which was often in silos. Initially, I thought this was just a temporary phase and that the real work would start soon. However, I found myself being allocated work such as copy-pasting numbers from PDF files. I was also part of the senior management, and this type of work was not what I expected.
Furthermore, my manager showed little consideration for my personal time and work-life balance. Within a month of joining, I found myself frequently dragged into unplanned meetings with unrealistic timelines for deliverables. Weekends were rare, and almost every Sunday, I woke up to messages with deliverables for Monday. My manager made it a point to keep me focused on myopic data points, with no end-to-end view of analysis. I was responsible for the analysis, while my manager had little or no contribution. They would take my commentary and pass it on to management and bring their queries back to me.
In addition to this, I was expected to take phone calls while attending to medical emergencies, and on several occasions, I was told that I was being immature for expecting to log time for weekend work or holidays. This was supposedly part of the company culture. When I raised my concerns with HR, they gave me bookish replies and suggested that I escalate the issue. When I approached the head of the department, I was told to resolve the issue myself and absolve them from any responsibility.
Unfortunately, I felt that I had no other choice but to resign. I spoke with the senior-most person of the Indian HR team, but I realized that they had limited accountability and could not go against the business even when there were clear violations of policies. My resignation meetings were more focused on my future plans and which company I was joining, rather than addressing the issues that led to my resignation.
After speaking with some of the other employees, I realized that many of them had similar experiences and received very little help. Some of them left the organization, while others adjusted their lifestyles to cope with the demands of their roles. Although some employees had a good experience, they were working in departments where the workload was less and better planned.
Overall, I would not recommend joining the GDS division of the organization. However, I have no experience with the consulting arm and cannot provide any guidance on that. If you are willing to work according to the whims and fancies of your boss and get paid accordingly, you may want to consider joining. However, if you value work-life balance and a healthy work environment, I would recommend looking elsewhere.