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Tata Consultancy Services

Part of Tata Group

Engaged Employer

Not for the smart, talented & ambitious - Anonymous employee Tata Consultancy Services Employee Review

1.0
Jan 19, 2010
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Good breadth of work (relative to what is available in the Indian IT services industry); you can usually get the kind of work you are interested in if you are persistent Decent Training facilities & opportunities to learn Still a few good folks left (who can be useful role models to learn from) The Tata Brand

Cons

Poor Pay; Normally, the only reward for good work is more work! The recent global economic crisis (2008 - 2009) was cited as reason for reduction in variable pay and the freeze on salary increases & promotions (Even though these increases are not even that big given present compensation policy). Please check what kind of compensation & increase the top management received in the same period. If you are smart this will tell you a lot of things about the company & you probably won't have to spend any more time reading reviews !! A culture that encourages mediocrity; poor performance goes unpunished & great performance is unrewarded. Opportunities to travel on-site (usually the only way to be financially well-rewarded if you work as a developer in India) have sharply reduced in recent times. Although such on-site chances might still appear easier to get than elsewhere they require blessings from the "management" but building good rapport with the right people in the management usually involves playing politics, licking boots & a host of other despicable activities which no honest, self-respecting individual in their right mind will even consider Conservative policies which mandate "x years of experience" as a prerequisite for any kind of growth really lead to situation where top performance & productivity are not differentiated. Hence, career progression is painfully slow. This causes most of the good & talented people to leave the organization early. Consequently, the middle management is largely incompetent & filled with people with very little technical know-how, poor project & people management skills & sometimes awful communication skills too. Dishonesty: Tons of tall claims in its corporate manifesto. Case in point: "Respect for the Individual" is supposed to be a company 'value'. Employees are referred to as "Resources" & the way they are treated by the management & HR (actually the part of HR that assigns projects... You often see lines of people waiting anxiously for 20-30 minutes outside HR cubicles without even being taken notice of) and the corporate policies w.r.t. to compensation, performance recognition, transportation (even for those who work late nights),... and yes, even tea/coffee quality (purchased using coupons) will give you some idea of how much "Respect for the Individual" this firm has. Politics: Key words used to demand 60+ hrs and weekend work: 'Ownership', 'Responsibility', 'Key member', 'Critical Project' Office politics based on: Regional & linguistic ties, ability to indulge in sycophancy, ability to deceive & project the right 'image' (e.g. Claim to be busy working on some important task day & night while actually checking the stock market or surfing the web).

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Apr 14, 2026
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Pros

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Cons

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3.0
Jun 19, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
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Pros

Large client base. Talented people, have "cracked the code" on offshoring development and support.

Cons

For anyone used to working in US-based firms, the culture and politics will be difficult to understand and navigate. Internal policies and systems focus on the offshore delivery center model. Roles in the US do not fit into that mold, and obtaining approvals for simple expenses can require weeks and insanely high approval chains given the size of TCS. I needed approval from a global division head (a CEO direct-report) just to pay for a short training course. Missions of different departments are not clearly defined, so overlap and conflict are common.

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