[Resolved]  Photon Infotech — Employee Harassment

Photon Infotech is popular but sadly for all the wrong reasons.

About 5 years back, I made the mistake of joining this company. I trusted the words of the really friendly HR person and he did a FANTASTIC job of making me believe every word he said. Actually the interview was good and they put me directly through to the clients (US) and that went off well too. So obviously I was excited and after negotiating my salary, jumped right out of the frying pan that I was already in, into this altar of fire.

I did not expect much in terms of facility or work environment, but it sure was dirty. I did not pay much heed to it though, because I soon realized that the client was running the show. The company called itself a Software Solution and Services Provider, but actually they stood no match to the small Technical team at the clients end. They were instructing and educating people here and were having a real tough time at that. The technical stronghold from this end was a couple of over glorified sloppy programmers.
I was taken aback when I heard a few of our mangers discussing things as they were swearing at each and everyone. That was the case even during conference calls we had. People were screaming expletives but still everyone around seemed so normal. It was not the kind of place that I was used to. But then the work was challenging and so I did not care much about the rest.

But this story which I witnessed made me think long and hard about continuing with them. A guy from another team wanted to quit mostly because of the same reasons that I was contemplating on. And I saw what happened to him, which totally made me hate this company.

They first asked him to reconsider his decision and threatened that they would go to any extent to retain him. When he did not budge, they filed a suit against him alleging that he ran off taking a Server box and a laptop with him.

This guy, whom I knew from many of the late nights we were at office, slogging to fix messed up code, desperately needed the relieving letter. The IT industry is so plagued with flaky resumes that companies that hire engineers insist on clean paperwork and work history. Companies like Photon Infotech use this to their advantage and literally black mail talented employees who only want to quit.

When this story hit our friends circle, we gathered more information and to our biggest surprise found that MANY others have gone through this torture. While some have taken their chances and eloped, a few decided to put up with this and stay a bit longer just to ensure their service track is intact. Further, we came to know that those who left despite these threats, were given terrible reviews during their background verification or were simply stated as never existed.

I seriously hope that law enforcements are present and frequent unbiased checks are made on such companies, which take undue advantage of the market scenario and harass innocent employees.

I would like to maintain anonymity for reasons needless to be mentioned.