Pros
You get your own office in the Pleasanton buildings. Public transportation is readily available. Work from home is available and you get your own cell phone so you can be reached 7x24. KPIT has a large IT budget and I have not seen any layoffs when I was there but you also get deadwoods hanging around not carrying his own weight. The engineers are bright and hard working especially the ones from India. They work and work without complains but there are also deadwoods. Pay and bonuses are decent.
Cons
Management, definitely management. In KPIT my department's management structure mainly consists of managers with India background. They are pretty technical people but really have no sense of what it takes to be managers. They hang together and they whisper and pass information back and forth among themselves. They definitely know their pecking orders. If an Indian IT Director says jump the Sr. Indian Managers would say how high and then in turn he tells his reporting Indian manager to jump x number of feet and he would in turn tell the rank and file engineers to jump x number of feet. They follow their superior's orders blindly and expects their subordinates to do the same. They are very results conscious. That means you are expected to do 60 hour work weeks for months at a time with no time off (and your comp times you are expected to carry your cell phones) to complete your tasks. These are not managers with "your" career goals in their best interest. They are concern with looking good in front of their customers/stakeholders so they too can become Directors and Sr managers. Mangers will say one thing to you and turn around say something else to the stakeholders to make themselves look good. If you are on the team and make a mistake with the stakeholders there is no way they will step up to protect you the employee. They will literally hang you out to dry just to ensure your mistake does not make them look bad and stall their career advancement. These managers are very political and they are very good at playing the political game and they know what it takes to ensure you don't make them look bad. Probably not all of KPIT is like this but in this IT department in Pleasanton that was what I observed and experienced for 2 years. If you get an offer with KPIT in Pleasanton I would highly recommend speaking with the sw engineers and support engineers to understand what the working environment is all about. Once a week you are expected to work a 12 hour shift doing support (they don't ever tell you this during your interview. They also do not tell you that your are expected to be available 7x24 either). Don't get fool with the KPIT recruiter and recruiting web site presenting the job description as the best thing for your career. Do not make the same mistake I made!
