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Name of the organisation, location, team strength
HCL Technologies Ltd. (Noida), 13
Application process
Campus Placement
Initial impression
Dream Job.
Work-life balance, caring bosses, cooperative environment. I was still in student mode – trying to absorb everything in and soaking in as much as possible, as early as possible.
Office timings/lunch, etc.
No fixed timings for anything. Stretch yourself to the maximum.
Official timings are 9:30 AM to 6:30 PM.
Have to reach as early as 8:30- 9:00 and barely to I leave before 8:00 PM.
Weekdays are off but on normal days, you will have to dedicate one day of the two to work or your Mondays will be screwed.
As far as lunch timings are considered, in the past one year, going from my desk to the cafeteria seems to be a luxury.
Most people bring their lunches and gobble up food between calls and meetings sitting at their respective desks/in the breakout areas.
Main responsibilities and tasks at HCL
Contract review, drafting, and negotiation.
There are internal teams – technical teams (working on the IT stuff), finance team (verifying the prices and related terms) and Business Team.
The business team gets business and hence, has the responsibility to get the document vetted from legal. They will be after your lives to get a document approved, completely trivialising the risks.
Legal will highlight the contractual and legal risk, appear as the villain and hence, will always be at logger’s heads with them.
Legal seeks inputs from Technical and Finance Teams and proceeds in their review. The work is purely contractual wherein contract law and a bit of technology/privacy laws come into play.
Apart from the contract negotiations with customers (the coolest part of the job), the Contracting Team also helps in making all sorts of excel reports highlighting risks, categorizing signed and unsigned contracts as per different parameters.
Work environment
People are kind and helpful on the face of it. However, you will get to know the real intentions after months, when you won’t be able to do anything about the same!
Someone will say something about you (not professional at all) to the Big Boss and he not confront you, but your boss. Your boss, in turn, will trickle the impact down on you. You will never be confronted or get a chance to explain yourself.
You will be witnessing heated arguments (with Business), colleagues saying “main aur nahi kar sakta” and a lot of firefighting than the actual contracting. The organization calls itself an “Employee First” company, when in effect, the attrition rate is extremely high.
A team of 18 has changed twice in my two years’ tenure and at present 13 are doing the work of 18. The environment is frustrating. At times, this frustration leads to unexpected friendships – bonding over hardships and at other times, results in groupism.
Bosses make sure to celebrate your birthday/farewell in a grand manner – take you out to the cafeteria and cut cake and all. Once a year there is an offsite (where you also contribute for the trip!) to nearby weekend getaways.
Best things at HCL Technologies
1. My boss is the only reason I am not quitting. She is would teach you very patiently, respect you, recognise your efforts and leave no stone unturned to include you. If you have made a mistake, she will even shield you from her own bosses!
2. Work From Home – If you have a genuine issue (health or family) – you can ask for a work from home. Since there is no paperwork and confidentiality measures are built-in within your laptop, you can WFH (work from home/hills) for a few days. But this is discretionary on your bosses.
3. Infrastructure and Diversity – Infrastructure is world class – you realize you are in an organization with a revenue of USD 8 Bn when you visit the campus.
4. Travel Opportunities – Negotiating often involved face-to-face meetings due to which you may get international travel opportunities.
Bad things at HCL Technologies
1. No transparency – you will one day get to know that a colleague with same experience and working on similar transactions as you is earning twice as you.
You will never get the real picture of how and on what basis work is allocated. You will wonder why is it so that you slog till 11 PM while someone silently leaves the office at 5:30 PM. No, efficiency is not the answer, my friend, an ambiguous allocation is!
2. No personal life left – I had joined HCL with grand plans of studying side-by-side and appearing for an LLM/judiciary exams. I barely get time to sleep for 8 hours. I skip dinner at times being too tired to cook for myself.
3. Office Politics – Attrition rate is high. Internal affairs ministry is very active. The less it is spoken about, the better it is.
4. Work Type – Everyday you will be bombarded with Amendments, Agreements of various kinds and after a while, it all gets rote. The contractual positions you fight for most of the times are what the company believes in. The element of ‘law’ is overshadowed by ‘policies’ and at times you question – am I a lawyer!?!
5. Remuneration – Remuneration will be low as compared to your law firm friends (despite the fact that you too will be working for 12 hours a day!).
Threatening to quit and getting a raise is to be resorted to for a hike, but it will still always be something you will not be satisfied with.
Biggest lessons
1. Leave the moment you feel you are unsatisfied. There is no point trying to wait for the right time.
2. In-House does not mean a ‘chill life’.
3. The only real friends who will make will be your college friends. Colleagues rarely become real friends. If they do, hold on to them.
4. Identify genuine well-wishers from fake ones. Office politics is common everywhere. Stay aloof, limit yourself to your work and ensure that your personal space is not infringed by your work.
5. Don’t indulge in office gossip but do remain aware of your surroundings.
Any other thing?
HCL will only be a metro station in your career’s journey. Try de-boarding as early as possible.
This review is only for a specific team. Apparently, there are other types of legal teams (compliance/ procurement) where people are not dying as much as the contracting team is.
Overall rating
5/10
Infrastructure at HCL
The campus is huge – as huge as a township in itself! There are multiple towers with swanky corporate environment, lush green lawns with fountains and all that jazz.
There are three cafeterias, with multiple floors with pizza Hut, CCD, Slice of Italy, Subway, Mother Dairy – you name it and HCL has it! Staying in Noida in nearby Sectors is what most people do.
Accommodation
Noida is inexpensive and hence, living standards are good.
Note: Job experiences shared on Lawctopus are written by individual employees and hence are subjective.
This experience is of the legal team. The account is absolutely true. The situation was dire in my time. I worked in 2014 and had horrible experience. Now lwgal team has changed. All the bad eggs have been thrown or are leaving.
This is brutally honest and being from the same team can vouch for this. Not only this, the fact that there is a minimum 6 month delay in releasing appraisal letter only to ensure employees from leaving. After all you would want to get the increment for a year full of sweat and blood. And in case you quit before the release of letters, not only do you get zero increments, but they also seize the bonus for last year and pay nothing. All this in the name of “Employee First”..
******########Don’t join HCL########******
Some people who are sitting in top management are ruining the employees career. Employees who
can follow orders can only be dear to their managers irrespective of the ones who work hard and willingness to learn have no space in company.
Hcl should infact make all the top management to go through some exam which will allow their exsistence here.
Hey. You people atleast not having hike. I had not even last longed the contract job until next offer all beyond my first level productivity and hard work applied.
The worst company ever to work with, they screwed my efforts of 1.5 years by giving me 0 increment because I was on my maternity leave, the, the HR will always be deaf and so are the leadership team.
Very well written and to the point. Each and every word is correct about HCL. Not only your team…. Most of the members in different teams face the same issue. The attrition rate is around 60%, but do wa t not disclose the actual figures and do not want to do anything about it. People who stay back in HCL is only because they have some personal constraints.
I work with it department in tata steel and looking job
This is the all fake… All are lies… The Chennai sez campus is one of the worst campus in terms of cleaniness. and all, so much of politics between
I had a worst experience in HCL Tss. They made to work for 4 months after OJT period, without salary and they removed me , i had lost nearly 1 year of time along with training period, they don’t have a minimum concern on employee. Project Managers are very rude.
It is all favourism those who can please their bosses have a life others are just ignored irrespective of the knowledge and performance. You see a lot of unskilled people growing, those who cannot speak english have foreign trips. It’s been a den for those who knows how to please their bosses by drinks or favours…there are overnight promotions of such resources where even HR don’t question and neither has any justification.
Don’t join HCL ever, they […] ruined your life, no growth in this company, no worries life balance, always thinking for cost cutting even no nsweets on diwali, management do not bother about work all are busy in making fool to senior mgmt and subordinate.
About birthday it is not correct, birthday is celebrated of those who are dear to the managers , groupism is observed in office catalyst trip, HR dept are management agents just like politicians corrupt police who use
Pass on the confidentiality of the conversation between an employee and an HR executive