Yes, a company which showed great prospects of reaching the top, is now struggling to survive. The employees have not been paid their salaries for the past six months. Come August, it will be the seventh month that the employees go without salaries. A company which had won the national award for the best indigenous technology is now in the dumps.
It all began with the infamous merger with another member of the TENET group founded by an IIT professor. This company is Banyan networks. They were themselves runnning in huge debt. But at that time Midas was going well. What was the inspiration behind this merger. Did Midas see great prospects in the products developed by Banyan networks. I don’t think so. Perhaps it was done to appease the wife of the CEO of Midas who was working in Banyan. Now she is working in Midas, just a few of the employees of the erstwhile Banyan networks who are left in Midas. All the others have left. The merger has been a huge liability for Midas, perhaps the most foolish things done by the management of Midas.
It is said that the people are the most valuable asset of any company. Perhaps the managers of midas have missed that line in their management studies. It has to be said that the technical managers have great talent, technically, but management skills .zero. In fact I doubt if any of them have studied management.
Another reason for this situation is the weak, or non-existent even, HR department. The HR department have never really played any major part in managing the human resources of the company. Currently they have made a guy who was previously delivering stuff from one premise of the company to the other, as the HR head. So it is imaginable how pathetic a state the HR department is in. This guy now walks around as if he is a big shot in the company. Thats all he does. There is no contact between the employees of the company and the HR. Not even an iota of information is passed on to the employees, regarding what is the current status of the company, what is being done to bring it back on track.nothing. The employees are in complete darkness. They don’t know what is going to happen the next day. There is no atttempt to find out how the employees are managing. In fact, they are not even told that the next month’s salary will not be credited. Everything is taken for granted. It is not that they have stopped working or anything. Work goes on as usual. I must say that the managment and the technical leaders are very smart in extracting work. They promise them that once you complete this delivery, you will be paid your salary. The poor gullible employees, believing their bosses words, work day and night to complete the delivery, only to be shown an empty hand. This goes on. The employees have no other option but to continue, because there is not many opportunities outside. The management of Midas realise this and continue to exploit them. The employees of Midas have to be given an award for being the epitome of patience.
But there is one department who is making huge amounts of money even in this tough times. And that is the purchase department. Gross irregularities have been happening in the procurement of components. The management is turning a blind eye to all this. Previously there has been cases where people in the purchase dept have been sent off because of corrupt practices. But the management didn’t learn their lessons. Perhaps it is because the head of the purchase department is the trusted aide of the CTO. It is another matter that this trusted aide and his trusted aide are running a flourishing real estate business side by side. Nobody is bothered to find out what is the source of this income. This trusted aide’s trusted aide recently resigned from the company. Perhaps he thought that there is nothing left to plunder. Why.even the CEO of the company is rumoured to be running a parallel business. Seems like he has lost hope in this one.
Midas is a great place to work for freshers. If you are not bothered about whether you will be paid your salaries, it is an excellent training centre for telecom hardware/software. Work here for two years, don’t bother about your income, and you are bound to be well place somewhere else.
The professor from IIT whose dream Midas is implementing, does not bother about how the company is doing presently it seems. It is a long time he was seen in Midas. He is one among the board of directors. If he was really bothered, he wouldn’t have allowed the management to function in such a poor manner. A lot of products were developed without even bothering to find out if the products are really marketable. A lot of people in the top level have left. A company which had a 500 strong employee strength, has hardly 150 of them now. And those who are left are doomed to rot in Midas. If Midas survives, they will work in Midas till they reach retirement age, or if Midas closes down, they will go down with Midas. I was lucky enough to quit the company about a year back.
I hope one of the many cash rich companies of the country makes an attempt to acquire Midas, a company which had shown great promise.