- low pay coupled with still very subjective appraisal and promotion process.
- lost human touch and excellence in HR practices - which created the Infosys growth engine in late 90's and early 2000.
- policies & procedures focus than nurturing talent - especially soft skills / management / communications
- below average technology skills across the board - there are a few stars in every group to counter this argument. However when you look at an average individual on a typical project - you don't get a sense of having someone coming from a technology savvy company. People talk more about CMM and process (which also they know little about) and all the systems where the data needs to go rather than talking about things which are really relevant for the client.
- talent management - while there are a number of training programs - the average skill coming out is very poor in terms of technology skills, communication, leadership and motivation to do something bigger and larger..
- lack of wealth creation focus for employees - Infosys was seen as a wealth generating engine for every employee in late 1990s and this attracted people to join Infosys (over other companies) ,to accept medium / lower compensation as the belief was that in longer run they will generate significantly higher wealth and professional success compared to a high paying job at another company.
Today there is no visible mechanism by which employees can see how they will be much better off continuing with Infosys. The salary / promotion dissatisfaction increase is directly a result of lack of new wealth creation mechanism and sense of ownership for every employee in the company. It's not about an immediate pay raise / hike - which is a never ending game as someone will always offer a higher salary compared to the current employer. The other attraction of working for cutting edge technology / domain / client problem has lost focus / attention in the race for making people billable. While we have COEs and units to showcase some great work in software engineering, and in every domain, this is limited to a group of individuals / groups which are quite closed. In any chain the weakest link determines the strength of chain (doesn't matter how much strong the strongest link is). Today an average Infoscion is much lower in talent, intellect, motivation, leadership and drive to do something bigger and larger (this was a pervasive spirit in late 1990s and early 2000s)
I think the size of the company is the biggest obstacle today for management to take time out and think for every person. So, while the intent and motivation of top management is still the same, due to this size of operations, focus is moving away from conscious employee grooming, enablement through engaged and continuous involvement. We are becoming the organizations which we used to compete successfully against in 1990s.