As mentioned on our 'about us ' page, our vision is to become one of the best companies to work for in Indonesia with innovative HR strategies. And to become one of the biggest IT services company in South East Asia.
In this blog post let me elaborate. First of all, we want to become one of the best companies to work for. I hate to see brain drain, whereby the smartest young people in Indonesia choose to leave the country after their graduation, to Singapore mostly. The main reasons are simple, it's that the salary offered, and the standard of living enjoyed, is much higher outside of Indonesia.
If we can grow, at some point our salary level can be competitive even on regional level, on a PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) basis. For example, a $2000 USD salary in Singapore is maybe equal to a salary of $750 USD in Indonesia, to achieve the same standard of living. And it's worth to take a look of other aspects of our company besides the financial gain; working at WGS inspires, teaches, and even encourages the employee to be able to be an entrepreneur.
So again, that's the first long-term aim of the company. To become a great place to work. Good salary, international-level technological challenges, are among the things that we are gonna sell. The second 'vision' relates to our growth. We want to grow big and bigger. The biggest IT services company in Indonesia has only about 500 fulltime workers. While in China almost 10k, and in India much much more.
When discussing this with an established 100+ worker IT services company in Jakarta recently, I am pretty surprised they dont share the same goal. They believe the best size for an IT company in Indonesia is about 30-40 people (our size now). They say it's difficult to manage employees in Indonesia, let alone programmers who mostly regard themselves as artists. Unlike in India, they say, Indians work hard and generally understands that IT is an industry just like a clothing manufacturing company is. Indonesian programmers on the other hand, under a slight work pressure, will choose to quit.
I dont know about Indians. But immediately my Indian associate agree to the notion that generally Indians can take more pressure. But he did not agree that the 'ideal' size of an IT company is 30-40 people. Neither do I. I believe with good management, we can grow our headcounts just like the biggest names in the world has done it (Wipro, TCS, Infosys, etc). After all, growth is largely determined by the number of headcount. If we always re-outsource the work that we got from customers to a partner, we are no longer an IT services company; we are a reseller agent.
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