It’s fair to say that we get into a lot of tech events. By and large, if there’s a public event in the Lankan IT industry, you can be sure of spotting someone from Readme at the back tapping away on a laptop. But when it comes to tech companies, we find that there’s just a few names that we run into constantly.
They’re everywhere – in conversations, in banners. Regardless of where their clients are, these companies are surrounded by a huge buzz. To back up our own thoughts, we asked thirty utterly random people from the software industry to name the first few companies that popped into their heads when we mentioned the title. Here’s the list, in order of popularity – and what they do.
1) Virtusa. Everyone knows Virtusa. There are legions of graduates out there who, when questioned about what they want to do after their degree, say “Ah, I’ll get a job at Virtusa”. Somewhere out there is a factory churning out people who want to go to Virtusa.
What does Virtusa do? Virtusa is an IT services company – they do IT consulting, BPM, ECM, data warehousing, business intelligence, systems implementation, QA – actually,the list itself might take a whole paragraph: they do a lot. They are very multinational – with delivery centers in the U.S., U.K., Singapore, Germany, Malaysia, Netherlands, India and in Orion City, Sri Lanka.
2) 99X Technology. 99X has had a meteoric rise in popularity, thanks to their spending sprees on events (Colombo Agile Conference, anyone) and two popular ambassadors – it’s CEO, Mano Sekaram and Hasith Yaggahawita. Both are charismatic speakers who end up speaking at quite a lot of events, and Hasith is probably the one person in Sri Lanka who has a better event attendance record than we do. Just look at our event coverage archives and see how long you can go without spotting them somewhere in the text.
What does 99X do? Based in Sri Lanka and Norway, 99X specializes in software engineering. They’re headquartered in Walukaramaya Road, which is a great place to be – it’s within a stone’s throw of Subway, the Manhattan Fish Market, and Pilawoos. Be warned that throwing stones is not advised.
3) WSO2. Getting to WSO2 is easy: hop in a three-wheeler and as for “that building with a fish tank”. WSO2 is famous for having one of the best offices out of this lot, including, but not limited to a walk-in kitchen, a huge fishtank that doubles as a wall, carrom boards, a foosball table, ping pong table and a security guard with a Macbook on the ground floor. Most people get distracted here, so nobody really knows where the work takes place.
WSO2 is an open source development company that does service-oriented architecture, middleware and quite a lot of stuff on the cloud. eBay runs on a WSO2 product. It’s the youngest company in this list. Like 99X, they invest a fair bit in events – like the hackathon we walked out of recently.
4) MIT. Millenium IT has been in the papers ever since the London Stock Exchange took it over. Since then, even people who didn’t see the potential in it the first time around have been using it as a fine example of how brilliant Sri Lankan software engineering is.
While they keep a constant presence in the papers, we’ve never actually seen their office – and that’s because they don’t invest in events: MIT is more like the monolith from Arthur C Clarke’s the Space Odyssey – too large to ignore, but nobody knows what’s inside it.
Perhaps part of the reason we rarely see MIT folk is because their office is in Malabe, an easy distance for a lot of SLIIT graduates but out of reach of most of the tech-related events in Colombo.
Just bothered by the fact that Millennium IT calls themselves “MIT”
What is MIT? 😮
as in ripped off of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Just to clear things, Millennium IT doesn’t call itself MIT. In fact it is forbidden within and outside Millennium IT to call it MIT. Just that, in this article and people who are not from Millennium IT, call it MIT.
MillinumIT Company
MIT is more like the monolith from Arthur C Clarke’s the Space Odyssey – too large to ignore, but nobody knows what’s inside it. – The Best Part
what is the difference between virtusa and a garment factory.
MIT is no better, getting worse
A Garment factory pays there employees better than at Virtusa 🙂
you sir deserve 1000 upvotes
Well said!! 😀
good thing is they hire lots of people, who will otherwise be unemployed
Virtusa is a great place to work if you have skills and you can fast track.
How about if you support individual politics and hatred list of your Reporting Manager, BU Head of Virtusa, even if you don’t have skills but could write the most shortest email (less than 10 to 25 words) in assigning and describing a project to team member/lead ? (Hence, Why you write shorted email is that if you don’t have anything in your head what to do with the project)
Thank god the most incapable and in-efficient NATO HITLER (No Action – Talk Only) “Full Thattaya” who cut off many capable Virtusans Leads and managers below him (second and third lines) to keep a large gap to save his position to get recognized for himself – finally has left Virtusa. All resigned Leads, Project Managers, consultants, and Interview Rejects by ‘Thattaya’ could rejoin Virtusa and give their best to make Virtusa Sri Lankan ATC once again shine as in 2000-2006..
you can earn more money than working virtusa (not only vurtuza lot of tech companies in sl)
Garment factory pay for OT (overtime) virtusa & all of it companies not
IFS pay OT.
Well, we all know Virtusa, MIT and WSO2.But what is this 99X Technology? Never heard of them and you say they are Popular 😛
greatplacetowork.lk/best-companies/sri-lankas-best-companies-to-work-for
Check this link.. you will be able to get to know….. your comment shows your awareness of the Sri lankan IT Industry.
Never thought 99X is this popular (to be among the top four in IT). So I went through the list in the link you provided and realized there are “Best Companies to Work For” that I don’t even know they exists.
Some of the companies in your said “Best companies to work” list has worst environments to work. That is a bullshit list done by some crazy bunch of people.
Buddy, being in some list doesn’t make you popular 😀 For an example I haven’t heard of Oxford College of Business either, which is in the same list. When you are a small company (according to the list 99X Technology have 100 odd employees) you are not that visible among the giants. Fault is not mine, blame your marketing guys 😛
Shalika, you are spot on about one thing… being in some list will not do any good. Being big doesn’t matter either. What counts is being popular among right people, listed in right lists and making a difference in right context. So I guess these companies do just that.
Kalana, you are damn right than Pradeep the mutt. All these Companies have Advertising and Promotional budget to pay for Rating organizations and mushroom rating Individuals, FB Accounts just to PUMP UP them with “BEST” Title. And all these companies bogusly advertise VACANCIES in TOPJOBS and NEWSPAPERS just to collect the CVs of Competitors Work Force and make new comers to the industry aware of their Company Names. Also, they have their C Executives (Officers Designations start from C) to play monopoly in Computer Associations, University career days to spend SUMMA and get wide Publicity that their are “BEST”.. All these are COMPANY AWARENESS TACTICS to get the HIGHEST PRICE for their Products and Services…
That’s because you are not in a touch with the facts. 🙂
This list was nominated once the website got paid by the company. So don’t mislead. Some companies were not there as they refused to pay. This is like Sirasa Super Star, you can be the star company if you pay. So funny.
Looks like greatplacetowork.lk favored their clients or only considered whom they know. Check their client list:
http://www.greatplacetowork.lk/about-us/our-clients
I have heard about 99x. They are always looking for good looking girls and batch tops for high salary. By marketing them they try to show that they are the best and they are having the best people for developments. But their actual developments are doing by the normal people who are passing out from the normal institutions for less salary.
What do you meant by “normal institutions” bro …?
That’s the truth.Our industry is run by this kind of guys.
There are new entrants trying to do really cool things like Zaizi, Pearson and Leapset.
As a responsible media focus on bringing those companies to the spotlight rather
than coughing for big player’s money.
99X is here, because ReamMe people get invited for every shitty event they host and feed them with roles and coke
“99x” is previously the “eurocenter ddc”
How can 30 people decide the top 4 companies, are you guys new to the field of research? MIT is no more on the hit list. haven’t you heard of Pearsons, Leapset who are creating a change….???
It’s called “popularity”. We’re not calling it “profitable” or “hit list” or some such. Do read first.
Where is the poll ? private poll ? gil maart? 😀 : Porky Pig likes your list anyway 😀
Come on guys. Just don’t be hash about someone else opinion. This article brought us all together. Try to be grateful about that.
which ever, still 30 people doesn’t represent majority IT professionals in this country, do something meaningful, than such useless articles. you don’t seem to be experienced in doing a proper poll
If you can not do it properly, don’t do it.
Learn some basic statistics before doing a this kind of experiment again.
Here is a link to a good course offered freely by EdX
edx.org/course/tennessee-board-regents/tennessee-board-regents-statx-apr-3541#.VDAibHWSzU8
I work for one of the two companies that you have mentioned. I am more than happy not to have the company I work for in this list. It values its employees over popularity and there is no discrimination based on your degree and the pay above the industry average. So as an employee what matters is not how hip your company is but its the bucks that they put in your wallet and without overburdening you
Hi mr. Don
Can u dk me a favor. I looking for QA internship. Please if you can help to find one. Please
[email protected]
Leapset = Cakelabs ? CakeLabs is the real Gentleman Company under Ex-virtusan as a Founder. recently they did their biggest mistake by recruiting the wrong Ex-Virtusan who would destroy this Company on a hidden Agenda of Virtusa by bringing Team Politics and giving high pressure to the exiting team members to tender their resignation (thank firing them to avoid any legal or making Founders to suspecting him as the Man Behind CakeLabs destruction)…
“Ah, I’ll get a job at Virtusa”, Are you guys kidding me??? How about IFS. This result seems purely on the pay cheque they have got.
Dude. Virtusa is a garment factory! A unfriendly working place.!
I totally agree with that ! The starting salary of IFS, the increments, the facilities, work environment, is way better than Virtusa. And IFS isn’t even mentioned here. lol. Surely they have been payed off or they have no idea how to carry out a survey. Seriously just by 30 people ? O_o Well, thats just sad !
I have been a huge fan of Readme and I have always loved reading their articles, but this ? :\
“{WSO2} they invest a fair bit in events – like the hackathon we walked out of recently.”… that was a local and minor event compared with the brand building done in events abroad.
Machan, I’ve always followed your articles and constantly found them out-of-the-box and interesting. But this article does not fall into that category. On what basis have you picked just 4 companies and say they are the most popular? I think there’s a serious deficiency in your sample. Also I fail to understand the purpose of this article. To me, it just seems like the winners of IT companies who does the most advertising. There are so many companies which you can add to this list, IFS, Leapset etc. But why are they not here? The 30 people you interviewed didn’t know about them? Are they not famous?
Help me out here.
Biased.
These look at the larger companies, however smaller companies sometimes have the most advanced projects out there. Zone24x7 is a find example of this.!
Zone24X7 😛 you just be from there
For me I was been those 4 companies before and I am also from IT field. I would love to share what i knew about those companies. first I think virtusa is the biggest one in this four but only from the money and their products. but not treat employees as a humans .yes of course they will offer you more than $1000 monthly payment but for me it’s not the only thing .As I know people who join virtusa they only say about salary they get not the happy life they get from the virtusa as an employees .second one is MIT I know almost some employees quit their job bcz of so much stress in this company.thired one and fourth one is much better than before two.but finally for me WSO2 better than 99x . bcz my slef more into opensource software and developments and friendly environment also their anyway actually there have a more best companies available in software industry in Sri Lanka. bcz when we selecting best companies it not should only fourcus how much they big and how much they pay or how much employees they have. important thing is how much their employees willing to work in those companies. that make companies are best……. this is just my own thinking….
Virtusa and WS02 are no brainers. Good to see Milennium IT in the list. And well done for Mano’s 99X making the cut. The other company I keep hearing is Dinesh’s hSenid (perhaps due to their links with ETISALAT).
hSenid is pretty popular too, Have unconfirmed reports of hSenid is also turning to like Virtusa this might be false if true hope they dont.
What do you mean by WSO2 and Virtusa no brainers? 99X better than WSO2?
Mano is running the show by throwing money at events.
#1) If you do not know to read and undestand the language do not present your stupidity, but go and learn English first!
#2) I dont know much about Mano or 99X, but the couple of Conferences done by 99X are not the only conferences held by an organization in SL. WSO2, Exilesoft and several other companies have their own conferences in SL.. Those are the companies who take the industry forward by building the knowledge of the country.. Fools like you only knows to comment on forums which they cant even read and undestand…
HSenid is a useless company, only IT company i knw that switches off the AC at 4.45 and let their employees work without facilities.
Hahaha that is real funny
LOL Pyxle also same man..only show-off..inside super sucks..
WSO2 is the only company which give you the freedom to code even while sitting down under a tree. Because their source is open and no worries who sees it.
Chatura, when you are in a well, it’s the “only” thing you see around.. (Specially when that well is good in blindfolded marketing) 😀
Are you talking about your self if not please elaborate on “blindfolded marketing” , WSO2 would be a only company who has DevOps. , look up DevOps you probably dont know. Though WSO2 code is open source you need weeks to figure it out that said you not being able read that makes you NOT GOOD not WSO2.
“WSO2 would be a only company who has DevOps” – hiks 😀 .. here comes the second frog in the well
seems you spend lot of time in the well 😀 with your fellow frogs
Whiplash, I feel really sorry for you guys… I attended last year Colombo Agile Conference (Jan 2013) where Pearson and 99X presented their practices on DevOps and Continuous Delivery… remember this is more than a year ago on a public conference DevOps being presented… There are few other companies with mature DevOps practices in the country including the company I work for.. undoubtly WSO2 is a great company, but idiots like you tampers that good will with your incompetence…
Sorry Bro, I know u knw only about WSO2. but there are several companies use devOps methodology. 🙂 And I don’t want to mention my company here. In my company we are all around 350 devOps engineers. we are devops not because go for the trend but because our complete product cycle is aligned to it. with 40k employees all over the world.
Sorry its not u d one n only. 🙂
You don’t want to be a frog in a well to understand that. Use Google 🙂
It’s only an advantage of being open source and a thought which came to my mind and I was surprised to see some funny comments based on it, which I never experienced with.
Every company which is listed here or not listed here has their own advantages and uniquenesses. Depends on your age, family, wealth, interests and what you want to become in the future, they could be vary.
It’s up to you to decide what’s the most suitable company which is align with your career. Every company brings foreign income to Sri Lanka and helps to develop our country.
You can be an employee in a company or you can do it on your own. At the end what you truly satisfy is what you are doing, know that your efforts not wasted, you learned something, you got something back to your life, and the code you have written has done something great for betterment of our country, people and the world.
MIT was one of best innovation company in sri lanka , MIT don’t know how to market things like other companies do. but other company nowhere near considering innovation happening related to distribute and high performance computing. but it was the past.
MIT are new born babies not to know how to market?. It’s that they dont what to market. “MIT was one of best innovation company in sri lanka ” every one is jerking ( not wht you think) around ?
Dude you are mentally ill. Have you ever heard that the “Still waters run deep”. MIT don’t need to that much of marketing for their survival just like 99x. They don’t want to do some small small seminars in small small institutions and post photos on their Facebook page for marketing. It’s true that everybody don’t know about the MIT. But the people know about MIT very well, who should know about such companies.
99x doesn’t get money from doing marketing they are just wasting, because they dont have a single client here and dont intent of having any clients here.
99X isn’t wasting anything they are just investing in man power, If they are not investing on marketing there is no way for them to get batch tops to do web app development
DISCLAIMER: I’m from 99X Technology
Dear @Anon Dev, may be you should go and visit our website to find out our business model and who our customers are (Ranging from ERPs, CRMs to AntiVirus products to middleware development and to OSX products, etc)? 99XT is specialized on “product engineering” and have delivered more than 150 commercial products during the decade. Due to our business model, we have a quite diversified technology stack and domain exposure, which I would say the main reason for our talent attraction.
Dear friends, why are you insulting the success of own naighbouring companies? We respect you all, from the smallest company to the biggest, for what you are and what you have done for our industry. We may not be the best in all aspects, but see a lot of good in our neighbours too.. and open to learn from each other through this journey.
Let’s try to put a stop to this haterous 🙂
LOL
to “Anon Dev Reply”
How can you develop and maintain such a big list of ERP’s CRM’s, AntiVirus..etc with less than 150 ppl(that totally says its capacity). loleee LOL bro.. I’m sorry. to be honest. I rofl. I respect your company as a good tech company. but what you do in you company is not worth for top ppl you hire. you may be popular, use new tech stacks. hell a lot of marketing and some good events for the SL IT community but that does not mean you are the best and the top and u do super star work. 🙂
I didn’t reply to this “Anon Dev Reply” because he/she does not have any idea what their company is doing. One does not simply make an “AntiVirus products” 😛
100% agree with you
Everybody has a opinion
Best known companies in Sri Lanka – 99x, MIT , IFS , WSO2, Leapset , Virtusa, Excelsoft, Zone x 24 , Codegen.
Least known might not be fully IT – Unilever ( great place to ) , Swift , JKS , Arimac , Pearson (living in the shadows) , dialog (98% is bullshit , other half is awesome ) etc
No one company is so much better and some one else, 99x is not better WSO and WSO2 is not better than 99x , there not in the same business ,
WSO – is a product driven company
99x – is a client driven company
greatplacetowork is a gobal system and process who even looks at Facebook , no one pays for the greatplacetowork,
all the companies get the chance. Look into the process of selecting greatplacetowork. ( we are Sri Lankans there is corruption at every corner)
If you dont know about 99x have you been living under a rock, SO the fact you DONT KNOW dosnt make it a UNPOPULAR COMPANY,
Zone24x7 – “most advanced projects” just because they do stuff with electronics don’t mean there “advanced”, WSO has a ESB that runs ebay. MIT the stock exchange (no bigy if shit gose down you will only lose billions of dollars ) . Other companies also..
What is “MIT” – ( oh god ) no big deal it’s just the ONE OF BEST UNIVERSITIES IN THE WWORLD with Harvard , Standford .
If you dont or haven’t heard about company let it influence your judgement
“still 30 people doesn’t represent majority IT professionals” – still [num] people here commenting there own opinion doesn’t represent majority IT professionals ( me included )
“Biased.” says Boomer – your mom is biased not readme .
Disclaimer – This is my opinion not any else though included. Any person hurt by this comment is merely a by product and not a personal attack on you or your family. If you disagree it might be because you have be sleeping , cooking , working but not limited on home activities , that you have failed to live in reality. If any of those reasons fail then it’s my fault ( by default if you dont like some one’s article or comment there stupid but not you ). Any grammatical but not limited spelling mistakes are done purposely.
You have the right remain silent , anything you say will be used against you in the court of readme commenting.
If you are to be listed in Top list of Best place to work thing you need to pay, thats the fact not in SL but any other place. But I think 99x technologies still deserve to be in the list
Replying to every comment in this post? Looks like someone’s a little butthurt over here.
To me great company need to pay developers properly. I know that some great companies, salary increment is just Rs5000 and if employee want to leave, he has to wait 3 months (3 months notice period) but there are spending a lot of money for their brand marketing
“To me great company need to pay developers properly” , do any shit if get paid right , that is the fucked up ideology that gets sri lankan’s fuck all the time.
I have never been to any of these three companies. but there are no one in IT industry who doesn’t know these three 🙂
I may miss few, Any one may miss few out of the list of companies I mention below. But U HAVE MISSED THE BEST PART OF IT.
the rest of old and new IT companies:
Hsenid,CodeGen,Eurocenter(99x),wso2,Codegen,Ironone,eBuilder, Pearson(eCollege), WSO2,Navanthis,Mubasher(DirectFN),Aepona(Intel),Creative Solutions(Fast Search), Cambio, CAMMS, tradecard, aeturnum, sabre tech , Calcey, Leapset(Lattitude),Excelsoft, ExileSoft, openArc, JKCS, Zone247, Motorolla, Synapsys,..etc and there are a lot of very new companies like ISM Apac, SymCentric….etc
U missed a lot of good companies. and u dnt knw even what other companies do, yeah true, because u dnt have extrnl friends u knw only the few other frogs around you in the same well.
Least Known and might not be fully it ?
LOL
Uniliver – how wrong you thought about the IT industry. You picked Uniliver to this ? If u want to pick uniliver, plz dnt forget, MAS, Brandix, JK, Cargills, Helyes,PWC, Lion. bla bla bla……..etc
Am i the only one who think that “is there a company called swift ? and thats needs to be listed here? ”
How did you think that JKCS is not fully IT ?
What came to your mind to pick this “Arimac” with 10 employees to this list ( though I respect this company and the CEO as he is the youngest and most innovative person i have ever known in this decade in SL)
Are you blind that u cant see Pearson but you see its shadow? Search topjobs you will get most out of IT job vacancies from this company for the time I post this. I think, not like urs, they not only publish but also hire. And ur company Founder also works there in Pearson.
Dialog 98% percent bulshit, other half is awesome? You meant the 2% of pretty girls are awesome, but not their too much popular GSM products you may use daily?
You may get wrong ideas from the ppl who just crossed their company to urs to get more benefits. its natural, no one can get the top benefits from a company working for sevrl years, they need to go for better opportunities, that doesnt mean they chosed you bcoz u are the best. not the entire scope of this IT inustry. but I believe you are best in few areas( main area is you use new tech stacks for your average scale products, I meant averge scale because I know you dnt handle a product worth Billion $$$$s and I know u dont handle data maintained in hundreds of clustered big data centers worldwide). I know you dont maintain 24×7 Network Operating centers to monitor your products and services real-time).
If you have worked in Virtusa, u may get different exposure, different benefits. may be less, but they will get better than urs in many different areas which they think good, better and the best in their way.
If you have worked in other big companies like, MIT, IFS, Pearson, Intel(Aepona) you will experience different benefits more or less.
You work for a company with 100+ employees and you hire very few ppl for an annum and just go out and show up. just like u are the only one who do agile, devops, automation, innovations, bla bla bla…
Others also do what you do. but they have their own business plans, they dont want to market in SL they dont want batch tops. they want only ppl who think differently.
Have you ever heard the world’s top IT company (GOOGLE) has hired a person just bcoz the person is a batch top ? They discourage hiring batch tops. 🙂 just google it and find out the truth.
If your arguments are to prove that the “Popular company” ur argument is in valid.
If is to prove that yours are the biggest and most valuable.. Hell NO.
If the argument to prove that yours have the best geeks… Plz climb the well and look what others got. 🙂
If its to prove that yours give the top opportunities and benefits. LOL, you can’t measure this. It depends person to person what they need.
if its to prove you are one of the companies who got so called batch tops and share the knowledge u have, do something to the community and use new tech stacks ? Yeah I agree yours are one of the best in that case. But not in other cases.
Bro,your analysis shows your knowledge.
“Best known companies in Sri Lanka – 99x, MIT, IFS , WSO2, Leapset, Virtusa, Excelsoft, Zonex24 , Codegen.
Least known might not be fully IT – Unilever ( great place to ) , Swift , JKS , Arimac , Pearson (living in the shadows) , dialog (98% is bullshit , other half is awesome ) etc”
Best Known ?????? LOL.
Evry time popular -Virtusa, IFS, MIT .
I have never been to any of these three companies. but there are no one in IT industry who doesnt knw these three 🙂
if company paid minimum 150k for a common dev (not batch top or experienced ) with Work–life balance.
it will be good company in sri lanka
The, there is no any good software company in Sri Lanka. 😀
I suppose you must have forgotten to mention that this post is a native advertisement. If you really want to write a good article on “The four most popular software companies in Sri Lanka”, do a survey involving more than 30 people (statistics 101, larger sample size will give a better approximation for the population), analyze the result and elaborate on how you have measured the popularity.
As far as I know two companies on this list do not pay for this kind of advertising.
But out of the comments here, you’ve made the best point. There should be some kind of a poll result. Without it this article is just a personal openion, and if the author is a non-techie the words he’d written is just worthless crap, likely to be accused of being bribed.
Not exactly native advertising, but a notice saying “Welcome to Native Advertising” wouldn’t hurt/ 😉
The comments confirms my all-time view of the software employees: They are idiots. They think they are the best and they work for the best company. Come out of the shell!
cannt agree with you more
Everybody likes to think that they work for the best company. They are offended when someone says otherwise. Most of these people will not hesitate to jump to either company when they are offered a better salary. That’s the truth and there is nothing wrong with that.
Love your job but don’t love your company, because you may not know when your company stops loving you. ~ Abdul Kalam
Indeed. Most dev’s are stubborn, most of the time mediocre ducktape hackers, who if challenged to write code, would come up with the worst designs ever. And they’re the Internet champions, so on the Internet they’d be very vocal about their companies, while in real life, be afraid to ask for a better salary package.
I’ve been in the industry for a short time, but in different companies, and those years only confirm Abdul Kalam’s quote.
who are the guys in the above banner image? co founders of FB,apple, microsoft 😀
I think they are the winners of recent WSO2 hackathon. and works for 99X. I spoke with them when its happening.
Also I recently saw article about Virtusa and 99x wining gold in National Best Quality Software awards or something like that.. maybe they are good at what they do…
Looks like @Shalika is a hater who failed a interview BTW bro I feel your pain 😀
I think you are refering to NCE Export Awards, not Best Quality Software (NBSQA) award?
This year on NCE Awards, 99X Technologies won Gold in Large category where Virtusa won Gold for Extra Large category. But last year I remember 99X Technologies won some NBSQA awards too, can’t remember which categories they were.
So either they are really good in what they do OR they have a business model that is award friendly :D.. I hope it is former!
Firstly, I respect all the companies.
Well, This article tells what was in author’s mind. I’m an Architect and I’ve interviewed so many people from above listed companies (Except WSO2) and the reasons they were telling to leave the company seems don’t match with what author mentioned here in title. This says just 30 people cant rank the companies. Its their personal opinion. I would appreciate if author got feedback on various aspects of IT company’s operations and rank them.
The article looks like a quick summary of 4 IT companies and what they do where lot of other companies such as IFS, Leapset, Pearson etc etc are well reputed among IT professionals in Sri Lanka. Even Exilesoft, Iron One technologies are fastest growing companies. There are other companies too. No matter how many employees are working there. They too have offices in other continents.
I’m not form WSO2 or any of the companies listed above or the companies I named above. But my next dream destination will be WSO2. I have lot of reasons to say this and all IT professionals are know why I’m telling this.
I think author has mentioned WSO2 (I don’t know much about 99x to comment though its ranked as no 1 company to work for) here with the wrong list but under the correct title. Some companies are good for freshers so they can learn a lot to have a good foundation. So those companies are popular among the undergraduates. Some of them are good for experienced professionals so they prefer to join with them depends on the technology and other opportunities they can get. Their family commitments too play a major role in deciding the company rather choosing a best company or technology.
Only few companies are good for both fresh graduates and experienced guys. From my experience and own survey , WSO2 is a good place for all. There are other companies too good for both freshers and seniors. Eg, ‘Iron One Technologies’, Leapset, Exilisoft are good for everyone starting from internship. I’m Sorry if i don’t mention other company names here. But I am able to provide other company names too.
In Sri Lanka, companies are popular among the young and experienced professionals for various reasons, few….
1. How company treats employees from bottom to top.
2. How they respect junior employees
3. How they value the employees as they do their customer
4. How they give work-life balance to their employees
5. How they spend money on employee’s welfare and other extra activities.
6. How they give opportunities for their employees for onsite and other client interactions rather keep all the juniors behind and always treat them as work machines.
7. More than that, how company trust and value when employee is really honestly and committed to the employer.
9. One of the 4 companies author had mentioned here is well known for an internal politics withing the teams and its members. How come it can be a popular company?
10. I still can remember one of the leads level candidate said, decided to leave as she wanted to take a leave, but as per company policy couldn’t get approval because of the very short time she had. Will she recommend the company for her friends?
There are so many reasons for us to say what is the best and popular company for a IT sector. Because IT is not just 9 hours job you go to work and come home to relax by earning millions. Actually you invest your knowledge, spend time to learn, put your health in risk and give up so many personal commitments to give your best to your employer. Few employers understand that fact and spend more money on employees welfare. Few employers are just check how many hours you sit at office no matter what you do while other employees got lot of work and spend hours and hours. They run their business only by statistics.
There are so many things behind every company’s success and popularity. Hats off to employees starting from its Founder to minor staffs for their hard work and dedication. you hire right people, train them , let employees to balance their work-life and make your dream success.
Author, don’t mislead the people by simply writing an article like this. Let people to speak to their known friends and get exact feedback about the companies and decide what to do.
This is my personal opinion and not intended to offend anyone including the Author. Feel free to write your comment to my mail. Expect more feedback from companies. I will share my experience : [email protected]
One good comment. (y)
Best comment on this article.
This comment gives the good and bad part of the IT industry in Sri Lanka. Mmmmmm. seems there are money making employers by the name of so called Owners and there are real leaders who take care of their employees. IT Feedback, You should have evaluated and experienced with lot of employers.
Thank you all for the positive feedback on my comment. I have experience with only few employers. But whenever I traveled to countries like US, UK, Canada, Singapore etc. met my friends and spoke about how their employer handles situations, how they treat new comers, even sometimes talked about farewell parties.
Also had an opportunity to work with big companies and experienced their work environment. Whenever I speak to my friends in SL, talk about technology, HR related things such as salary scale etc etc. Of course wont get the exact figures and It is not to go and demand my employer, because I involve in negotiating salary with candidates for last couple of years.
I get upset when I see employer i would call responsible managers always talk about policies rather there is always a space to discuss possible alternatives and address case by case. No matter how employee is dedicated and sacrificed him/her self to the company, policy is always first. Which will really demotivate that particular employee and encourage to look for alternatives. But we simply blame them they go for better offer and not ready to correct our self as employer.
Again I don’t blame all the employers, but I witnessed lot of incidents. Some employers pay low salary but when employee try to leave, employer will try to match new salary which they could have offered before employee decided to leave and handed over the resignation letter. Funny part of this story and employer doesn’t understand is, This employee is eligible to get more salary within few minutes of handing over the resignation letter without even going through the appraisal or evaluation. As others commented here, its not a problem with how much of increment you get, its a problem with how and when you get that increment. How is your evaluation process works. That is where the reputation of the company stands.
Every professionals have their own private space and expect others to respect them. No matter how many years experience they have. So mentoring or anything should happen one on one. We can’t have that kind of conversation in front of others just because we are in a senior position or we work as a team. I don’t think most of the companies practice this.
I can keep on writing a lot. But my point is, we need to be very careful when we write article like this which will spread via social networks. Feedback about a company is not just a yes/no question. We can’t simply ask whether the company is good or bad. Its like ‘Hey your office building looks nice so should be a nice place to work’. I prefer to tell, its a good company… managing very well, treat people well, let their employees to balance their private life. No matter they don’t even have a name board or how they share their activities in FB.
I can tell one reason to say company ‘A’ is bad, but we tell 100 reasons to say company ‘A’ is good. If we evaluate companies for each and every part of it’s operations, I think author will end up with one or two companies like WSO2, etc. This is my own survey.
Hope Author will take extra care in his future articles.
Yep… best comment
This is better than the article. You should write your experiences on a blog.
Sure, I will start writing my experience. Of course people can reach me at [email protected] for any advice for free.
I think we seniors should educate our new generation who are coming into IT industry. We don’t need to educate people by blaming specific companies like people write comments here but in more general way. We have so many IT bodies in SL (I don’t want to name them) they promote local companies and participate in software competitions. I doubt they really try to bring giant companies like Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, HP, Dell etc etc to Sri Lanka and let our engineers to directly work with them and show our talent. These bodies can work with Gov to bring them if its necessary. We don’t need intermediate local companies to send our people to Oracle / Dell by the name of offshore.
Most of the candidates were misled by how much they can earn, where company has offices, posting company activities in social media etc etc. Simple Eg. Company will publish you should be ready to travel immediately, but as per VISA policy of some countries, you are not eligible to apply for a visa starting from 6 months – 1 year. Because you need to have minimum number of months history at given company.
I think our younger generations should have full understanding of what is SL IT industry (It is totally different from what is in US, UK, Canada, Singapore etc) as we mostly offshore model. As long as we have better understanding on how our employer do business before we join, There is no need of criticisms, misunderstanding, blames, unwanted comments, no need to look for new opportunities etc etc. Worst will be job posting sites should layoff their employees as no more job for them.
Unfortunately I’m unable to reveal my identity, therefore Always writing as Anonymous.
Best comment on this article. In fact, this comment should be an article of it’s own.
After reading this, so many things make sense to me. Well done, sir… very well done indeed.
Busted… 😀 .. naive attempt to market the company he works for…
Personally I wouldn’t join any of the above 4 companies mentioned for my next job.. But I respect the right of the author to do a simple survey and post the results with open and honest statement on how the data is collected… All big mouths from the companies drumming on this page confirms that non of them are a great place to work (having freedom of opinions).
I hate VIRTUSA.
Dear Read Me
Please do a Survey on companies that treat their employees well. Other than posting popular software companies , this will give more inside out value to the Sri Lankan community . Once you started to do , you will find pretty interesting facts and revealed facts about employees and the methods used for termination by force 🙂 This will be a hit
Thank you
We all know this article was paid for. And we all know Virtusa Salaries are shit. No fresh graduate wants to go there anymore. Stop misleading people to earn a buck.
I don’t think the word ‘popular’ is right. With a sample of 30, this survey could be very biased. But I would say they are probably the 4 companies that most heard of. I feel IFS would have been in that list 10 years ago. Companies such as Codegen could have been in that list, instead of 99X if not for their marketing strategy. As a company I don’t know how good or stable 99X is, but definitely they have been marketing a lot.
I worked in one of those companies and few other places during my first 2-3 years of employment. Then I moved to Cambio where I worked for 5 years before migrating to Australia. I thought I need to comment specially after seeing the comment from @IT Feedback. If you ask me to rate Cambio between 1 – 5, with 5 being excellent, on the 10 points listed in that comment, I have no doubt that it would be either 4 or 5 and nothing less. That is the reason why I was there for such a long time. But I don’t think most people have heard of Cambio even though they have over 200 employees (@Shalika has said that ‘When you are a small company you are not that visible among the giants’. I feel Cambio is fairly big but still managed stay undercover). I know as a fact that from 2006 – 2011, not more than 10 – 15 people have left Cambio to join another Sri Lankan company. Seems it has changed now, with quite a few moving to WSO2. Anyway, if you still don’t believe that there is a company called Cambio, just look around if you happen to come to the Manhattan Fish Market or the Bars Café. The board, ‘Cambio Healthcare Systems’ is probably misleading everyone.
In another 2 – 3 years, I would like to come back to Sri Lanka. If things stay the same even I might consider joining WSO2, but failing definitely I would consider Cambio as my second option. In my opinion it is difficult to rank companies. It all depends on your needs & values that you respect. Even if I get double the salary I wouldn’t move to a place that doesn’t meet my needs & match with my values.
Cambio?
That company with THE worst code base with java 1.4 as the “industry standard”?
The company with a set of dick-head managers who know nothing but to play whack-a-mole with the employees about releases,
The company that presents a set of policies in place so that employess can be stopped right on the track about any benefits for them?
The company which is famous for increments not being offered?
The company tracking the in and out time like a proper garment factory but not the quality of work done (not a surprise since most of the managers are from the biggest IT garment factory)
The company with a product so buggy and rigid that QA can’t even handle that shit, but still conducts QA workshops to “show how it’s done”? (ask a QA from Cambio about their QA process)
The company where the junior devs have to come on time and be scowled for bugs introduced in 90’s so that a set of “seniors” (yup, they have a tight system of internal politics) can enjoy laid back and boast on forums like this about how “great” cambio is?
Give me break.
Cambio has 200 employees? How many out of that are devs? And how many are QAs? How many can actually write good code without mucking up the repository for a week?
(Yes, I was at one time employed there, and yes I didn’t have a good experience at that place, at least not for the last year, and yes, all of the above facts are true, ask this “Migrated” whether it is not. And yes, I’m pissed, and that’s because Cambio is called a small “player” while companies like SimCentric aren’t even mentioned here. And no I’m not from SimCentric)
I am really sorry you feel this way and even more upset that you felt this way while working at Cambio. It would have been really helpful for the company to grow if you would have shared these concerns before you left. Its not too late now if you feel you need to discuss these issue with the company and we will appreciate your input.
since you have mentioned about our technology and since this is a public forum i thought of giving some perspective to what cambio is.
– Our latest releases go with Java 8
– Technology used varies from EJB , Hibernate , Swing , Metro , Flex , HTML 5 etc.
– We have separate configuration management function which handles all releases , version control branching etc ,
all these are automated with the use of Jenkins , mevan , SVN ,JIRA etc
– We follow scrum and use CI for all our development
– We have flex working ours but pride our self in promoting people to maintain normal office hours and maintain
their quality of life , all extra hours\days worked are compensated
– Our EHR is the market leader in Sweden and Denmark and we have also delivered to our first NHS trust in UK.
We do have our EHR running is smaller countries as well.
i can go on , but hope this provides a bit of perspective , we are an international company and we pride our self in having employees who are happy. I am again really sorry your experience @ cambio was this bad.
In a way i’m happy that developers marketing their own company aggressively on this forum, that shows how much they take pride of their employer. But the real question is.. how many of these employers are proud of their employees.
All these comments are personal opinions of less than 1% of big mouths inside our organizations. Probably they are the management team members of the listed companies posting comments on different identities time to time 😀 .. PLEASE DO NOT GET DISRTACTED by such comments if you are looking to join any of these listed companies. I can already see groups from certain companies are setting to scratch each others back on the forum itself.
If a company would like to do an indepenent opinion of all of their employees they should apply for an independent award such as “Great Place to Work”. On comments I can see some trashing such awards, but once I had been discussing with GPWT to undestand the process of the award in my previous employment. They take the rating through a direct survey and interviews on ALL OF THE EMPLOYEES and evaluate the company on several different aspects.
When I worked at my previous employer (one of the 4 companies listed above) I wanted to go for an evaluation with GPTW, but my management was afraid to get a real employee feedback on a public forum. Basically they didn’t want to hear if employees love or hate them… with that attitude there is no possibility of them doing any good for employees, their focus is on their own job security. After failng to convince my management I decided to leave that organization a year ago.
So I really respect the courage of the 2 IT companies who made it in to the GPTW list. Currently I work for a company which is not listed in this article, and I can see they have a similar attitude as my previous company towards GPTW. I do not know how long I would stay here because as a HR personnel I should let my employees to speak up. If I get a chance for the next job I will definitly try one of the 2 companies listed in GPTW. because they have the right attitude and courage to get direct feedback from their employees, which tells that they really care the staff.
My advice to all of you is to push your management to go for GPTW (or any other similar award) where they have to take direct feedback publicly from all of their employees.. thats the only way to prove that they really care the staff. That is a better investment of your own future than jumping up and down on this forum :).
well said.. without being in caves and throwing stones, lets prove our company is the best on open competition … It is the only way to know..
The problem with the GPTW survey is that you gotta pay them to get into their list. So it’s not really an accurate representation of the greatest companies to work for 🙂 You’ll see plenty of people from the companies listed in GPTW saying that their company doesn’t deserve to be on the list.
Any organization doing awards will have to finance their own operation. Similarly for you to apply for an award, you will have to pay for the operational expenditure of GPTW. I can agree with it because such financing is needed to perform thorough evaluation of the applicants.
But applying for GPTW by paying the operational fee does not mean you get listed. This year there are many companies applied but not got listed (I know few of my friends applied without getting a place in top 15). Listing happens through the trust index (all employees feedback) and culture assessment of the organization.
I’m not pro GPTW, but I’m surpriced with the way most educated so called cream of the country behave when a collegue organization win an award. Shouldn’t you atleast read the basis of awarding before commenting?
It is funny to see the commenting and shows how immature the so called geeks in our industry.
I can see one of the companies I worked for time back is demonste the known attitude over this forum too, I’m not working there any more fortunately. Employees there are brainwashed by the leadership to believe that they are the ONLY company which is worth in the industry – commenting ‘we are the ONLY company doing this and that’. I joined that company after working in the industry for about 5 years, joined due to the big techie profile they are projecting. But once I joined I undestood their domain exposure and technology exposure is too narrow but still they think they are the best techies in the world. The middle leadership is soo imotionally attached to the technology stack they KNOW and ignorent to what happens around.
It is unfortunate to see the arrogant of the employees who think they are the only one to worth having a voice. The attitude is such they can’t accept anyone having a opinion, but anyone reading this forum will undestad the moron attitude they are projecting here too. If they were listed no 1 in this list there will be appreciations all over this forum, im confident 😀
But one thing, I respect the founders of that company more than anyone else in the industry for building such a company. What is unfortunate is to see the middle management making such attitude in the employees.
Sounds like Millennium?
Read pro WSO2 comments to see how they put down the other companies.. i think this comment talks about them?
Virtusa, MilleniumIT, 99X teams deserve a good appoloud for keeping calm over the heavy stone throwing on this forum… way to behave folks, you all make a point here…
FYI.
WSO2 is not a Software Company or a Labor Force supplier like some of the listed here. WSO2 is an “Open-source” Middle-ware Product company. It totally is a Product company that generates revenue against the production support.
>> WSO2 is not a Software Company: ???? FYI. You are a Software Company developing a open source middleware product stack.
>> WSO2 is not a Labor Force supplier “like some of the listed” here: Here comes the Moron attitude of WSO2 employees as highlighted by ‘@Sithira’ and ‘@A Techie’ above.
@Chatura, please get a humane life, learn to appreciate what your own collegues do in the industry. After all SL IT industry is not made by just you. There are many who devoted their lives to bring it to the state where it is now. You all better do a ‘human values’ course within WSO2 to teach the employees to respect others so that we all can take hand (with no elitism) to bring the industry forward.
To quote the popular meme, the level of butthurt on this article is too damn high. At the same time, there have been quite a few intelligent comments (IT Feedback, A Techie, 8-Years-in-HR, looking at you here), so let’s clarify a few things. Firstly, thanks for reading.
1) IFS was purposefully excluded from this list because they are headquartered in Linköping, Sweden. In case you haven’t noticed, one of our regular columnists, Supul Jayawardene, is an IFS employee; we don’t discriminate.
2) It’s written “paid”, not “payed”, and no, we weren’t. Whether you believe that or not is entirely up to you.
3) A sample space of 30 random people from different walks of the industry were picked for the purpose of keeping this short and simple. It’s a popularity poll. Does being on Sirasa Super Star automatically make you a Grammy Award winner? No. Likewise, being on a popularity poll (or not being thereof) is an indicator of the performance of your marketing department, not your code. If every random pleb from an ace code to a random intern doesn’t know of your existence, you’re not on this poll, period.
4) Next survey: the 4 least / 4 most intelligent employees in the IT industry? There certainly seems to be a sizeable sample space here.
5) As for the comments on “WSO2 is not a Software Company”: what is middleware made of? Swiss cheese? Please look up software on Wikipedia.
Thank you.
and Virtusa is headquartered in Westborough, MA
You have a title “The Four Most Popular Software Companies in Sri Lanka”, and then say IFS was excluded because it’s hardhearted in Linkoping, Sweden. Virtusa is headquartered in Westborough, MA and also listed in the US. Your reasoning is so silly.
For your reasoning to make sense than you should have had a title “The Four Most Popular Software Companies in Sri Lanka of Sri Lankan ORIGIN”,
Virtusa is headquartered in US. Your basis for excluding IFS is void.
There’s plenty of butthurt – looking at the comments – because your sampling is too small and the content too random to justify such a clickbait headline. You’re not writing about the best cupcakes in Colombo ffs, you’re writing about software companies. There’s a difference in both writing and research methodology on that kind of subject.
Readme, you guys have a lot of potential, if you want your articles to be taken more seriously, a bit more thought and research would go a long way.
TO THE WRITER: If you’ve never seen Millennium IT, definitely you should because you’ve not seen the best work environment in the country with the largest infrastructure within 16 acres of peaceful land…. Just pay a visit to millenniumit.com gallery.
You meant this I suppose Supun
http://www.millenniumit.com/facilities-at-millenniumits-campus
http://www.millenniumit.com/millenniumit-malabe-campus
Wow.. Geeks at war!!!
Interesting
This shows one thing, We need a good independent survey on Popularity as well as Salaries of IT industry in Sri Lanka
Interesting article with the most amount of comments.
Right now smaller companies are creating a bigger buzz and attracting talent better than bigger companies since they have an awesome work life balance.
I see a lot of employees raving about small IT companies such as Loops, Bhasha, Arimac. Maybe they ar doing something right which bigger companies can learn from
99X? really I saw them marketing themselves about having 35K likes on FB! Seriously guys?
35K seriously 😀
they are buying those likes for sure
virtusa is not a good place for fresh graduates, I don’t think anyone in uni willing to join virtusa in first place. This survey is shit. This article may be valid in 15 or 20 years back. Everything is changed now 🙂
Interesting comments. And my comment on this topic and the content is;
First look at the topic, It clearly says: Popular software companies in Sri Lanka.
And first listing is Virtusa. And I would say that 100% correct. Virtusa got its popularity as a software company in sri lanka. But we are not considering anything about the inside view of it, whether it’s a garment factory 😛 or they pay less salaries or they treat their employees in a low level. I DONT KNOW.
But most of the sri lankas know, Virtusa is a software company and they believe working there is awesome 😀 [though it’s not my perspective]
Next WSo2, Again A beautiful company with huge building and beautiful big fish tank.. Who ever passes the company knows it’s an awesome company from the way it looks. So it had got its popularity as one of a popular software company in sri lanka.
Next MIT. Again becaus of their building and the name Millenium IT
Interesting comments. And my comment on this topic and the content is;
First look at the topic, It clearly says: Popular software companies in Sri Lanka.
And first listing is Virtusa. And I would say that 100% correct. Virtusa got its popularity as a software company in sri lanka. But we are not considering anything about the inside view of it, whether it’s a garment factory 😛 or they pay less salaries or they treat their employees in a low level. I DONT KNOW.
But most of the sri lankas know, Virtusa is a software company and they believe working there is awesome 😀 [though it’s not my perspective]
Next WSo2, Again A beautiful company with huge building and beautiful big fish tank.. Who ever passes the company knows it’s an awesome company from the way it looks. So it had got its popularity as one of a popular software company in sri lanka.
Next MIT. Again becaus of their building and the name Millenium IT. People knows it’s into IT industry with a super awesome building 😀 😀
and finally 99X technologies. How does they got the popularity? I would say,. this has clearly got the popularity among the ones who are into the IT industry. Not like other three.
Because for the past few months, they use to conduct workshops that has given a good exposture
Interesting comments. And my comment on this topic and the content is;
First look at the topic, It clearly says: Popular software companies in Sri Lanka.
And first listing is Virtusa. And I would say that 100% correct. Virtusa got its popularity as a software company in sri lanka. But we are not considering anything about the inside view of it, whether it’s a garment factory 😛 or they pay less salaries or they treat their employees in a low level. I DONT KNOW.
But most of the sri lankas know, Virtusa is a software company and they believe working there is awesome 😀 [though it’s not my perspective]
Next WSo2, Again A beautiful company with huge building and beautiful big fish tank.. Who ever passes the company knows it’s an awesome company from the way it looks. So it had got its popularity as one of a popular software company in sri lanka.
Next MIT. Again becaus of their building and the name Millenium IT. People knows it’s into IT industry with a super awesome building 😀 😀
and finally 99X technologies. How does they got the popularity? I would say,. this has clearly got the popularity among the ones who are into the IT industry. Not like other three.
Because for the past few months, they use to conduct workshops that has given a good exposure to the company.
So finally I would say what the author meant here is Correct and again it’s from my perspective 😀
Kind request from the site admin, please give us an option to edit or delete comments that are made by us. At least Edit. Or if the feature already exist, please point it out. Thanks 🙂
The order should be
1.WSO2
2.99X
3.MIT
4.VIRTUSA
Everybody blamed Virtusa
Congrats to all the four companies to making the list. We’re also striving to be a top software company where people would flock to join. Our models a bit different though since we mostly do software projects for lots of clients around the world.
I also note that few here pointing at Virtusa for lower salaries. Although I agree with them to a certain extent its a great place to work as your first job. The training you get their is first class and its up to you to impress the hierarchy and move up the chain.
Ha ha another virtusa type company.
I’m not from the IT field.
All companies have pros & cons and that’s the way it is,fact is IT industry employs thousands of young men and women who earn salaries,feed their families and live life.Without jobs and a salary where would you be?
People today should be happy to be gainfully employed and be a part of society.
can i joint virthusa with HND ? or i have to tack digree i am a HND student
The four most popular fruits in sri lanka, and then explaining the pros and cons of each fruit in their context , nicely done. However understanding that it is about 4 different fruits which is unique is the most difficult part as I realise by looking at the comments. …
I have a IT training
I won’t a IT training
Aquaiver IT Solutions
A comment,long time after the article has been posted.This list does not make any sense as of now,Of course the popularity of the mentioned companies were there for some extent few years ago.But at the time many small scale companies bringing their A game and as I know personally they are working with many international clients for some innovative projects.Not to mention some industry leaders like Pearson and Leapset.
If you have a next level innovative idea it is better you find a small scale software firm,because they will pay attention on the innovative aspects and will build a close relationship with the client they are working on.I think that is the plus point working with such companies like http://www.treinetic.com
Only four ? What about CodeGen ? nothing else ?
What is the best company for 5 year of internship ?
I recommended Xiteb Pvt Ltd
http://www.xiteb.com
i want to do a part time job during the after a/l period.which software company most suitable???
plzz kindly reply me– [email protected]
Can you provide a list of the companies that came to mind for these thirty random individuals in the software industry when you mentioned the title, and could you also explain what each of these companies does, in order of their popularity among the respondents?