The Service Company
Escape
Plan
Stuck in TCS, Infosys, Wipro, or HCL?
The longer you stay, the harder it is to leave.
Check your "Career Rot" level below.
First, what is your official role?
1. When was the last time you wrote code from scratch?
2. What is your primary domain/stack?
3. How much of your day is meetings?
RESULT
Your Personalized Escape Protocol
Strategy: The "Automation" Trojan Horse
External recruiters ignore "Support" titles. You must hack your way out.
- Step 1: Code your job. If you restart servers manually, write a script. Put "Built Automation Tools" on your resume.
- Step 2: internal Switch. Apply for QA/Dev roles inside your company. The bar is lower.
- Step 3: The Jump. Once you have the "Engineer" title for 6 months, apply to startups.
Strategy: The SDET Pivot
Manual testing is irrelevant. You need to become an "Engineer in Test".
- Must Learn: Selenium or Playwright + One Language (Java/Python).
- The Project: writes a test suite for a public website (e.g., Amazon search flow) and put it on Github.
- Target: Series A Startups looking for their "First QA Hire".
Strategy: The Portfolio Play
You have the right stack, but the wrong label. Show you can build product.
- Build ONE Complex App: Not a ToDo list. Build a Trello Clone or Chat App with WebSockets.
- DSA: Solve Blind 75 Leetcode. Product companies WILL ask this.
Strategy: The App Store Validation
Mobile devs are judged by shipped apps.
- Ship It: Publish one app to Play Store / App Store. Even a simple utility.
- Focus: Clean architecture (MVVM/Bloc) and UI Polish.
Strategy: The Real-World Project
Don't just do Titanic Kaggle. Solve a messy problem.
- Project: Scrape a website, clean the data, and visualize insights. End-to-end pipeline.
- Target: "Data Engineer" roles are easier to get than "Data Scientist" roles initially.
Strategy: The Strangler Fig
You have "Mainframe" or "SAP" on your resume. It's poison to startups.
- Rebrand: "Maintained Legacy Code" -> "Refactored Monolith to Services".
- Side Project: You MUST build something in a modern stack (MERN/Go) to prove you aren't a dinosaur.
- Target: Banks/Fintechs. They value legacy knowledge + modern intent.