The Indian "IT" World - wOw!!!!!

I have now spent a little over an year in one of the top IT companies in India and have many friends working in various software companies. However, I was avoiding writing this particular piece, as it seems like an unpatriotic thing to do, to tell the world how bad the working conditions in software companies in India have become. And there's always the risk of excerpts being used out of context to bash up IT in India.

I am now writing this because I just keep hearing horror tales from the industry and it doesn't seem like anything is being done in the matter, so I thought I will do my bit and write.

First and foremost, before stereotypes about India kick in, I would like to clarify that I am not saying that Indian software companies are sweat shops where employees aren't being paid and made to work in cramped uncomfortable places. The pay in software companies is very good as compared to other industries in India and the work places are generally well furnished and plush offices. India being a strong democracy, freedom of expression is alive and well and Indians are free to express their opinions and voice their concerns. Yet, still I say that the software industry is exploiting its employees.
IT work culture in India is totally messed up and has now started harming the work culture of the nation as a whole. Working 12+ hours a day and 6 or even 7 days a week is more the rule than the exception.

Consequences:

· A majority of IT people suffer from health problems. As most of the IT workforce is still very young, the problem isn't very obvious today but it will hit with unbearable ferocity when these youngsters get to their 40s.
· Stress levels are unbelievable high. Stress management is a cover topic in magazines and newspapers and workshops on the subject are regularly overbooked.
· Most IT people have hardly any social / family life to talk of.
· As IT folks are rich by Indian standards, they try to buy their way out of their troubles and have incurred huge debts by buying expensive houses, gizmos and fancy cars.
Plush offices, fat salaries and latest gizmos can give you happiness only if you have a life in the first place. They are just left for dust and insects to bite them off!
The reason I feel this culture has emerged, is the servile attitude of the companies. Here's a tip for any company in the west planning to outsource to India- “If you feel that a project can be completed in 6 weeks by 4 people, always demand that it be completed in 2 weeks by 3 people.”

Guess what, most Indian companies will agree. The project will then be hyped up as an "extremely critical" one and the 3 unfortunate souls allocated to it will get very close to meeting the almighty by the time they deliver the project in 2 weeks. Surprisingly, they will deliver in 2-3 weeks, get bashed up for any delays and the company will soon boast about how they deliver good quality in reasonable time and cost. Has anyone in India ever worked on a project that wasn't "extremely critical"?Please tell me if you know anyone who has ever worked on a non critical IT project!! ;)

I read somewhere about a session where a top boss of one of India's biggest IT firms was asked a question about what was so special about their company and his answer was that we are the "Yes" people with the "We Can Do It " attitude. It is all very well for the top boss to say "We Can Do It ".. what about the project teams who wish to say "Please....We Can't Do It " to the unreasonable timelines...I wish I was there to ask "What death benefits does your company offer to the teams that get killed in the process?". I sure was ashamed to know that a fellow Indian was openly boasting about the fact that he and his company had no backbone. The art of saying No or negotiating reasonable time frames for the team is very conspicuous by its absence. Outsourcing customers more often than not simply walk all over Indian software companies. The outsourcer surely cannot be blamed as it is right for him to demand good quality in the least cost and time.

Exhaustion = Zero Innovation

· How many Indians in India are thought leaders in their software segment? - Very few
· How much software innovation happens in India? - Minimal
· Considering that thousands of Indians in India use Open Source software, how many actually contribute? - Very few
Surprisingly, put the same Indian in a company "in" the US and he suddenly becomes innovative and a thought leader in his field. The reason is simple, the only thing an exhausted body and mind can do well, is sleep. zzzzzz
I can pretty much bet on it that we will never see innovation from any of 10000+ person code factories in India.
If you are someone sitting in the US, UK... and wondering why the employees can't stand up, that's the most interesting part of the story. Read on...

The Core of the Problem

The software professional Indian is today making more money in a month than what his parents might have made in an year. Very often a 21 year old newbie software developer makes more money than his/her 55 year old father working in an old world business. Most of these youngsters are well aware of this gap and so work under an impression that they are being paid an unreasonable amount of money. They naturally equate unreasonable money with unreasonable amount of work.

Another important factor is this whole bubble that an IT person lives in.. An IT professional walks with a halo around his or her head. They are the Cool, Rich Gen Next .. the Intelligentsia of the New World... they travel all over the world, vacation at exotic locations abroad, talk "american", are more familiar of the geography of the USA than that of India and yes of course, they are the hottest things in the Wedding Market!!!

This I feel is the core problem because if employees felt they were being exploited, things would change.
I speak about this to some of my friends and the answer is generally "Hey Ankit, what you say is correct and we sure are suffering, but why do you think we are being paid this much money? It's not for 40 hours but for 80 hours a week. And anyway what choice do we have? It's the same everywhere.If we refuse, there are so many standing behind us to poach in on any opportunity that comes there way".
So can we make things change? Is there a way to try and stop an entire generation of educated Indians from ending up with "no life".
If you are a manager or a would be manager in an IT firm, then please try and pay some head to the suggestions I am mentioning here. I am sure, they will make you better managers.(not only for your organization, but also for your reportees)

1) Never complement someone for staying till midnight or working 7 days a week.

Recently, in an awards ceremony at a software company, the manager handing over the "employee of the month" award said something like "It's unbelievable how hard he works. When I come to office early, I see him working, when I leave office late, I still see him working".. These sort of comments can kill the morale of every employee trying to do good work in an 8hr day.
Companies need to stop hiding behind the excuse that the time difference between India and the west is the reason why people need to stay in office for 14 hours a day. Staying late should be a negative thing that should work against an employee in his appraisals. Never complement someone for staying till midnight or working 7 days a week .

2) Estimates:

If time estimates go wrong, the company should be willing to take a hit and not force the employee to work crazy hours to bail projects out of trouble. This will ensure that the estimates made for the next project are more real and not just what the customer has asked for.

3) Employee organizations / forums

NASSCOM (National Association for Software and Services Companies) and CSI (Computer Society Of India) are perhaps the only two well known software associations in India and both I feel have failed the software employee. I do not recall any action from these organizations to try and improve the working conditions of software employees. This has to change.
I am not in favor of forming trade unions for software people, as trade unions in India have traditionally been more effective at ruining businesses and making employees inefficient than getting employees their rights and helping business do well. So existing bodies like NASSCOM should create and popularize employee welfare cells at a state / regional level and these cells should work only for employee welfare and not be puppets in the hands of the companies.
If the industry does not itself create proper forums for employee welfare, it's likely that the government / trade unions will interfere and mess up India's sunshine industry.

4) Narayan Murthys please stand up

Top bosses of companies like Infosys, TCS, Wipro, etc. need to send the message loud and clear to their company and to other companies listening at national IT events that employee welfare is really their top concern and having good working culture and conditions is a priority. Employee welfare here does not mean giving the employee the salary he/she dreams of. The company I work for currently has a couple of such initiative in place, namely “Employee First Policy” and “Xtra Miles” . Again, these aren’t practically doing anything but at least they give a “feel good factor” to its employees. Also, it has made the organization a case study at “Harvard”!! :P

I am sure some of my thoughts come from the fact that I too work in such an environment perhaps I haven't got over the frustrations I have experienced.
So think about my views with a pinch of salt but do think about it. And if you have an opinion on this issue, don't forget to add a comment to this post.

The Tortoise and The Hair – An Age old Fable!

‘Good old lessons in Team Work’ is the workshop which I underwent during a corporate training program. It is from one of the presentations there, that I am recalling and writing down this post.
Read on…. You will surely learn a lot many new things by the time you reach the last line of this post and yes, don’t forget to give your feedback/ comments..

Once upon a time, a Tortoise and a Hair had an argument about who was faster! Our dear Hair quipped– “I am the fastest runner”! “That’s not true!! I am the fastest.”, pat came the reply from Tortoise Uncle.
They decided to settle down the argument with a race. They agreed upon a route and started off the race. The hare shot ahead and ran briskly for some time. Then seeing that he was far ahead of the tortoise, he said to himself, ”Poor Torty! Even if I take a nap, he just cannot catch up with me. Yo! I am the best.. I deserve some Rest!” He sat under the tree and soon fell asleep. The tortoise plodding on overtook him and soon finished the race, emerging as the undisputed champ. The hare woke up and realized that he'd lost the race.
The moral of the story is that “slow and steady wins the race.”

This is the version of the story that we've all grown up with. But…….. But……. The story continues ….
The hare was disappointed at losing the race and he did some soul-searching, “Why did I lose the race? WTF did I do wrong. I certainly am more capable then that Torty”
He realized that he'd lost the race only because he had been overconfident, careless and lax. If he had not taken things for granted, there's no way the tortoise could have beaten him.
So he challenged the tortoise to another race. The tortoise agreed. This time, the hare went all out and ran without stopping from start to finish. He won by several miles.

The moral of the story? “Fast and consistent will always beat the slow and steady.”
If you have two people in your organization, one slow, methodical and reliable, and the other fast and still reliable at what he does, the fast and reliable chap will consistently climb the organizational ladder faster than the slow, methodical chap.
It's good to be slow and steady; but it's better to be fast and reliable.

But….. But…. My dear readers, the story doesn’t end here!! ( Don’t worry I aint stretching it unnecessarily!)
The tortoise did some thinking this time, and realized that there's no way he can beat the hare in a race the way it was currently formatted.
“How can I beat that God Gifted Hair?????” He thought for a while, and then challenged the hare to another race, but on a slightly different route.
The hare agreed.
They started off. In keeping with his self-made commitment to be consistently fast, the hare took off and ran at top speed until he came to a broad river. The finishing line was a couple of kilometers on the other side of the river. The hare sat there wondering what to do. In the meantime the tortoise trundled along, got into the river, swam to the opposite bank, continued walking and finished the race.

The moral of the story? “First identify your core competency and then change the playing field to suit your core competency. “
In an organization, if you are a good speaker, make sure you create opportunities to give presentations that enable the senior management to notice you. If your strength is analysis, make sure you do some sort of research, make a report and send it upstairs. Working to your strengths will not only get you noticed, but will also create opportunities for growth and advancement.
No! No! It’s still not the time to start writing your comment ;)
The story continues….
The hare and the tortoise, by this time, had become pretty good friends and they did some thinking together. Both realized that the last race could have been run much better.
So they decided to do the last race again, but to run as a team this time. They started off, and this time the hare carried the tortoise till the riverbank.
There, the tortoise took over and swam across with the hare on his back.
On the opposite bank, the hare again carried the tortoise and they reached the finishing line together. They both felt a greater sense of satisfaction than they'd felt earlier.

The moral of the story? “It's good to be individually brilliant and to have strong core competencies; but unless you're able to work in a team and harness each other's core competencies, you'll always perform below par because there will always be situations at which you'll do poorly and someone else does well.”
Teamwork is mainly about situational leadership, letting the person with the relevant core competency for a situation take leadership.

There are more lessons to be learnt from this story-
Note that neither the hare nor the tortoise gave up after failures. The hare decided to work harder and put in more effort after his failure. The tortoise changed his strategy because he was already working as hard as he could.
In life, when faced with failure, sometimes it is appropriate to work harder and put in more effort. Sometimes it is appropriate to change strategy and try something different. And sometimes it is appropriate to do both.
The hare and the tortoise also learnt another vital lesson- “When we stop competing against a rival and instead start competing against the situation, we perform far better.”
I hope we it helps us build better teams and be all the more successful in this competitive world where each of us strive for excellence!

A night..

I cant stop dreaming, and I cant stop staring at the ceiling either. Something makes me smile constantly. It’s not anything in particular, its just.... EvErYtHiNg!I toss. I turn. I go to the loo countless times, even when I don’t really have to go. A song’s playing on my PC. It’s played about 10 times already. It’ll play another ten perhaps. Something about the lyrics keeps me up. Something in them makes me want to dance. Something tells me I need to sleep, because the gods of work will not be pleased about my escapades in the night. They will not feel the understated joy of discovering a new song that takes over your entire being. You’ve traveled already, for hours with the song…. Imagined! Believed! Lived! And yet you know, despite the fact that your mind had managed to wander to the most beautiful places, your reality hasn’t changed. It won’t. And that’s part of the joy.The hands on the clock have been moving tirelessly. Tick tick. Tick tick. The hours have been drifting past. At 11 you thought, you’d be asleep by 12.At mid night you were convinced, you wouldn’t be awake to see the clock arms go past one. Tick tick. You’re still awake. Still smiling. Still in your “Journey of the exquisite landscapes, that may not even exist” And yet, far- far away.Suddenly you realize you are not alone. Your glance meets someone else’s. You’ve been looking at each other for sometime now. Occasionally acknowledging each other’s presence. A mirror after all is hard to ignore. The person in the mirror is just as happy as you are. Just as elated. No one in the world, but the two of you understand this insane joy you feel. Over nothing really, then again…its not really quite the same when happiness comes with a reason. Because then you know you have a reason that’s making your heart race. Something tells you this is not going to last. But joy, that has no reason…has no reason to end. Because nothing in particular stimulated it to begin with. It just “KICKED IN”. And brought with it, a sleepless night. An lasting smile. The flicker of eyelashes that hold in them a world of imagination. And that feeling, is hard to take away.You enjoyed it at first, but now reason steps in. You’re trying to figure what it is about your new discovery that makes the world seem spectacular. What is it about a tune and a few words strung together that make you feel irrational joy. Ecstasy without actually consuming any!I try and write my feelings down. If something’s making me feel this good, I would want to feel this joy everyday. Even if it has no reason. Even if I can’t trace where it all began, I feel I cant definitely make it stop from ending. And in this process, I DESTROY it! Hours of bliss end in a jiffy. My hunger to ‘feel’ this rush, to ‘preserve’ it, becomes the ‘weapon’ that causes its ‘death’. I stop writing, realizing I’m ending the most beautiful thing I’ve felt in days. And then I think to myself…. How happy I was, in the moments that were. And how trying to hold on to something only makes it go away further…. Faster!! I finally fall asleep.I try the same song again the next night. It doesn’t quite have the same effect. I don’t see the arms of the clock working. I don’t meet my faithful companion in the mirror. And I have no way of knowing if he sat there, waiting for me the entire night. I was asleep after all.