IT Survivors – Staying Alive In A Software Job
Before I started working for myself, I spent some years in some of the top IT companies in India and still have many friends working in various software companies. I wrote a blog Recruiting like crazy, about the same time last year about how Indian companies are recruiting like there’s no tomorrow and the possible consequences. 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, 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 folk 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.
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”?
I was once at 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 was tempted to ask “What death benefits does your company offer to the teams that get killed in the process?”. I sure was ashamed to see 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 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 Harshad, 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.”
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”.
Solutions
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.
Last word
I am sure some of my thoughts come from the fact that I too worked in such an environment for a few years and perhaps I haven’t got over the frustrations I experienced back then.
So think about my views with a pinch of salt but do think about them. And if you have an opinion on this issue, don’t forget to add a comment to this article.
I take serious exception to Amarinder’s comments – ‘if you can manage a motor car production does not mean that you can manage a software project’. Well can he tell me how many Project Managers with Technology background (aka Glorified Developers) have been successful as PMs? The problem is that the industry neither grooms its developers to become PMs nor facilitates successful PMs from non-Technical background to fit into their new role. The type of PM he has referred to fail mostly because of the Technical leads who see him as a challenger to their career(!) and ensure that he fails. The organizations also do not recognize this as a cultural issue and try to resolve it. Rather they either brand the PM as incapable or eliminate the Technical Lead. I am telling this from my personal experience and from the experiences of some of my friends – all of us moved from the ‘Old World’ to this so called ‘New World’.
The only solution is to start planning an exit strategy while the going is good and not wait till you become a nervous wreck.
The only solution is to start planning an exit strategy while the going is good and not wait till you become a nervous wreck.
I think Mr. ‘Not entirely true’ is little confused. When he is giving an example of opening up a grocery store, it seems he has forgotten the one basic thing that in case of owner of a grocery store even if he work for 20 hrs, he will be gaining something from it. The prime thing ‘Money’. Hard work never works in the long run. Many of my friends are working in the US. They say that they go home at 5.00 PM everyday but their colleagues in India stay late in the office. I wonder if hard work pays, then how MS/Sun are able to deliver ‘The Technology’ products to the world just by working 8-9 hrs a day. One most important thing is Indian companies are not sure of what is ‘The Technology’. We are just followers. And the day is not far when other low-cost options like China, Mexico, Brazil will crop up and Indian will lose its importance in software world. So its to woke up and understand the reality. Instead of just dreaming about how India is great. India has done nothing to improve the way we work. I have even worked under the managers who don’t know the language in which the project is being developed. And these people talk about ‘The Technology’, which is very disgusting.
I think Mr. ‘Not entirely true’ is little confused. When he is giving an example of opening up a grocery store, it seems he has forgotten the one basic thing that in case of owner of a grocery store even if he work for 20 hrs, he will be gaining something from it. The prime thing ‘Money’. Hard work never works in the long run. Many of my friends are working in the US. They say that they go home at 5.00 PM everyday but their colleagues in India stay late in the office. I wonder if hard work pays, then how MS/Sun are able to deliver ‘The Technology’ products to the world just by working 8-9 hrs a day. One most important thing is Indian companies are not sure of what is ‘The Technology’. We are just followers. And the day is not far when other low-cost options like China, Mexico, Brazil will crop up and Indian will lose its importance in software world. So its to woke up and understand the reality. Instead of just dreaming about how India is great. India has done nothing to improve the way we work. I have even worked under the managers who don’t know the language in which the project is being developed. And these people talk about ‘The Technology’, which is very disgusting.
This is really eye-opening …
I’m an engineering student (non-IT) tempted by the software boom. I plan to get placed in campus in one of the top software firms. What is the ideal company for reasonable work hours and suitable remuneration- maybe 12 hrs x 5days or something … I remember at an Infosys PPT the guy was bragging that ‘in our company we work from 8 to 6; NO, not 8am to 6pm but 8am to 6am’. People seem to romanticize working late, but I’m sure it would hurt later in life … Kindly advice.
This is really eye-opening …
I’m an engineering student (non-IT) tempted by the software boom. I plan to get placed in campus in one of the top software firms. What is the ideal company for reasonable work hours and suitable remuneration- maybe 12 hrs x 5days or something … I remember at an Infosys PPT the guy was bragging that ‘in our company we work from 8 to 6; NO, not 8am to 6pm but 8am to 6am’. People seem to romanticize working late, but I’m sure it would hurt later in life … Kindly advice.
Very true.
Very true.
I read views of most of the ppl here. I would like to aver 1 thing here… the pressure we have in IT is not permanent phenomenon. It is just the deadlines and last minute hicc ups which are faced..or to some extent very badly screwed up estimations make life hellish for employees… but in all we have quite a lot of free time with us and the number of responses on this Blog is an indicative of that. These ppl (including me) had time to read thru the article and blogs and then post his/her views. Isnt this enuf to prove that the pressure situations are not always there.
and every body has to slog.. even if u open up a small grocery store somewhere, u need to work atleast 9-9 to get it moving and profitable. hard work is needed everywhere, then why not in IT.
I read views of most of the ppl here. I would like to aver 1 thing here… the pressure we have in IT is not permanent phenomenon. It is just the deadlines and last minute hicc ups which are faced..or to some extent very badly screwed up estimations make life hellish for employees… but in all we have quite a lot of free time with us and the number of responses on this Blog is an indicative of that. These ppl (including me) had time to read thru the article and blogs and then post his/her views. Isnt this enuf to prove that the pressure situations are not always there.
and every body has to slog.. even if u open up a small grocery store somewhere, u need to work atleast 9-9 to get it moving and profitable. hard work is needed everywhere, then why not in IT.
Hi Harshad,
I found your article apt. I have myself experienced all this stress and pressure and it scares me to think what this job will make of me even 10 years down the lane. We have similar work culture in my team. And the reward I got for standing up to it was an extremely poor appraisal and literrally mental torture where I would be unnecessarily denied leaves even in critical family issues inspite of the fact that I stay 24 hours away from my family, so on and so forth.
I dont understand how to face up to such situations. It causes a lot of stress and unhappiness apart from office time too.
Does anyone have an answer?
People have suggested escalation, but when the top brass act like this what can you do other than quitting your job?
Hi Harshad,
I found your article apt. I have myself experienced all this stress and pressure and it scares me to think what this job will make of me even 10 years down the lane. We have similar work culture in my team. And the reward I got for standing up to it was an extremely poor appraisal and literrally mental torture where I would be unnecessarily denied leaves even in critical family issues inspite of the fact that I stay 24 hours away from my family, so on and so forth.
I dont understand how to face up to such situations. It causes a lot of stress and unhappiness apart from office time too.
Does anyone have an answer?
People have suggested escalation, but when the top brass act like this what can you do other than quitting your job?
Product based is still better option than project based company.Though product based company manager also needs to improve a bit.Was readind one comment about CTS US,above.I have few friends in CTS and few have already quit CTS and few likely to in future.This company is so horrible one must say.CMM5 status ,still projects are messed up,time/work allotment is worst by management.In a CMM5 company why one is to stay late and work on weekends ?Where are the processes?What have management learnt while going for CMM 5 status ?Employees are real salves there.Employees are also responsible to ceratin extent for this condition.Lust of US/UK trips make things worst.And when they realize,its too late.I saw its CEO in Economic Times award function few days back.This is surprising.This person should take care of employee satisfaction etc.Recent ‘Cognizance’ fuction was felicitating people who have missed their social/personal life and worked late hours and on weekends.This was the most disgusting part.You are promoting such culture rather than condemning.Harshad had rightly pointed that issue here.Harshad, one suggestion, how about you taking initiative to be CEO of such company and change things.
Product based is still better option than project based company.Though product based company manager also needs to improve a bit.Was readind one comment about CTS US,above.I have few friends in CTS and few have already quit CTS and few likely to in future.This company is so horrible one must say.CMM5 status ,still projects are messed up,time/work allotment is worst by management.In a CMM5 company why one is to stay late and work on weekends ?Where are the processes?What have management learnt while going for CMM 5 status ?Employees are real salves there.Employees are also responsible to ceratin extent for this condition.Lust of US/UK trips make things worst.And when they realize,its too late.I saw its CEO in Economic Times award function few days back.This is surprising.This person should take care of employee satisfaction etc.Recent ‘Cognizance’ fuction was felicitating people who have missed their social/personal life and worked late hours and on weekends.This was the most disgusting part.You are promoting such culture rather than condemning.Harshad had rightly pointed that issue here.Harshad, one suggestion, how about you taking initiative to be CEO of such company and change things.
I agree with your view’s. We need to think about our future the things will not be so simple at the age of 50.
We are strecching ourselves a lot.
I am very thankful to TL and our client they ask us to work only 9 hrs.
I agree with your view’s. We need to think about our future the things will not be so simple at the age of 50.
We are strecching ourselves a lot.
I am very thankful to TL and our client they ask us to work only 9 hrs.
Harshad,
You are right on the money with this article and have pretty much summed up what I felt about working in a (big) project based company for some time.
Though I agree to all your points I will not put all the blame on the company for the delayed projects and the late nights. I would also put some blame on the employees also. To my experience many of the employees working on the project are technically incompetent, as a result they can not apply or use the technology to the fullest and in the most effective way. The saddest part though is many of them don’t conciously take any effort to improve it also.
Many view staying late is working working hard, irrespective of what they have been doing the whole day. My own experience is that many a times I was assigned work at 6PM when I was about to leave. Some are there just to impress the managers. They tend to think sending the daily status email at 10PM would underline their hardwork than anything else.
Another factor in this equation is sloppy management at the actual project execution level. For example employees are trained for 15 days in java and put on a java project. The project obviously gets delayed and for obvious reasons. I am very happy now that I made the concious decision to move out of a project based company into a product based company in reasonably quick time (could spend 6 months threre before my patience finally ran out). I am certainly living a better quality life since then (even though I never get any onsite oppertunities and $$ to go with it. :-D)
My 2 cents worth.
No harm intended.
-Nikhil
Harshad,
You are right on the money with this article and have pretty much summed up what I felt about working in a (big) project based company for some time.
Though I agree to all your points I will not put all the blame on the company for the delayed projects and the late nights. I would also put some blame on the employees also. To my experience many of the employees working on the project are technically incompetent, as a result they can not apply or use the technology to the fullest and in the most effective way. The saddest part though is many of them don’t conciously take any effort to improve it also.
Many view staying late is working working hard, irrespective of what they have been doing the whole day. My own experience is that many a times I was assigned work at 6PM when I was about to leave. Some are there just to impress the managers. They tend to think sending the daily status email at 10PM would underline their hardwork than anything else.
Another factor in this equation is sloppy management at the actual project execution level. For example employees are trained for 15 days in java and put on a java project. The project obviously gets delayed and for obvious reasons. I am very happy now that I made the concious decision to move out of a project based company into a product based company in reasonably quick time (could spend 6 months threre before my patience finally ran out). I am certainly living a better quality life since then (even though I never get any onsite oppertunities and $$ to go with it. :-D)
My 2 cents worth.
No harm intended.
-Nikhil
Hi Harshad,
All you ppl are obviously from the IT field so can afford to have this view about your indutry. I am working in one of the top investment banks in the world, having set up its office in Mumbai.
You think only you guys work crazy hours, then you should catch up on guys in I-bankingor even in the private banks in India. It would surprise you. The latest in outsourcing are the KPOs. We in India provide research support to our peers/seniors abroad. All my colleagues are from IIT’s / IIMs. They pay really well, have great packages (health/medical beenfits, bonus schemes, etc.), but expect you to work as well. Not that one should complain, but generally, I put in about 10-14 hrs everyday.
Still, I must say that we have a strict 5-day work week, so its ok.
Hi Harshad,
All you ppl are obviously from the IT field so can afford to have this view about your indutry. I am working in one of the top investment banks in the world, having set up its office in Mumbai.
You think only you guys work crazy hours, then you should catch up on guys in I-bankingor even in the private banks in India. It would surprise you. The latest in outsourcing are the KPOs. We in India provide research support to our peers/seniors abroad. All my colleagues are from IIT’s / IIMs. They pay really well, have great packages (health/medical beenfits, bonus schemes, etc.), but expect you to work as well. Not that one should complain, but generally, I put in about 10-14 hrs everyday.
Still, I must say that we have a strict 5-day work week, so its ok.
I think it is the mental frame of human beings in India-and may be in other parts of the world too- which has changed, it applies to any sector that you work in whether doing jobs or running a business. Spending maximum time of your life in your work is considered ideal and man doing that is successful! why not when on person does the work of 3 persons he will get additional advantage-whether or not that is what gives happiness!
Its ths attitude that has developed over a period of time in our society. Current bosses are previous employees who worked same long hours. I think our values have changed. We work for money and sometimes for professional achievement. When we are young we feel this is the time to work hard and earn as much as we can so that we can relax in later days of our lives, instead we relax from work but suffer from innumerable health problems and spend our earning for maintaining our lives.
We think that happiness lies in secure future and not in being happy in our present. If we are given the right values by our parents and eventually by the society, we can surely differentiate between how to spend time at work and in other things. But i guess its difficult to happen, how can we give such values to our children when we dont have them? How can we not think about earning more and more when all we are taught is the power of money to buy happiness? How can we find pleasure in simple things of life when we have made pleasure an unattainable task that we seek to attain for rest of our lives? It requires a lot more introspection at individual level and may be sometime such consciousness may bring change. I am hopeful that it will.
I think it is the mental frame of human beings in India-and may be in other parts of the world too- which has changed, it applies to any sector that you work in whether doing jobs or running a business. Spending maximum time of your life in your work is considered ideal and man doing that is successful! why not when on person does the work of 3 persons he will get additional advantage-whether or not that is what gives happiness!
Its ths attitude that has developed over a period of time in our society. Current bosses are previous employees who worked same long hours. I think our values have changed. We work for money and sometimes for professional achievement. When we are young we feel this is the time to work hard and earn as much as we can so that we can relax in later days of our lives, instead we relax from work but suffer from innumerable health problems and spend our earning for maintaining our lives.
We think that happiness lies in secure future and not in being happy in our present. If we are given the right values by our parents and eventually by the society, we can surely differentiate between how to spend time at work and in other things. But i guess its difficult to happen, how can we give such values to our children when we dont have them? How can we not think about earning more and more when all we are taught is the power of money to buy happiness? How can we find pleasure in simple things of life when we have made pleasure an unattainable task that we seek to attain for rest of our lives? It requires a lot more introspection at individual level and may be sometime such consciousness may bring change. I am hopeful that it will.
Harshad,
It’s really refreshing to see another Indian who truly understands what it means to have rights in the workplace. I work for Cognizant Technology Solutions, and I’m not even an India-based employee. I was hired by CTS within the US as a US-based employee. Yet, the company has no regard for employee rights, labor laws or any such governance. Even more informally, the account managers boast about people being their biggest asset, but really when it comes down to it, they expect us to work extra hours, come in early, stay late, take calls from home to coordinate with offshore for which we don’t get reimbursed and get no appreciation in return.
In the 6 months that I’ve been working for CTS, I have has many clashes with many managers on these issues. The first was when I was told that I was expected to start my workday everyday at insane hours in the morning, just because my client employees work those hours. “Conference call at 6am” is “normal” to these people. So basically, I have to change my entire lifestyle so that the client employees can spend their evenings at home with their children. Of course, my personal preference means nothing to CTS, even though I’m their own employee.
The latest conflict has been over holidays, or the lack thereof. Because the number of holidays allocated in a year is limited to an exact number in the US, it follows that if one of those falls on a weekend, a make-up holiday is given on a weekday. Every US company, every employee, even the McDonald’s guy who works for minimum wage gets a day off for Christmas. But not us “IT professionals.” By using some illogical reasoning, CTS has taken away my rightfully earned holidays from me (and all my coworkers).
The worst part though, is that my CTS coworkers think this is all okay. They honestly come from the mindset that that’s the dynamic of the IT service industry. That the client calls the shots and we do whatever it is that they want us to do, even if that means giving up our personal/social lives and employee rights. To address your argument of why employees don’t stand up, it’s because the Indian culture has traditionally been collectivistic. It’s one where there is a large separation of authority. It’s unthinkable to question authority in this culture because the intrinsic nature of authority there is that it’s beyond questioning or challenging. But if these “knowledge workers” want to boast of a lifestyle and a workplace culture that is on par with that in the US, then they also need to understand that no US employee will ever accept such treatment. These companies have a long way to go before they can come anywhere close to a US work ethic. They haven’t even begun.
Harshad,
It’s really refreshing to see another Indian who truly understands what it means to have rights in the workplace. I work for Cognizant Technology Solutions, and I’m not even an India-based employee. I was hired by CTS within the US as a US-based employee. Yet, the company has no regard for employee rights, labor laws or any such governance. Even more informally, the account managers boast about people being their biggest asset, but really when it comes down to it, they expect us to work extra hours, come in early, stay late, take calls from home to coordinate with offshore for which we don’t get reimbursed and get no appreciation in return.
In the 6 months that I’ve been working for CTS, I have has many clashes with many managers on these issues. The first was when I was told that I was expected to start my workday everyday at insane hours in the morning, just because my client employees work those hours. “Conference call at 6am” is “normal” to these people. So basically, I have to change my entire lifestyle so that the client employees can spend their evenings at home with their children. Of course, my personal preference means nothing to CTS, even though I’m their own employee.
The latest conflict has been over holidays, or the lack thereof. Because the number of holidays allocated in a year is limited to an exact number in the US, it follows that if one of those falls on a weekend, a make-up holiday is given on a weekday. Every US company, every employee, even the McDonald’s guy who works for minimum wage gets a day off for Christmas. But not us “IT professionals.” By using some illogical reasoning, CTS has taken away my rightfully earned holidays from me (and all my coworkers).
The worst part though, is that my CTS coworkers think this is all okay. They honestly come from the mindset that that’s the dynamic of the IT service industry. That the client calls the shots and we do whatever it is that they want us to do, even if that means giving up our personal/social lives and employee rights. To address your argument of why employees don’t stand up, it’s because the Indian culture has traditionally been collectivistic. It’s one where there is a large separation of authority. It’s unthinkable to question authority in this culture because the intrinsic nature of authority there is that it’s beyond questioning or challenging. But if these “knowledge workers” want to boast of a lifestyle and a workplace culture that is on par with that in the US, then they also need to understand that no US employee will ever accept such treatment. These companies have a long way to go before they can come anywhere close to a US work ethic. They haven’t even begun.