Not Quite The IT Job

About a decade back, when multinational giant Google arrived in Hyderabad with its technicolor dreams office, this correspondent attended a written test and series of interviews for a position in Google Adwords. What did the job entail? Hell, who cared? This was Google! The written test was a breeze if you knew basic math and had a Wren & Martin lying around. The interviews, though, lasted over several hours, made lengthier by trying to grasp American accents of the interviewers.

Gmail had just arrived with its snooty condition of “only on invitation” and Google, with its doodled tee-shirts for staffers, was the mecca of the IT universe. A fortnight later, an HR person called and said I had not been selected. The reason: I needed higher energy levels. For about 11 years, one never really understood the “high energy” clause till the great, brutal Amazon workplace story surfaced in the New York Times.

A friend who did make it to the IT world, and has changed seven jobs since, translates it thus. High energy, he says, basically means having an exterior of concrete, a digestive system of steel and being a rolling stone that gathers no IT moss. Exaggeration or fact? Well, somewhere in between, apparently. Do Indian white-collar employees really work so hard? Is an Amazon-like work culture par for the course in India?

HiTec Hyderabad, which spawned a consumerist, yuppie boom in the last 15 years, does seem to have a dark underbelly. Apart from Bangalore and Gurgaon, Hyderabad has the largest cluster of IT, BPO and multinational companies in the country—Microsoft, Google, Facebook, TCS, Wipro, Infosys, Amazon, HCL, Del­oitte, Accenture, Ora­cle, Polaris and Capgemini, you name it. Take a drive around Cyber Pearl, Madha­pur, and the air is pure IT oxygen. “This feels like another country,” said a niece who had come for an interview.

And indeed it is another universe altogether. One where nine-hour workdays often stretch to 10-12 hours, where “weekend fun” means organised outdoor games with colleagues or a trip to an upscale resort; where salaries are fat but the overall psychological well-being borders on thin. The “happy” FB upda­tes and beer parties are often the facade that hides depression.

Says a consultant working with a highly respected Indian IT firm, “The official nine-hour day often stretches to 12-14 hours, depending on deliverables. So when a project is nearing completion, longer hours are a given. Indian IT companies work on thin margins and they make money by undercutting their US counterparts. So if a software/hardware engineer in the US charges $40-50 an hour, an Indian IT firm will try to bag the project by offering services at $9 an hour. And if this seems cheap labour, countries like Vietnam, Cambodia and Phi­li­pp­ines are offering services at $5 an hour,” he explains.

Those who complain either quit or are sidelined. No one says, “meri shift khatam, main ja raha hoon”. There are many IT emplo­yees who keep quitting and change 10 companies looking for that elusive Xanadu of 6-8 hour shifts. “This is because they are fools who believe the grass is greener across the street,” says the consultant.

Photograph by Sandipan Chatterjee

Thirty-one-year-old Abhijit Das did hit Xanadu, it seems. He works with Oracle, and says his company gives him great work-life balance; he works eight hours a day. The earlier jobs he held entailed more than 10-hour workdays and often 14 hours. Blame it on aggressive timelines, he says. “No one is willing to give eight months for 10 feature upgrades. So now it is, take two months, develop two upda­tes and then start again. Everyone is trying to get into the market at an early date, and there are faster releases and quarterly cycles,” he says.

Flexi work hours, cab pick-up and drop facilities, free lunches, overtime and work-from-home options are some benefits IT professionals tout. But as many IT employees also explain, companies know how to cut corners in other ways. To win a project, a company reduces the cost estimate for the client by using fewer people or junior workers, so the pressure automatically escalates.

Aiyyappa Nagubandi, CEO of Possi­bill­ion Technologies, disagrees that IT companies in Hyderabad sap their emp­loyees with impossible targets and long work hours. Most firms are now offering flexi work hours. Yes, at times, engineers and product developers work on weekends, but who doesn’t at times,” he asks. According to him, only some e-comm­e­rce companies which have raised capital recently use such exploitative tactics.

“There is tremendous pressure on such companies to show growth week after week. Employees are the first casualty in a high-pressure market. So in such cases, we have 50-60 people doing the work of a 100,” he says. Nagubandi argues that most IT companies in Hyderabad are services oriented and in such firms, there is pressure only during a project release.

Dr Pragya Rashmi, a Hyderabad-based consultant psychologist, says she deals largely with employees from three gro­ups—BPOs, ITES and techies (engineers and MBA holders) and techies undergoing bench time. She says they constantly feel threatened due to competition and a new technology around the corner.

“The techies have a very Western way of thinking, theirs is a multinational India. They are compartmentalised in their thoughts and frequently troubled when they go out on to the streets. While they are using technology to their advantage, they cannot adapt it to the rest of India. This creates a very IT vs non-IT feeling in them and their relationships are troubled,” explains Dr Pragya.

As for the BPOs and ITES group, she says, there is immense pressure to perform. “It is an industry depen­dent on man-hours and there is constant threat to perform or lose one’s job. This lot, usu­ally 21-28, is the more troubled lot. They suffer from failed relationships, anxiety, poor health. The work is extremely exploitative in nature and many take to drinking for recreation. People don’t grow and they find it hard to get out of the work loop,” she says of her patients.

However, HR professionals in the IT world strongly prot­est the Amazon story view and insist that be it in BPOs, ITES or IT engineers, projects have a peak and a trough. “If during a delivery date, they have to work longer hours, that means there are times when they have really light schedules. IT is an industry which has contributed significantly to the growth of the country. The key factor is that IT employees are really pampered and paid well. The ind­ustry is not doing as well since 2009 so the pampering has reduced but benefits are still given,” says Kalpana Krishna, a senior HR person in an IT firm in Hyderabad.

Kalpana says that maybe it is an Indian mindset that benefits are never enough. “Hamara dil hamesha maange more,” she says. Kalpana also feels that most candidates nowadays focus only on salaries at job interviews. “They never talk work hours or conditions at the time,” she says.

So some may call it slave-driving or a rainbow chase, for others it is just ano­ther day at office. Crazy work schedu­les or not, the IT planet in Hyderabad is still where dreams flower every day.