Behind the glory - five times the salary his dad would have retired on perhaps - the relentless grind is getting worse for today's software professional. Long hours, maddening demands and draining deadlines are taking their toll, despite good HR practices by IT companies. Is India's most high-profile sector in not so good health?
FOR 31-year-old Harish, life begins and ends on Sundays. Rest of the week, he develops software applications for his company's US-based clients he has never seen.
An extended sleep, some TV, and lazing around in Mumbai's suburbs make the concept of weekend fun for this bachelor. For the next six days, he will get into his Nariman Point office by 9.30 a.m. — after an hour's train journey — and reach back his listless home when many would be watching Sex and the City.
He is not complaining though; he gets five times the salary his father had drawn when he retired. "But sometimes I feel I will soon break down and I can't take it anymore," Harish (name changed) confesses.
Many others in his profession are breaking down, by the way. The software and business process outsourcing (BPO) sectors are witnessing an increasing incidence of nervous breakdowns, back pain, hypertension and cervical spondylosis these days. So much so that Ayurveda companies and spiritual healers are now devising special packages for the IT industry.
Is India's most high-profile sector not in good `health'? Are our software professionals an exploited lot?
"Nobody works in a software firm for the customary eight hours. You put in an average of 10-12 hours a day," says one software engineer who doesn't want to be named. He too doesn't grudge his grinding work schedule.
"The culture of standing up and shouting simply doesn't exist in a software company," he says.
So take the workload in your stride, and find solace in the fat salary is the funda for people like him. Doesn't matter if you don't get time to spend it.
When it comes to BPO employees, well, life is a long spell of insomnia.
This is by no means to suggest that Indian software and BPO companies are money-minded sweatshops. The Indian IT industry has adopted perhaps the best HR practices and it does take care of its employees really well, besides paying fabulous salaries and other perks, which employees of other sectors envy. But it seems the inherent nature of the work, wherein project deadlines are sacrosanct, puts too much load on employees, even if they don't mind it. But problems crop up when your youthful exuberance wanes with each passing year. After all, life is not just about making money.
Companies are aware of this, but the cutthroat competition in the sector gives them no room to relax. On the one hand, companies compete with one another from their peer group to win an order. And on the other, they have to fight bigger firms that have more resources in hand.
When everything boils down to price, the lower you quote, the better your chances of winning a project. This means employees will have lesser time on hand to deliver.
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