The Gleaming IT Profession in India

Do you want to learn and grow in the organisation you work in from a fresher to a high managerial level? Do you want to balance work and home together without sacrificing much? Do you wish to lead a healthy life and make ever-lasting friends at your work place? If the answer to all these questions is ‘Yes’ then the IT industry is not the place for you to look for employment.

These days it has become quite a norm for people in the IT industry to change jobs every year. They find that the only way to increase their salary is changing a job and asking for a phenomenal jump in the salary. This is also a consequence of a bad appraisal system in such organizations. When a person joins an organization, he is told that the company has one of the best and fair appraisal systems in the industry. But when the person goes through his first appraisal he gets to know that the big promises made to him at the beginning were just an eye wash. No matter what he does, he will never be able to get a hike he deserves. The appraiser is instructed by the higher management to appraise the people in his team in such a way that one person gets an excellent grade, two people get a good grade and the rest of them get an average grade. He is also allowed to give a poor grade to the person who he dislikes and who he thinks is incapable of contributing much to the project and to the organization on the whole.

As a result of an increase in the attrition rate, the trust and loyalty that used to exist between an employer and employee has come to an end. Nowadays, the employee is least bothered about the loss the company faces because of his resignation. The companies have also stopped caring for their employees. They don’t bother whether the employees have been put into projects keeping in mind their interest and capability. They just place them in the project which they think would fetch them the highest monetary benefit from the client. They don’t bother about their personal and organizational growth. They refuse to stretch and accommodate a personal request. Both the employer and the employee think about their monetary benefit. The company squeezes out as much work as it can from its employees and the employees also try to negotiate a phenomenal hike when joining.

Because of such a huge demand for professionals in the Indian IT industry today, companies find it easier and cheaper to recruit freshers. They prefer training them according to their own needs rather than employing someone who is experienced and who asks for a big pay. They pay peanuts to these freshers on the pretext of their being inexperienced but make them work as hard as experienced employees. On the other hand, if an experience employee comes on board, he is pushed into doing the same work as a guy with half his experience. He is put under a team leader who is younger than him and has nearly half the experience but is in the current organization for two or more years. The experienced person then gets frustrated due to the immature way in which the work is handled and is forced to either take up some other project outside his interest or look for greener pastures again.

In BPO or ITES companies catering to foreign clients, it is assumed that the employee is ready to work in any shift the company puts him in. While UK timings are still reasonable, USA timings extend up to wee hours of the day. If there is a meeting or a deadline, the employee who comes to the office at 9 in the morning is expected to stay back even beyond midnight. There is no consideration whether the employee is a male or a female. Everyone is expected to stay back to finish work and then leave. If the company issues a laptop to the employee or he has a computer at home, he still has some relief of finishing the work from home. If this isn’t enough, generally there is no healthy snack or meal available in these offices. In order to finish work fast and rush home, the employee is forced to either skip meals or have a high calorie snack which has little nutrition at office. This leads to obesity and lifestyle induced diseases.

In today’s expensive economy, to maintain a decent lifestyle and save something for the future, both spouses have to work. Sometimes it is seen that due to stress at office the relationship between them also starts getting sour since they hardly get any time for each other. On weekends they have other household and important chores to attend so they get very little time to enjoy each other’s company. They also get cut off from their extended family and friend circle and end up only making courtesy calls to them once in a blue moon.

In some cases, where both the partners are in late thirties, it gets difficult for them to conceive due to stress and unhealthy lifestyle. Another problem area is when women have to join work just after having children. They have to leave back their toddlers in some other family member’s care or sometimes even with a maid to join back work. Sometimes, this choice is made due to the family’s financial problems. But, when this choice is made due to over ambition of women, it is not worth it as at such a tender age the child is deprived of its mothers care. The mother also feels guilty as it always plays that the back of her mind that she is not spending enough time with her kid. When she returns home from work she is very tired. After doing the household chores, she is left with very little energy to play with the kid.
Thus, only bachelors who have ample amount of time and energy can survive working in such organisations which demand an awfully high level of commitment without offering much to their employees. Just out of college, bachelors are more than happy to get jobs in companies with good reputation. They take up these jobs for work experience and get a good jump in their next employment. As they still live with their parents or with roommates, their expenses are next to nothing. So they take up these jobs even if they are paid peanuts. But for people who have families to sustain it’s a different story.