The idiosyncrasies of the IT industry

 The IT world is rife in its inherent idiosyncrasies. One thing that struck me quite hard in my short tenure is that people here are like travelers oblivious of their destinations. Travelers meet in a journey, spend some good time with each other and then say good bye and probably never see each other again for the rest of their lives. The same goes for the IT world. You never know when you might get transferred to another location. And as I said it struck me because compared to college the phenomenon is quite commonplace. In college we stayed together for at least four years and the valediction was not abrupt. We had been anticipating it. But here any day could be your last. But on the brighter side there is always the scope of forging new friendships (if you want of course) even though they might be short lived.

   When it comes to work it is the most lackluster as far as the services sector is concerned. At the beginning one might be interested but slowly the passion wears off. Let me tell you, what I did in my B.Tech project was much more satisfying than what I do here. It can't even be compared. You don't have a say over the nature of work you want to do. It is simply thrown at you without the slightest regard to your aptitude. 

   And when it comes to organizational principles there is lot of dichotomy. Officially the working hours are 9 hours (only in India. In Accenture offices abroad its less and depends on the country specific labour laws) but can stretch even to 24 hours. The IT industry can provide a wonderful case study for those who would like to study labour exploitation. And all of this is done on the pretext of achieving, at times unachievable targets in a desperate attempt to remain competitive in market. Whether it means employees sacrificing their personal lives is of little interest to the management. At times somebody from the management is considerate enough to give some lip service to assuage the miseries of the employees but those gestures don't extend beyond materializing into a lunch at a posh restaurant or maybe an outing. Now tell me, after months of slogging who cares about a bloody dinner or even an outing for that matter. No wonder India is an IT superpower. Its not because we are doing some rocket science but India has the potential to perpetually produce a pool of cheap skilled (???) labourers (as if needs any reiteration). Without the twinkling of an eye I can say that the day the labour laws in this country are made stringent enough to put a ceiling on the actual working hours of the private sector (of course I mean in letter and spirit) will herald the sunset of the IT industry.