The Hindu Business Line : Burnout!

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.

"Often marketing agents would offer shorter deadlines to clients which are not possible to meet at the rate of eight hours a day," discloses one software professional.

Once a deadline is committed, employees will often have to bend backwards to finish the project on time.

The nature of some projects would be such that even if the company has enough resources, only a few people can work them.

"To develop some modules of a software, you can't have more than two or three people working on them," Harish says.

It is also seen that miscommunication between the client and marketing arms of software firms brings more pressure on developers. Often, the actual requirement of the client is misunderstood by the developers going by the brief they have had, only to realise their folly towards the end of the project. Things go haywire from here.

"What the client actually wanted may not be what we have developed. It is a nightmare," Harish says.

Also, sometimes the realisation that the project is too much for you to handle will dawn only after you are into it.

Often it is a point of no return for the company as stiff penalties would be inserted in the agreement. Naturally developers would bear the brunt.

In many cases, the smaller the firm is, the more the pressure on employees.

While larger and established companies can turn down unviable projects, and deploy more people on assignments, smaller firms have no such luxuries.

Their survival and success will depend on how fast they can deliver the project, at what lower cost, in the best possible way.

"Bigger companies have some say, but we don't," says an employee of a small software outfit.

When everybody in a smaller firm works with a goal to join a bigger company, extended working hours are just another means to add more experience to your resume. So rather than trying to get a better working atmosphere, they would typically look to join a bigger firm.

It is precisely this mindset that would prevent trade unions from entering the portals of the Indian IT industry, however hard they may try.

Unlike in traditional industries, where an employee would join and retire from one company (his son would have also joined the same place by then), in the IT sector there is no concept of lifetime loyalty.

We have seen that even promoters move out after selling the companies they built from scratch. Trade unions helped the labourers of yore to ensure a better workplace.

But for a software professional, the better workplace is always his next stop. Why join a trade union and fight for a cause, when the easier route is to simply join another firm that offers more money and more incentives?

Also, software professionals seem to be more tolerant of their workload as they are aware of the situation in the dog-eat-dog world of the IT industry. They know that ultimately it is the client who calls the shots.

`So why fight with your own management when they can do little' is the thought.

Or the industry should collectively decide that they will not accept lying down the unreasonable demands of their (potential) clients, when it comes to deadlines and price.

But when everybody is looking at quarter-on-quarter performances and bottomlines, it is unlikely that such a step is feasible for Indian companies anytime soon.

So if you happen to be a techie who works for one of those `growing' companies, don't expect to get back home before mother cooks dinner.

Picture by Bijoy Ghosh

vipin@thehindu.co.in

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