IT Storm: A reward or a point of concern for Indian youth

It has now been over a decade since the IT boom has shown its bigger picture in India – the land of farmers. The country’s agriculture has shown tremendous increase with the introduction of new crop called “S/W Engineer”. The impact of IT is easily visible, let it be the rise in national economy or as the biggest consumer of fresh graduates from various institutes across the nation. Today IT is absorbing nearly 63% of Indian Engineering students even before the completion of their degree. And this number is increasing year by year.

But what exactly this boom is offering? If we look at the outer picture, the decision by Congress govt way back in 1991 to enter into the world of Globalization has done wonders esp. in the last few years. It has injected the fuel of Foreign Direct Investment to the thirsty Indian economy. India fully capitalizing this opportunity made a new entry in the global market as one of the leading BPO and IT Service Sector. And, today IT sector is standing tall as one of the leading sectors in Indian market. What more would the govt hope for? This seems to be the perfect choice offering huge employment resulting in larger amount of tax, and building infrastructure of the nation.

As always there is other side, the other view and the other perspective. So let’s see the inner picture of this grand gala of New India. Let us take a small ride into the life of a “S/W Engineer” and try to find out what these white collared executives are actually doing in their day to day life.

Here are few of the facts based on small survey conducted over some of the s/w engg from various companies:

Ø Satisfaction with working culture – 60%
Ø Satisfaction with the perks – 50%
Ø Satisfaction with the opportunities available in near future – 50%
Ø Satisfaction with the nature of work – 30%

Now note the fourth point and imagine the joy and enthusiasm in the life of a person who is 70% dissatisfied with his/her nature of work. What do you think could be the reason for such high percentage of dissatisfaction?

To begin with, IT industry is broadly divided into two categories

Product based (company initiated)
Service based (User initiated)

Companies which produce and launch their s/w (products) in the market come under first category. They take the initiative and develop the product that they think will suit the user’s requirement. Whereas, when the user raises a request and the company provides service to fulfill those requirements, these companies come under the second category.

India is a big market of Service Industry. And the major part of Indian market deals with the projects of Support and Maintenance. Now to have some idea of the kind of work in such projects and the expertise required, it is sufficient to look at the basic requirements to get into any of these MNCs. Have you ever wondered that for engineering students why the branch/stream is not a criterion for most of the companies or why even BSC students are being absorbed in Multi Dollar Projects?

The fact is that at the starting of your career you just need to be a human machine which once trained will perform the similar job again and again. A perfect robot directed to work and behave as per the processes and rules enforced. The worst thing about these projects being you not finding any place for the work of your interest or your out-of-box thinking. This creates high dissatisfaction towards work. There is nothing in this world that can give you as much satisfaction as the quality of work you do rather than a good rating in appraisals or one onsite trip.

The condition becomes miserable when we look at the situation in the colleges of the country. People rushing blindly towards the fascinating job profiles offered well within the campus of the institutes. This rush is killing the thinking of the students to go beyond and they finally decide to flow with the current.

Having said all this, the concerns here are not to reflect the negatives of these glittering careers or to divert the thoughts against this. The only idea here is to bring into light the initial phase scenarios of this Hi-Tech career and to provide the overall picture that might help in finding the ways out to the desired destinations for aspiring fresher.

The key is to find out the area of interest from the bottom of your heart ignoring the noise of external views and comments. And finally, having the passion and the courage to go for it, even against all the odds. Never ever settle down until and unless you fall in love with what you do. The real test of being yourself is when you don’t stop loving even after being rejected.

Have the hunger and foolishness enough to grasp the food of thought. Stay Hungry, stay Foolish……….World is all yours!!