Sunday, June 12, 2016

Why Indians move abroad - SPOILT WORK CULTURE & TIMINGS

It was just another day at office in Bangalore; I was still in India, working for one of the Top-3 IT firms of India.

I wanted to leave bit early from work on that day, so I requested my manger:
“Hi, I have some work…, would like leave office around 4’ O clock today, is that OK?”

“Sure, No problem. Do you need any taxi/cab to drop you back at home?” my manager replied caringly.

For a moment, I thought he was sarcastic; but he was not. It took a while to understand that he actually was going to approve my request to leave by 4AM,by the next morning!
*Not a joke; it's a true incident

Yes, it was my mistake; I should have asked him specifically as 4 in the evening. But, this is the reality and expectations of most Indian Managers; Working 10+ hours a day and frequent weekend working is a standard norm in most of the IT firms.

Not just the over timings, another point what actually irks me is the poor work ethic and expectations of some of the Indian managers.

Most of my American or European colleagues and managers are extremely happy to hire an Indian Engineer, they firmly believe that an Indian Engineer can easily pick-up sharp and deliver a superior result.But they are never in favor of outsourcing the work to an Indian firm, or even to invite an Indian programmer on deputation.

You may call out several different business to political motives for their behavior, but one of the factual reasons, I would accept is the bad business practices statistically associated with the Indian way of working.

A Polish friend told me a story of a man who constructed a complete house from the materials he stole from his work.

During the communist period in Poland, There was a guy who was able to steal all the materials, bit by bit every day and from his job factory and built an entire house in few years. He was a considered as a local hero and “smart” in his village for this brilliant skill. But won’t we call the same person as a “corrupt” today? Well, most of our Indian managers have a little bit of the same “smart” syndrome.

I have seen many such “smart” managers who try to double or compensate his revenue margins by asking their engineers work on two projects simultaneously. The manager is seen as “smart” by his boss, but eventually, his team loses their “quality” while compromising for the “quantity” of work.


In this scenario, even just talking about the work life balance is a joke, so I better skip the topic.

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