a mARTIAN dIARY

Recently there is a lot of talk about converting the 5 day work week to 6 days to offset the strengthening in Rupee against the Dollar. Rupee gaining strength in the international market always invokes a lot of conflicting emotions. As an Indian the strengthening of the rupee can been seen as a matter of pride, even though I am pretty sure that they might teach that it’s not something to be too proud about in an economics class, if I ever cared to attend one.  On the other hand I am faced with the daunting prospect of having to think about sacrificing one of my precious off-days

This whole 6 day work week issue reminds me of one of the countless forwards I had got looong back. I have dug it up here. In that article the author openly argues for shorter working hours. Back when I read it, I had just got into the industry and barely come to terms with the Indian work culture. I thought, even with 42.5 hours + countless late nights + weekends that I am putting in and I see other people put in; my work is not taking any noticeable steps towards the word called completion. And true to my human nature, I assumed the problem is with “them”, that all Europeans are lazy twats and they do lesser work than us Indians and are even more lazy that they have the audacity to actually ask for lesser working hours. Now me, I was proud of my work, proud of the extra hours I put in, even though my seniors warned me that, the pride will soon wane away but you would still end up at office on odd hours to cope up with the work.

And then UK onsite happened.

One of the first things that I noticed there was that people were VERY strict about their working hours. Unless something VERY important, they came in at 9 o clock and left at 5. Again I thought…no wonder they need to outsource their work, they are lazy to the core. Me and my colleagues would run up by 10 and work till 7-8 which was “real” work in my eyes. But as my work their progressed, I noticed something very different about their work culture. Unlike us, if a personal call came to them during office they would not chatter on endlessly and when they came to work in the morning, the first place they went were not their Gmail or Yahoo inbox but rather to their official mail box to check official mails (I cant really say that with 100% surely but still). Again most of the time I went to the coffee-vending machine, which was a common occurrence since I used to get orange juice FREE! , it would more often be my colleagues sitting around chatting rather than the “native” workers and after 5 again we would, at least  most of the time, be the only people still working.

One thing that was becoming clearer to me was that they might be spending lesser hours than us at office, but the actual amount of “work” minutes they put in seems to be the same. Hence “lazy” prejudice that I associated with them got replaced by efficient and towards the end of the 3 months I spent there, I could see the benefits of that.

But coming back, it didn’t take me long to fall back into the old routine of staying late without realizing it. But then certain things like appraisals have a way of forcing you to introspect your life and ask questions like “Am I prioritizing things properly?” it is then I realized that I had unknowingly slipped back into my night shifts and inefficient work patterns

At that moment everything seemed clear. I was able to see something really wrong with the work culture. She would later tell me that it is something She has been telling all along but I still would credit the root cause analysis to moua.

Root cause analysis By Sabarinath K

A large chunk of the IT industry is normally freshers (read as fresh out of college and fresh into industry from academics). A lot of them come from different backgrounds from the bullock-cart village to the extremely urbane. Of this most of them do not have the luxury of getting a job at their native place and are hence are also fresher into a new city and probably “living” in a city with bright lights for the first time.

Being in the IT sector most of them must be computer savvy and would possibly swear by Gmail, Yahoo and Orkut or at the very least hooked to the internet in general. Even though I would not bitch about pay, but I have to say that the cost of living in Bangalore is one thing that’s proudly kept pace (and sometimes even overtaken) with the pay hike that the IT sector has been experiencing. And being bachelors their lifestyle would be…well…let’s stop with the word “bachelor-like”.

Looking at the big picture, what do you have at your hand? You have a huge set of young boys/girls living outside their parent’s aegis with a limited amount of financial freedom. They are getting free internet and air conditioned workplace with freedom to stay till they drop at their office compare this with their “unconnected” home , subject to the whim and fancy of brother weather ( not AC’ed I mean) , what would they choose? This leads to a lot of them staying back at office for no particular reasons or at least official reasons. Add to that, misguided corporate policies giving web mail access only in the night, and more and more people are drawn to stay late.

Once this sets in work will be slowly put off till the dark due to various reasons (maybe cuz the hot chick in the next cabin wont be available to flirt after 6:30? Or maybe you will not get into the mode to work till its night or maybe your PM saw you sitting late and night and just assumed you would love to work then too). Once this happens, habits for a life time are sowed. Since the current seniors would also have been subject to this same cycle, it would be seen unnatural and would probably go un-noticed.

Not only are we learning to stay late, we are also learning to expand the work (Murphy’s law? Work expands to fill time given), that could be easily done in 8 hours, to fill 10-12 hours. From a bachelors point of view it is not very relevant, but moving such a habit into a married life can be disastrous and by that time (that a IT person get married) this would be in-grained in us to be easily fixed.

Coming back to the crux of the issue. The reasoning behind the 6 day workweek is to bill the customer more rt? I feel that the customer is not myopic to not understand that 6 day workweeks would decrease the productivity increase errors and we would end up spending more man hours for the same work, in turn costing the customer more but getting possibly more shabby work.

I feel it’s the duty of the Indian management to understand/convey this vision, and coupled with the issue of margins and try to take the hit themselves or pass it on to the customer ,by convincing them that it’s in their best interests.

One thing that you might think that I have ignored is the competition from companies like Accenture, EDS etc who have a lot of their workforce outside India. Well, from where I stand (ideological zenith and practical nadir) , the cost factor was going to be just the spark for the engine that’s is the services industry, the fuel needs to come from differentiation in other more important things like say quality of work!.

Time to look at that maybe eh?

( A HHHUUUGGEEE thanks to Nikhil or rather he should thank me for giving him the opportunity to proof read the draft )