I am not going to talk about 112, 911 and SOS services, but my experiences with IT industry in Germany & India. It all started when I began working for a software company from 2008, as of now my professional experience totals to over 4 years. Additionally one and half years I was on sabbatical to pursue my higher education. Looking back on the task and projects I have worked for sometimes surprises me. In total, 5 projects, 3 companies, 3 countries, 5 work locations, budgets from a few to several million rupees, dollars and now Euros, Business units from wireless, RF, Software Support, Embedded software development, 7 project managers, 8 good friends, 1 female friend, 2 breakups, 2 enemies, the statistics might look fancy, but what am I gained? I’m neither an expert nor a novice.
Rediscovering further I found that I am someone who does a fire fighting job, what does it really mean? You work in a mainstream project which typically has many sub-modules either developed or managed by subcontractors or by other project teams, in case a skid happens in terms of project schedule or project resource – you are deployed to take up the task either to bring order or to minimize the damage. What do you learn by doing this activity? An extremely aggressive learning, of-course you start with a NO WHERE point and reach at NOW HERE point. Trust me this is the best way to lose your girl friend and shed your hair.
During these times one needs to be prepared to get multi-dimensional inputs, as there is more number of managers (commanders) than the engineers (performers). You will get used to experience sweet tortures, for instance, one fine morning your super boss will come to your place with a smile and tell you “we have a client visit, do we have something do give a demo?” if you answer NO, then you’ll be replied “We shall do it”, it literally means YOU WILL DO IT. Such times are enough to burn your evenings and weekends. For one of my projects I have to work from morning until midnight. In the long run, you will get your health deteriorated. Adding oil to fire, you need to manage your peer competition, thanks to the growing engineering colleges and the mass recruitment by IT giants. Either you outsmart your peers or get in to a gray cloud of hostility and get lost.
Fire fighting doesn’t last for long time; this means you won’t be part of the project for a long time. In other words, you won’t be part of the GOOD TIMES of the project, hence during your appraisals most often your work gets unnoticed or underplayed. The smart ones in the industry manage to get benefits by taking advantage of the criticality of the job role but the weaker ones exhaust in the process. The after effects can be seen by the wobbly job market. So as long as you are in a service sector of Indian IT industry, encountering the above mentioned experience is inevitable.
On the flipside, let’s talk about Europe Germany in particular. The major difference lies with the job security and the employment policy, attributed to the scarce technocrat population. If a German firm wants to employ human resources, the employment department is quite watchful to meet the interest of its citizens, and they have a strict priority rule in place, ie., Germany, EU and finally to non-EU in the descendingprecedence. So it means, immigrants just can’t pop into the country and can’t dilute the job market (can’t steal jobs) and the salary package, this translates to a stable job market and a standardised pay scale (forget hire & fire). So only the best ones will get an opportunity to work, this means the projects run with minimum human resources as it is run with fixed budgets. This drastically reduces the peer pressure in the project group, and can even get the luxury of including your vacations in the project plan. But what sucks the most is no one knows what is supposed to be done. It is rather pretty easy to work on your own than getting your work done by others. But as the country gets older, lacking young engineers, the employers are forced to recruit high skilled immigrants. This will definitely increase competition in job markets and introduce economical (stingy) ways of running a project.
Moral of the story:
- Learn the bad tricks of IT industry as soon as possible.
- Start quick with a good salary and quit quicker with a bulky package.
- Company loves you as long as you are productive.
- Loyalty is a word, the meaning of which will be forgotten sooner or later.
Comments