My affair with corporate world is not very old but in a small time period it has taught me brilliant lessons of corporate philosophy and its practices in reality. The great new world of job opportunity emerged in software companies, which have made millions of Indians realize their dream of holding a job and at least earning a decent living. At one end the happiness of being employed is very overwhelming but at the same time the rigours and pain of conflicts and its repercussions make you feel disgusted and dejected at times. Such incidences are more often expected in the software companies where body shopping is the working and revenue models. In their terminology, this is called the onsite opportunity to work in some other company’s premises being on the payroll of the parent company.
You work on the client’s premises as a contract employee whereas your parent company calls you a consultant. While getting the tag of a consultant you feel overwhelm thinking that your carry superior skills and knowledge what even the hiring companies people might not have. Your judgment of yourself is quite right, nevertheless for client you are just one of the human tools what they don’t want to hire into their fold rather get you on the contract to complete a particular task. You might be smart, knowledgeable, and efficient, whatever adjective you use for yourself but you are just a plug-in to fit and get the things work. The rule of the game is different. It’s the game of few chickens who rule the herd of pigs for their accomplishments. The client company is interested in your work and not in you. For them you are just a commodity to be bought for a particular period of time. For your parent company you are a saleable commodity. The day you stop having your sale value, you are no more required in the companies. This is the part of life in the software companies.
Mismatch is a very sober, sophisticated, direct, and clear word being used now these days in the corporate environment. Being contract employee demands you to keep lower profile than the employees of the client’s company. At times you might be knowing more than what they know or you might be able to solve the problems they are facing but you need to keep yourself contained to your job and should not come forward to help them out. The reason being, they will make you do the work and take the credit themselves. Forget about giving credit to you, if they are threatened with your longer presence they would seek a replacement of you stating that you are mismatch for the job and in spite of giving so many chances you have failed to do what is expected out of you. Some times if you are able to perform better and getting expertise in the particular area of work, the co-workers of the client company would work behind you to see your back.
By the time you come back to your parent company, they will make you go once again to different other companies for the interviews and again at the client’s place and the mismatch saga continues. This is the service delivery model of software services companies. But we dare not call it body shopping because it’s the civilized world’s most popular business model which degrade human in front of other human and teaches you the art of slavery to survive. If you have worked in any of the software services company you would know that they hire corporate trainer to teach you how to speak in the interview and how to answer the question in pleasing manner to the interviewer. May the interviewer be a muff; you need to please him by your answer. You need to answer the question the way he wants not the way you can better explain it. The ego and pride are the supreme quality these hirers have than the hunger for knowledge to progress further.
We know why we bend to the tunes of these buffoons, because our parent company wants us to do so. If we miss to get through, our company would not get the contract and we wouldn’t get our salary, promotion, and appraisals. We dare not do that also because we need job and no other industry in India offers such opportunity. We are more than a billion people country and software services industry provides more number of jobs than any other industry. So what! If the service delivery model is slave delivery model.
