Slave Delivery Model

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.

Who should be blamed?

Bangalore is happening city because of IT boom. Not long ago, the city used to be called pensioner’s paradise and garden city of India. Gardens are no longer green. Felling of trees to accommodate increasing human population and garbage littered around tells the sordid story of death of green city of Bangalore. Solitary houses are converting into multi-storey buildings. Marshy and outskirts open areas are turning into concrete jungles. Towering apartments and flats just like pigeon holes are for the human inhabitation. People blame the government, government blames the corporate, corporate blame the system, and this blame game is continuing. Everyone is part of this blame game yet no one takes the onus.

This is the not the story of Bangalore alone. Almost all the metros of India passed through the same phase and experienced the same situation. One should be happy Bangalore caught it late and that too the industry which is pollution free, waste free and employs millions to earn their livelihood. The city turned out to be the silicon city of India. It was fortunate that westerner found Bangalore to be the ideal place for them to set up their software IT park mainly because of the weather which suited them. Nevertheless, even the manpower required for the budding industry was concentrated in southern India and Bangalore became the hub of the industry.

Rising price, increasing population, unmanaged city’s infrastructure is obvious when you look at the traffic on the road. Ever increasing number of cars, busses, motorbikes and heavy vehicles are putting more pressure on the city. Software industry might not be polluting the environment but the snarling traffic smoke definitely does that. Anyone would feel pity looking at the traffic police manning the cross road junctions. Prolonged hours of work and pittance payment can not compensate what they are losing everyday masking their mouth and nose to avoid dust and smoke of the passing vehicles. Yet tomorrow is another day.

Everyone is stressed, everyone has problem, everyone is irritated, but nobody thinks how we can solve the problem. Naturally everyone feels solving city’s problem is government’s job. As ideal citizen we feel that we pay the tax to the government and it is responsibility of the government to provide us clean air, clean water, wider roads and so many other things. And as an ideal citizen we just want to utilize all the facility as me only. We are not bothered about others, about our neighbouirs, and about our fellow human beings. Its always me only. Every one talks in terms of I and me only and expects government to take care of all the I’s and me’s.

Be on the road, everyone wants to run past very fast as soon as possible breaking all the traffic norms, signals, dashing another vehicle, and dozing pedestrian. End of the day we all talk about bad traffic system and poor management. We never sit to look our own faults, if only we follow the rules, the system runs, otherwise system breaks. Who is to be blamed?

Like many cities, Bangalore too gets cauvery river water drawn through massive pipelines, yet we lavishly use and waste water without thinking that if one day water is not available what will happen to our life. Do we really think of rationing the water for ourselves? The answer is no. It is government’s job to mitigate the water scarcity.

Garbage disposal and waste management is one of the crucial challenges of the city. City resides on the higher altitude of the land mass. There is no nearing sea or river system to drain out waste. The government is tackling the problem by clearing the garbage and waste and dumping it in a place to decompose it.

The great joke is everyone blames other about littering their place. The fact is any open place is a garbage and waste disposal place for everyone irrespective of it being private property or government property. Elite classes have their pet kept in their house but take them to crap in front of another person’s house. Yet they are the one who complains more about everything.

If we really take a little step to look into our small problems to solve ourselves and let the government solve the bigger problem, we would definitely be improving our life style, conserving our environment and saving for the future. Instead of looking outside, its time to look inside and ask whom should we blame for our plight.