Gone are those days now when people craved to be a govt servant, from last few decades something that has rocked the world apart from tsunami and other natural disasters is the word "IT" - Information Technology. In academics whatever you specialize, whatever you learn, 60% of India's youth end up in IT or ITES...why?
Would like to describe what is IT and how it works to some of you who may not have any idea of what it is....Most of you parents or kids or grandparents would always have told sometime or other in life that I want to become a doctor or engineer if you are an Indian. Even today we could hardly see some kid wanting to get into IT when he grow up. But in todays world there are only two kind of engineers, IT or non IT and same with jobs.
Today's world needs lots of IT professionals and tomorrow's world might need still more! In India, the academics revolves around IT...whatever college you study, most of the syllabus now talks of what IT company's are looking for and what stuff the students needs to be good IT slaves.
Its like a poultry farm where hens are fed with things that will grow them faster so that they can get the meat faster...Sad but true...our current generation of college-goers are treated this way...and towards the end of the course...starts some of your journey as an IT software engineer...
IT companies has great belief in training...whatever you are good at they don't care...they just want you to do what they want....no one has any choice until you gain experience....IT also stands for Egalitarianism. Here no two individuals are separate until you have proud it so. There are instances when you could just earn a 60% mark in your academics and be treated superior to your classmate who was a rank holder in your university. In IT marks doesn't matter, what matters is your attitude and flexibility. Your willingness to go that extra mile and hardworking nature is something that would always suit IT.
We could take innumerous examples out of our dear and near ones, who always wanted to be something else but not IT and eventually end up in IT. Now this is their own fault, can't portray it as lack of opportunity on other areas but greed is what drives most of them. People think IT can fetch them good money and there are more choices in case they get bored seeing the same people at work. The high attrition in IT field is also due to these type of people getting into the industry for just money and not really caring about their job and career. This is not just about non-IT graduates in IT but also again IT graduates in IT.
Indian companies are minting good money out of the Asian, American & European business providing IT services. Read more on Dream IT
IT could be compared with factories of yesteryears. If you could recollect from sources written well before the advent of British in India, we had a different education system. This system revolved around fulfillment. Whatever job we are doing was taken as a divine task. The person involved in the job or task would spend whole life devoting the advancement of technology or refinement of tasks which gave them a type of pseudo or real satisfaction. Later the current education system was introduced which according to experts are oriented on creating factory ready products from the college/schools. The industrial revolution needed lot of workers or working class to get the stuff ready and for all colonial nations it was inevitable. Most men were brain trained that education is required to earn them a job as a worker which is the only way they could progress in life. This was also required to attain a good marriage and much more. This slow poison fed in right level to the colonial people at right intervals made them think they are workers and need to work. This killed their creativity to an extent too. Now the erstwhile colonial population and their generations has it in blood to be a worker straight from college which drives most of them their whole life.
After all these history lesson, what's happening now? Again in IT, people are classified in different levels as old caste system. People are classified as Senior Mangement, Mid-tier management, HR Management, Finance Management, Developers, Testers, Support Engineers, Infrastructure Engineers, BPO staff & Customer Care executives in that order in most cases where Customer Care executives are treated as the lowest grade and Senior Management as the modern day Brahmins. Now many people may not want to agree with the use of words here. But this is required for some others who doesn't understand how IT works.
Another funny fact is that when a political party calls for a bandh or some roadblocks, IT still survives using the power of Internet and some other techniques. Most of the IT companies dare to function on a bandh day since they cannot share the same with their customer in some cases. Work from home is another technique that is used for work continuity. There are companies which arrange for accomodation for core support staff etc in their own premises from the previous day. Now this makes us proud that there are workarounds(as in IT) for all these. But do we actual employ the same workarounds in other industries?
India needs IT as much as IT needs India but again the main focus would revolve around the cost of cheap labor. Once this cheap labor shifts to other English speaking developing nations, we Indians would have to start looking at other sectors or hope for a boom on something else so that the worker mentality is retained and properly fed.
Good One. I agree to your views.
ReplyDeleteVery true. Graduates look for something other than IT and eventually end up in IT.
ReplyDeleteThanks Sooraj for your comments...there is nothing much people can do rather than swim with the flow...but parents and guardians needs to understand that IT is just another job which is highly paid in some cases because the life expectancy by the IT induced lifestyle could be a reduced one...since the earning years are lessened and the first person to start a career in IT and retire is yet to be seen..
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