On this May Day not everyone can fit their work schedules into neat little ‘nine to five’ boxes, especially not techies. Techies are usually to be found in front of their desks in Technopark at least nine hours a day, and sometimes even 12, 15, and 16 hours!
“It’s part and parcel of the job,” says Sarah Ann (name changed on request), a project manager, who has been working in IT for the past decade. “You just cannot compare the work schedule of a techie to that of a government employee. Time is of the essence here and every second of our work day is potentially worth hundreds of dollars,” she adds. Raneesh A.R., a test lead with an MNC, says: “We knew what we were getting into and there is no option but to adjust.”
Techies point out several reasons behind the tight work hours. “Most of the companies in Technopark work in the global market, so our schedules work around the schedule of the clients, wherever they are in the world, and their demands, which can often change on a whim,” says Raneesh, a veteran of several 15 hour work days over the past six years he’s been in IT.
Vineesh, a senior technology lead with an MNC, who has been in IT for 10 years now believes problematic work schedules are caused by a failure in planning, unreal expectations and a failure in communication by the companies soliciting projects. “Suppose there is a project with a timeframe of six months. In a bid to win the project, companies, especially the small and medium enterprises (SME), who have limited resource personnel on their roles, would quote for it saying they will complete it in much less time, say a week or two. This puts the said resource personnel in a fix and they would be under pressure to make the deadline. Hence the long work hours,” he explains.
Sujay Sivasankaran, a senior business analyst with an SME on campus, agrees and chips in: “Bigger companies are usually are much more process oriented and would have a fixed procedure and enough resource personnel in place to handle these kind of projects. Then, they can afford to focus on quality and quantity. With SMEs the focus is often on delivering the project in time, which throws any fixed schedule out the window.”
That does not mean everyone has to work crazy hours every day, though some companies do insist that their employees have to log in a minimum of nine hours in front of their computers, excluding lunch/tea/bathroom breaks.
Work schedules, it seems, mostly depend on the projects that each person is working on. The closer they are to the delivery phase of the project, the tighter the schedules.
“It usually peaks during the testing phase, when the project goes live, and the post delivery phase, which is when most of the glitches happen. Only, these phases can last for months! We have to be on our toes throughout and the faster we fix the problematic issue, the earlier we can call it a day.” explains Sujay. “It’s mostly freshers – people who have one to three years experience – who get caught in the grind. So, you can say that tight work schedules are a rite of passage for techies,” he adds.
There are a couple of silver linings, though. “The best thing about the IT field is that quite a few companies give their employees flexible hours, meaning we have the liberty to come or go as we need as long as the day's work is done,” says Vineesh.
Also, several companies now give their employees the option to work from home. “I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t have the option to work from home now that my nine-year-old has his summer vacations,” says Sara Ann, adding: “This way I need to go into office only once a week. That does not mean you can slack off work; you do have to be online with the office throughout the working day.”
Some techies believe that an employee’s union to fight for and protect their rights is the solution to easing work schedules.
“Whether trade unionism would work in a space like Technopark is debatable. However, we are in dire need of some level of collective bargaining, at least to create awareness about our rights. It’s come to a situation where techies themselves are forgetting that they have rights or rather, nowadays they don’t have the time to be aware of their rights,” says Dipin Varghese, a system engineer. They also want the government to intervene and redefine the laws of the land to include the rights of professionals in the knowledge-based industry. “Only then will we be able to take a stance,” says Dipin.
