A Newbie in IT land

Another day with nothing much to do but wait and watch the stock market worm graphs wiggle up and down. I can imagine what hell it must be to be a stock broker...this anxiety multiplied by ten. But maybe the fact that you are playing with other people's money eases the pressure a bit.

Its been six months since I have been working with one of India's prominent IT firms as a business analyst. Only MBA's are appointed as business analysts...but I really cant see why...we dont seem to do anything of consequence here. These past six months have only served to solidify my belief in Dilbert's principles which in effect say that management or MBA's dont really serve any purpose, other than to further complicate and jargonize the atmosphere.

In my company, an entry level MBA can have three types of work profiles.And I have been through all of them:
1. Business Development: Projected as cutting edge marketing communication with client in order to sell millions of dollars of services to clients after discerning their need. You'll have to factor in the competition and their capabilities too. In reality it is plain documentation work, wherein you build new proposal documents over existing templates with the client name and logo changed appropriately in the right places. You have to collate material recieved from technical folk, the manager who does the pricing, etc. And once you have done it there is nothing left to learn. Yet they expect you to keep doing the same pointless thing like in a sweatshop or something. To top it all off there is no direct interaction with the client. There are several intervening layers of account managers, client partners, project managers and other fiends who put you through thousands of review iterations with mundane changes. "If this comma is here instead of here, it will mean that we understood the client's requirements to a greater deal."

And there is no decency is the way work is demanded, "This XX million dollar proposal has to go out in three days, we need a cut today, and revised version everyday till the final version on the third day" No wonder the BD team, of which I am not a part, has an atrition rate of over 80%

2. Business Analysis: This is more up the MBA's sleeve I would say. He has to study the business model and come with appropriate solutions/requirements specifications. But such work is few and far between. I had to do an excel based financial analysis. But I sat doing that for 3.5 months, whereas it should'nt take more than two weeks simply because my manager did not want to release me from his clutches. MBA's are assigned as manager's bitches. If they are not allocated, they enter the resource pool as free agents..basically now you are anybody and everbody's bitch.

3.Project Management: The existing project managers don't consider you to be capable enough to lead a team. But they have a mandate to involve you in something. So they string you like a puppet, and make you dance to their tune. And when it comes to credit, they intend to corner all the glory and reliquish you to the background.

Another big part of IT is that you dont have much work most of the time. There are times when you are fairly/overly occupied. But those are bracketed by long periods of inactivity, another consequence of IT companies maintaining large backup labour pools in the name of being resource ready (gleaming teeth here) !!

The only positive of being an MBA in the IT sector (which in itself I think is a scam that just leverages the exchage rate difference very well...more on that in a later post) is that the work loads are not very demanding, and you may get the chance of overseas travel provided your fate lines are all good and align perfectly with those of your manager.

I really feel lost in this environment. It just supressess the motivation to do good work. I do not have a clear reporting line, and the manager I am supposed to report is very hard to even get a hold of. But mind you, if another manager so much as thinks about pulling me for some work, we'll have a turf war on our hands.

So I am not happy...so what millions are not happy with their work. Does that mean I have to quit if I am not happy? but then what?..move to another corporate logjam. A recent tata safari ad had this line which I felt was quite apt. I dont know if it is quoted from source or an original one. "Its not that slavery has ended, Its just that we have stopeed recognizing it"

I guess the only place where we can work to our definitions is in an entrpreneurial business...and that requires courage to overcome fears that shackle us. Till then, we'll have to make do with cribbing and bitching.