Amongst many ailments in the Indian Software Services Industry, the one stinging one and often overlooked is ‘Racism‘.
Now people could be aghast and shaking their head in disagreement but the moment they stop doing that and think a little hard, it won’t be difficult to disagree.
A Software Services Company often has the onsite teams, offshore teams and usually customers from other geographies. Do you think that the same norms are applied to all the team members irrespective of their geographies, designation and skin colors? Or does everyone gets the same privileges and has the same amount of accountability?
- Disparities in Privileges and Accountability:– Within software services companies, disparities in treatment among onsite and offshore teams are evident. Despite the global nature of the industry, a skewed set of norms often prevails. It’s a well known fact in the industry that customers and onsite teams follow a standard office timings and offshore team members are expected to be working beyond their office timings, on their weekends and Holidays too. The question arises – are the same privileges and levels of accountability truly applied to all team members?
- Hierarchy and Views Weight:– The views of customers and onsite teams always deemed weightier. Even the views of company executives who have no knowledge of the actual work carries more weight than the person working on the ground. Hardly anyone will counter the customer views however stupid they maybe. Even the management and executives will give their well rehearsed, buzzword laden speech for all the problems, which is usually an utter time waste and can make a bad situation worse.
- Trust Factor:– In the Industry, the trust factor tends to favor the person with a fairer skin, the person in closer proximity or the one with a shinier title than the person who is actually doing the job, knows his shit and can even actually fix your problems.
- Appreciation and Recognitions Disparity:– Even to celebrate the achievements, magnitude of celebrations is different. Offshore or Ground teams will get a simple ‘job well done‘ and may be a meagre lunch at best. Whereas the appreciations, jubilations, laurels and monetary benefits are being shared by the upper echelons for ‘getting the job done‘.
The Challenge of Speaking Up
Rooted deeply in the industry’s psyche is the idea that the client is paramount, managers and executives possess omniscient knowledge, the worker bees don’t know any better and expressing opinion is discouraged. Initiating a conversation about these ingrained biases becomes a herculean task, and any attempts to raise such issue are met with those well-rehearsed, buzzword-laden speech.
Conclusion
Racism within the Indian Software Industry is an obstacle that impedes progress and close collaboration. It is a serious problem to deal with as many issues stems from the fact that people are carrying this mindset while building solutions to worlds’ problems. The Industry’s services could improve, the products could be better and cheaper, if we can openly talk about the issue and treat each other like equals.
The first step toward changing the situation is to acknowledge it, understand the damage it does and initiate a sincere dialogue.