- Franklin D Roosevelt.
Conservative is a man with two perfect legs who, however, has never learned to walk forward.
- Franklin D Roosevelt.
When silence is prolonged, it can only be broken by deeper voices.
This volley of quotes should not give you an impression that I am doing something as revolutionary as Columbus mission to find India without having any damn clue about where it is and thereby hitting the most famous missed shot of present times by finding America.
Neither my journey is as colorful as the walking to neighborhood grocery store to buy a kg of potato. However as always, its the middle path which I am following.
I am going back to school, IIM-Bangalore, for MBA (part-time) starting Jun 09. While my next two and half years are gonna make me feel inside oven(literally as I have been assured since day 1), I asked myself why am I doing this.
I asked this to myself after I was asked this question from everybody from interview panel to my apartment watchman( though I have not told him yet, and people I have told yet are in single digit, but I assume even if I had told him, he would have asked the same from me) - why this, what for, for whom and why now?
I am happy that finally I have asked this question from me now. I remember so many people did not ask the same question when they should have asked, yes when I got married. Nobody asked me then - Why, what for, why now, why not later/earlier etc?
Coming back to this school thing, I finally asked from myself, why am I doing this? I got amazing answers. It may be an act to fool myself or to console myself as I still remember "This world is full of people who do not need a reason to believe but they need an excuse to believe."
But following is my thought process.
Basic premise of my argument is as follows.
In India a career in IT businesses, which is totally limited to technical/technological contribution will lead to a grave dissatisfaction sooner or later leading them to either move outside the country, or to change their line or be happy being the second fiddle.
This statement might seem pompous or amateurish unless coming from someone who is as high in stature as one who have founded HP, which for sure I have not (If you do not believe me for this please google for this:)).
The backdrop of this basic premise is as follows.
Technical growth can only be assured by consistent handling of bigger technical challenges. Going forward the technical challenges tilt more toward R&D then just execution and delivery.
This R&D commitment requires a technology vision on the part of organization, elaborate road map of the future, strong belief in one's core Values, consistent viability of funding and market research to rationalize the funding for these R&D programs.
This R&D commitment also requires the large-scale availability of the domain expertise in respective segments.
These R&D commitments being longer terms in nature also require focus and commitment from the workforce. It needs workforce which is equally motivated by the cause/goal and is not driven merely by the cash value on the plate.
Finally it also requires the equitable organization & social respect for technical contribution
If I summarize this - high value technology development is possible in a scenario where the organizations, workforce and the markets meet following conditions.
1. Stable business organizations with vision and potential to start from scratch and finally doing it themselves.
2. Highly motivated and committed workforce with substantial domain knowledge and perseverance.
3. Where Organizations and engineers are willing to take some risks.
4. Finally a social environment which respects such organizations and such people.
Since this discussions is about the professional career around the businesses and not that of the academia, I have consciously kept out one crucial element - Centers of excellence which produces the world class technical workforce and fosters the culture of cutting edge R&D.
Now when the ground is set, I will come back to our prevailing Indian technology scenario.
I will be discussing the three elements of this trilogy - Organizations, Workforce and Society in detail and then finally analyze why I reach to the basic premise as stated above.
1. Organization -
On the organizations front, there are four kind of organizations.
First group is of the the private (wholly Indian) corporates with pretty impressive global footprint in terms of employee strength and revenues. But their track record for technological ground breaking work, innovative products, research in technology, global share in any product market is abysmally poor. Mostly its the outsourcing model of channelizing the cheaper workforce to the high cost job and chewing up the margins which is making their balance sheets looks greener.
Second is the Indian centers of global Biggies, which is a kind of American response to the outsourcing model. Mostly these centers (Barring very few and rare exceptions) are also maintaining the products which were last being used for someone in Africa a decade back (Little bit of exaggeration here but trying to push the point hard).
Third set is the plenty of start-ups which are doing lots of niche technical work but their evident weaknesses are as follows.
1. lack of vision - most want to be sold or acquired sooner or later
2. lack of access to potential network of investors- this leads them to die for want of seed/bridge funding.
3. Lack of access to the customers/markets - Since more markets are outside India, thus they have a tough time getting their feet in.
Fourth and last set is of huge government/PSU organizations. Though undoubtedly most of India's technological growth is only because of them, but their potential is largely not harnessed due to ultra-poor accountability, insulting compensation packages (at least before six pay commission).
Thus across the spectrum I clearly see a lack of the organizations which have the vision to commit to path breaking technological work, which have the funding to explore this, which have the accountability and drive to continue on these tougher and rather unfulfilled journeys.
Thus most careers in these organization either does not require that kind of focused high value technical expertise or does not offer that kind of environment wherein one can pursue such a goal.
2. Workforce -
Now the second point - Workforce. First we have very small (single digit) centers of excellence in India, which the cutting edge technical talent which is globally competitive. But sometimes people, given an opportunity, can excel in later phases of their life. But that requires the appropriate environment in the organizations and in the society.
Secondly large (more than 90%) of the workforce come from modest financial family background. This makes them less prone to risk and forces them to trade their passions with the basic necessities and then competitive luxuries in life. This arduous task typically takes at least one generation to take family up to the next level. In this perspective money in the short term by a mediocre organization appears much better then the high complexity technology work in a financially unstable organization.
3. Society -
The last factor is the society. Almost all societies in the world have been hierarchical in structure with the elements of feudalism replacing the real merits earned based upon the performance.
More mediocre societies continue to give higher importance to administrator. One who rules becomes more important than the ones being ruled. This leads to a race to being a ruler or wielding an authority. This thirst for authority and feeling the power there in and thereby earning more recognition in the society drive more and more people to seeking for this authority.
Indian society which was highly intellectual in ancient times, gradually ceded to be so and degraded into a strongly hierarchical structure. In some cases it was age, caste or religion or other such non-merit bases criteria which decided who will have the final word.
For corporate world this translated into the a hierarchy of power or food chain i.e who eats whom or who reports to whom.
Managing a group is brazenly confused as Heading a group which is automatically understood as Leading a group.
Power to decide one's daily work, doing one's annual appraisal and signing on the leave applications are still considered to be more powerful then developing a technology. Individual technical contributions are still considered to be individual weaknesses or non-competitiveness thus symbolise a laggard's career.
All is not lost -
Having said all this, I must say we still have exceptions in each of the above mentioned categories. Fortunately the trend is optimistic.
Why Business Knowledge is Important -
So I thought finally that if I have to evolve in the technology side, I will grow in the technological business side. I need to have a sound understanding of the business side of technology. Keeping eye on the end goal, this business study will not only equip me with some of the minimum mandatory knowledge but also will give me access to wide network of people from industry and academia. My objective is not merely to earn a grade in the hierarchy or two, its also not shunning the line of hard work in technical contributory roles. But I want to start with authentic and applicable quality education of the fundamentals.
Finally I hope and wish this will help in one day starting a technology product company right here in India, which will not die for want of funding, which will not be born to be sold out, which will not sell the cheap labor but competitive technology, which will not foster the culture of bureaucracy but of meritocracy and which will exist beyond my existence.
First of all let me say the customary congratulations to you - now you are going to be part of the elite of the country - the super-achievers. On a more serious note, I am happy and excited that you have decided to pursue education after a long deliberation involving many factors and not just money.
ReplyDeleteFor the reasons that you have already mentioned in the article, not many in India have this kind of mindset.
I (once again) agree with almost everything that you said and the points of disagreement are not too important.
My vision is currently tinted by my immediate reality – something that is not too charming. However, when I try to be objective about it, here is what I think.
For one, the situation in other countries is not too different.
Workforce:
Granted that the developed world have much more affluence and hence people are freer to do what they want to do. But corporate structure and functioning wise, there is little difference – not in the aspects that you mentioned. The people in developed nations, on an average are more skilled. That is obvious because these societies have been industrializing at a massive pace for 3 centuries now. However, majority of the population in these countries is involved in services – serving beer in bars, pole dancing, teaching, working in shops like Wal-Mart, etc. The cost of education is so high in America that most of these people can’t dream of gaining those much coveted skills. Not that they dream. Most, it would seem, don’t have ambitions beyond the paycheck-to-paycheck life.
Quality of the organizations: Petty politics is rampant. What you see in the Indian arms of the global giants is nothing but an extension of their home practices. The collapse of several business houses in the past decade is just the tip of the iceberg. Sometimes I read the forums where they write about their companies. Most of the employees seem to think that they top management is worthless, overpaid, has horrible policies and cannot save the company. They also feel helpless and realize that there is no growth for them anywhere in America. Corruption is rampant and so is arm-twisting, nepotism etc. Since I have come here, no day goes when they don’t report a scandal involving big government or corporate functionaries.
Well, but there are two ways of looking at things. And when I look at the positive side, I am equally amazed. However, I will write about that some other time.