It’s a dead end, boss. You are awaiting a holocaust,” I drew Subroto Bagchi’s attention to the impending crisis that awaits Bangalore’s tech community. India’s, I should say. Now Subroto Bagchi’s one of those brilliant minds who wandered into the world of information technology by design, rather than accident, after majoring in, of all things, political science, to eventually set up MindTree Consulting, Bangalore’s hottest IT services outfit.
There are nearly half-a-million nerds in the IT services sector in India, some 140,000 of them working out of Bangalore. MindTree employs 1,700 of them. The average age of these techies is 30 years. A bulk of them are code writers who join cushy jobs soon after graduating from reputed technology schools, several of them from the IITs. By the time they are 30, many of them manage complex assignments, executing software tasks worth millions of dollars for high profile Silicon Valley firms.
By 2008, India’s IT services sector is expected to employ 3.3 million code writers, 60% of whom, or 2 million, would be employed by Indian outfits and the rest, by the in-house centres of the global IT majors. Now, of the 2 million that will get sucked in by the Indian outfits, 1.4 million would be employed by the top four players alone, TCS, Infosys, Wipro and Satyam. That’s as big as the whole of Indian Army. Just think of it, India’s going to be home to a huge army of code warriors barely four years from now. And we are just getting started. “That’s when your problems will start,” I told Subroto Bagchi. “What will happen to your 30-year-olds then? What will happen when today’s hip techie turns 40? Will he still be writing those codes?”
There couldn’t have been a better person than me to ask the question, having crossed over to the wrong side of 40 and grappling with mid-life crisis. More than half my buddies who started together have wandered out of the profession, yielding place to a bunch Johnnies-come-lately who are brilliant at their jobs. How often I have wondered what I am doing out here. But then, journalism’s always been a happening place, and so far, I have managed to tuck myself in a comfortable corner. Also, journalism’s never going to get as huge as the software sector. So, do I really have a problem?
“Life begins at 40,” Subroto Bagchi said, getting me startled. But then, he added with a somewhat grim refrain: “It’s true that very few companies have thought through the 40s conundrum. If you don’t address this issue now, you’ll have a huge problem. Of course, one of the best things about IT is it was born as a global industry and constantly mutated. The other interesting thing is we don’t fix things until they are broke.” That’s called jugad in north India where I come from. It’s going to be exciting to watch, I bet.
Subroto Bagchi says he’s looked ahead in time though. Today’s 30- year-old code writer will have to make himself capable of multi-tasking if he still wants to keep running at 40. Broadly speaking, he will have to learn to be extremely good at least at two of several things that will define his future assignments: he will manage resources, he will manage technology, and he will manage complexity. “And he will have to be different from what made him good at 30,” Surboto Bagchi said. Managing resources means that he will have to learn to manage people and manage capital budgets to achieve operational efficiency.
Managing technology means that he will initially have to become a knowledge and technology master, but at 40 he will have to know the economics of technology. This is to say, he better know the economic implications of Java, he better know its social cost. Bigger than these, perhaps, will be the ability of today’s 30-year-olds to learn to manage complexities. It’s like when you find out that your biggest customer wants to elope with your biggest competitor. What do you do then? Because there’s no precedence to follow. At 40, the guys who just know technology but are awed by the complexities of the workplace will be dead. The guys who learn to master this art will be the chosen leaders. The others will have to just make do.
Looking back at myself, I don’t seem to have too much of a choice. “Too old to rock m roll, too young to die,” I murmured to myself. That was Subroto Bagchi sprang his biggest hope for me. The guy at the wrong side of 40 could also master the art of rainmaking, he said. “What’s that,” I asked bewildered.
“Companies exist for economic value. And some guys exist in companies for rain making,” Subroto Bagchi said, acquiring more and more the demeanour of a wise old hermit for his age. “Rain making is all about your disproportionate ability to create value out of nothing.” That’s what those blokes do all the time in the software hotspots of the west.
Rain maker, me. I’ve got a new identity badge for myself. On the wrong side of 40, I know what will carry me ahead. If you find it hard to believe, just go back to the first line of this column. Haven’t I got you something out of nothing?
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