Working for multinationals, aka life in the Special Exploitation Zone

On the outside, an Indian IT-enabled services company looks just like any other European corporation – fancy office buildings, smiling receptionists and impressive conference rooms with a lavish display of company logos, ISO certificates and posters boasting about corporate values such as "integrity", "meritocracy" or "excellence".

On the inside, the situation is not necessarily worse, just different. Scratch beneath the surface and the company will reveal its unique Indian flavour. The time in between signing in and signing out is long, typically 10 hours per day or more, so besides work, there is plenty of activities to put on your timesheet - such as sipping cardamom tea and nostalgically moaning about your job (and your desire to go back to Europe) to your Indian colleagues, who will in turn bore you to death with tales of their sky-high career ambitions. Everybody wants an MBA and everybody wants to know why you don't have one yet. The Indian "B-schools" do not require any work experience for entry into these courses, unlike in the UK or US. So a 21-year-old without any desire to have these three magic letters behind their name is an oddity indeed.

Education is extremely important, and my Indian colleagues would often sit me down and subject me to self-praising lectures starting with "I am from a premium institute of India …" and ending with "I can be earning much more than the other muppets at this company. I have a brother / uncle / cousin who lives in London / New York / San Francisco and earns £100K a year. That's what I'm going to do as soon as …" I never had the heart to tell of the international standing of these so-called premium institutes. Well, according to the World University Rankings 2007 there are exactly zero Indian "premium institutes" among the top 200 universities in the world. My own "alma mater", the University of Birmingham is number 65 in the world. If I was as stuck-up as some of my Indian ex-colleagues, I would say it's my turn to boast about "premium institutes" now. But hey, it's so much more fun to pretend I can't count to five.

All of the junior employees at my company seemed to be studying for some sort of entrance exams in the evenings (GMAT, GRE etc.) and many were willing to take out extortionate loans to pay for postgraduate degrees in the UK or US. Leaving "this company" ranked high on the list of priorities of most people, whatever "this company" might happen to be – the majority of India's IT kids are suffering from a serious form of "the grass is always greener elsewhere" syndrome. Which creates a formula for the Achilles' heel of most multinationals in India: Ambitions + Dissilusionment = Seriously High Staff Turnover. One senior executive I spoke to called this a "culture shock" – young kids join serious corporations in entry-level jobs that fail to provide them with the same intellectual challenge that they were used to from university.

Ten years ago, magazine articles in Europe shouted about a highly educated, grateful and motivated workforce that is willing to do dead-end jobs for a fraction of a Western salary. Too good to be true? It was. Demand for well-qualified, English-speaking graduates in India now far outstrips supply and graduates can choose between big-name companies the same way we choose between different brands of beer in the supermarket. Stella, Fosters, Heineken, Carlsberg, Budweiser or Corona? Wanna try a few in turn and see which one you like? And what if, after a few cans, you find out that all beers are kind of the same, that they all taste bitter?! Some soul-searching might be in order. And again, the soul-searching leads us to education. In India, the only two subjects generally considered worth studying at university level are engineering and business. Very few people consider studying something that might bring them a feeling of self-fulfilment, such as international relations, development, music, literature or history … But why?

Well, according to the ever-useful Urban Dictionary, the most popular definition of a "soul" is "currency to trade with the devil". If multinational companies are the devil, and the devil is hungry for engineers and business-types, and willing to pay for it in hard rupees, then you sell your soul for a decent standard of living, an air-conditioned office and a fancy job title, such as "Business Analyst" or maybe "Project Manager". Souls are a precious resource and the supply is not unlimited, so the devils keep outbidding each other with offers of higher salaries, better benefits and even fancier job titles. The company I worked for offers onsite yoga classes three times per week which you can take part in during work time, a free gym, salsa classes, ping pong tables in the cafeteria, annual offsite teambuilding trips, occasional office parties with free food and unlimited alcohol, on top of a fast-track promotion cycle and decent salaries (in local terms). All you had to do in exchange was work your 10+ hours a day and forget that you may want to achieve more in life than processing endless spreadsheets in a "factory-style environment". You may be referred to as a "knowledge worker" but this is a hardcore production line running around the clock to meet the demands of lazy executives in various time zones.

Offices are referred to as "a 5000-seat facility", not "5000-head" or "5000-staff" – the amount of available desks and chairs seems to be the crucial determining factor when it comes to company growth. Chairs and desks need to be filled, even if capacity utilization is low. After all, they need sufficient bandwidth to be able to leverage their potential and deliver on large-scale assignments. Yes, you guessed – the Indians, too, have mastered the art of meaningless corporatespeak. If all this becomes a bit too much and you just want to run to the toilets and cry – don't despair. There will be plenty of underpaid, but nevertheless helpful housekeeping staff on hand to supply you with tissues so you can wipe your face and restore your make up.

Should you wish to leave the company, however, the bureaucratic machinery will do its best to make it difficult for you – fist an exit interview and then a treasure hunt for approval signatures from 25 different people in at least 12 different departments. For many, this will be the right time to meet the Head of HR, Head of Finance, Head of Transport and Head of IT for the first time, and to discover that the company has such things as a library. Last but not least, don't forget to send a soppy goodbye email full of fake sentiment and promises to keep in touch, before you are locked out of your computer, asked to hand in your access card and kicked out of the front door by a security guard. Goodbye!

Disclaimer: I can't take credit for the term "Special Exploitation Zone", it comes from the Gurgaon Workers News and is joke version of the all-important term "Special Economic Zone", aka SEZ - a government designated area where companies pay no tax.