Silicon.com has published an article on August 25^th, 2009 on how Indian outsourcing workers are being stressed to their limits.

Though it has been hailed as the key to India’s economic growth, the inside story of its the outsourcing industry is one of sheer drudgery, with punishing deadlines, long night shifts, irate customers a thousand miles away a the sheer, mind-numbing tedium of writing code.

With young employees in the outsourcing industry already suffering from acute physical stress due to over-work and lack of adequate sleep, matters are being compounded because of the recession and anxieties about losing ones job. This is on top of occupational illnesses like obesity, migraines and depression which fracture relationships and significantly increasing the risk of diabetes and heart disease.

Young, enthusiastic, just-out-of-college students struggle to keep apace with the frenetic work culture. Initial job euphoria is high, with non-stop partying and reckless spending during weekends. Bingeing on junk food and alcohol is the norm of the day. Peer pressure adds to the situation until youngsters end up totally stressed and unable to work.

Industry sources say that they end up losing a large portion of their employees solely due to stress. People on night shifts are the main casualties.

With healthcare being not being given due importance, the industry could be facing a severe crisis. Counseling centers say that they are seeing a lot more youngsters in the age group of 19-30 years who are unable to take the stress. The centers tell them to ease up and start managing job stress easily so they are able to take care of their relationships better.

Though some of the bigger companies are trying their best to provide facilities like an in-house gym, medical insurance, better work options, doctors, nutritionists and healthy food, their efforts are ignored by many of the younger employees. They are unable to get out of the groove.

Only time will tell whether there is a solution to this  perplexing sociological problem.

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal described how there has been a significant increase in Japan’s hitherto minimal outsourcing to India.

This increase is in part due to enhanced efforts on the part of Indian service providers to penetrate the Japanese outsourcing market, a consequence of the Indian companies’ falling fortunes from the recession-plagued US market. On the other hand, it is also due to the Japanese noticing that many of their competitors are gaining cost advantages by outsourcing tasks to India, causing them to follow suit to maintain market share.

Examples of projects being outsourced are car navigation systems, automated securities trading systems and medical scanners.

The article mentioned how, in two very well-known Indian software companies, the very small teams dedicated to Japanese projects of a few years ago now teams with thousands of people. And these companies are predicting steady growth in the future due to the fact that very few new engineers are being produced in Japan.

Traditionally, cultural barriers, such as language and business conventions, have not permitted India’s outsourcing business with Japan to grow rapidly. So Indian companies are teaching their engineers the Japanese language and Japanese business customs.

An issue which has to be addressed is the difference in the Indian and Japanese product development strategies. The Indians believe in building , testing and delivering a product quickly then fixing any late-emerging bugs in the field as and when they occur. The Japanese, on the other hand, expect flawless performance from the moment of delivery, even if it takes longer to deliver the product. The article does not comment on whether the Indians have a solution to this, but judging how things have evolved in the past, it won’t be long before such a solution emerges.

Thanks for reading —