Tripped out of training

“I can’t talk about it. No use talking about him; you won’t be able to bring him back, will you?” asks Ashish Mukherjee.

He’s a broken man. A few months ago Ashish was a proud father whose son had made it to the training programme of the prestigious Infosys Technologies Limited. The same son is but a memory today. The news of his suicide made it to the front page, only to be relegated to news archives a few days later. After all, there’s always fresh blood on the walls to be written about.

And for many at Infosys, Ashish Mukherjee’s son is just another trainee who committed suicide on campus. Ironically, it’s the fear of this very facelessness that had pushed the youngster over the edge— the fear of being just another digit added to the number of laid-off trainees.

Abhijit, Ashish Mukherjee’s 22-year-old son, had called up his father to say he’d fared poorly in an assessment test. He then asked his mother to call and wake him up at 5 a.m so that he could study for the next one. When she called the next morning, Abhijit was dead. He was found hanging at the end of a rope tied to a hook in the ceiling. The boy left behind a 6-page suicide note in which he confessed he didn’t feel competent enough to handle the stress of the training schedule. He didn’t blame the Company though.

“I don’t want to sound bad, but such things do happen out here. At the end of the day, Infy’s a service provider with client commitments. Pressure’s bound to mount from the very beginning.”

The speaker is Raj Sinha, a 25-year-old employee of Infosys, who survived the gruelling training programme. Ask him about the “pressure” he refers to and his words provide a glimpse into the world of a freshly recruited trainee. “Hectic” is how Raj describes his stay in the ‘training camp’. Training sessions from 9 to 6, studying till at least 1 in the morning, everyday, 5 days a week, only to study harder during weekends for the module test scheduled for every Monday— “hectic” is perhaps the first adjective that comes to mind while trying to communicate the picture. Coincidently, the same word was used by most of his peers placed in India’s top IT companies to define their training schedules.

Raj was in the ‘fast track’ training programme designed for those from computer and software engineering backgrounds. The ‘long cycle’ course, devised for entrants that are comparatively less tech savvy, isn’t much different. Says Mrinalini, Raj’s colleague who got a taste of the ‘long cycle’ in 2007-08, the time-table “tries to cram 4 years of software engineering into 2 ½ months of training”. Of course, it’s stressful.

The story isn’t different in other IT companies. According to Geeta, a 25-year-old employee of Patni, the whole of Java was covered in 5 to 6 days in her training programme, the maximum number of days spent on any concept being 11. Since these companies recruit freshers from various backgrounds— chemical, mechanical as well as software engineering, the imbalance between the amount of time a subject merits and the amount actually allotted to it puts trainees from non-IT backgrounds in quite a spot. Though put into the longer training cycle, the pressure isn’t less.  Mrinalini went through 9 “amazingly comprehensive” courses in 2 ½ months.

Kolkata’s showpiece tech township mirrors the pattern. Deb Sen, a software engineer in a renowned Sector V company states that he and his colleagues “never dared” to take leave during their training programme, not even when they were sick.

The pressure mounts from the recruitment stage itself. In most cases the HR presentation spells out the terms clearly— if you don’t pass 3 out of 5 tests, or score below 60%, you’ll be expelled. So trainees know what they’re in for. But when the company in question is one of the best in the country, there are only two options— either put your nose to the grind or back off. The choice is pretty obvious.

No one entering a training programme expects a cakewalk. But not many are prepared for the mind battering, nerve wrecking time that awaits them. Soon the campus is abuzz with the number of people who got kicked out after failing their tests. It is here that the actual fear kicks in— fear of diminishing from a person to a number in the ranks of those who didn’t make it, of being part of that nameless sum that forms the ‘boogey warnings’ of trainers. It’s the fear of a loss of identity. While it spurs some to rise above the situation, it swallows others.

But is failure in the training programme really ‘the end’ professionally? “Not really” says Geeta. Many of those that fail these programmes have a fair chance of getting into other IT companies. What dominates them though is the thought that they didn’t make it. The stamp also remains— of getting kicked out of one of the country’s best companies. This is enough to make prospective employers question their worth.

How a person reacts to this kind of pressure depends on the individual’s ability to cope with stress, maintains counsellor Nupur Sen. However, she sees the economic downturn as an important factor affecting the level of performance anxiety.

Insiders reveal that the slowdown has made Infosys resort to a number of cost-cutting measures. The time period of the Infosys long-cycle training programme being increased to 7 months is just part of the stratagem. Why? Because recruits have to be paid more when they enter the development phase and are allotted live projects.

However, Infosys gains first preference among many IT aspirants. Mrinalini had the option of joining other major software firms, but she chose Infy primarily because it trains non-CS people. It’s from a cousin, who entered the industry before her, that Mrinalini learnt that people without a CS background were not favoured by other IT companies when it came to testing or development projects. They were just given “manual work”. So she decided to enter Infy to get a better foothold in the industry. Has she got what she wanted? “Yes,” comes the reply. “In fact, if it wasn’t for the strict training schedule, most of us would have taken things too easy.”

That’s what training programmes are meant to do...whip you to catch up. It’s the 'Brave New World', a giant machine that ‘trains’ you for the next level. The rules of these levels are written and rewritten. They get tougher by the day, as the machine has to keep moving to churn out fresh players who can catch up with the new order— if you manage to keep up, you’re safe; if not, you get crushed.

(Names have been changed on request)


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