I have been a part of the almighty Indian IT industry for
nearly 2 years now. I used to wonder why this huge bunch of dreamy eyed
engineering college students chase the big fat IT company dream. It was akin to
Bollywood’s classic “poor boy chases rich girl” scenario. It all sounded
stupid. Now, I no longer wonder. I just know that it’s stupid. Seeking help
from a classic cliché, it’s akin to digging your own grave.
This won’t be a rant on the shortcomings or idiosyncrasies of
the IT Industry; that would require me to write a book. I would like to bring
up one particularly pointless and convoluted part of corporate life, Office
Jargon. There are 2 such jargons, which are mostly specific to the IT industry,
i.e. “Resource” and “Body-Shopping”. For those who don’t know, a resource is a
tag given for an individual with any specific skill-set; i.e. a person skilled
in .Net becomes a .Net Resource. Body Shopping is when such “resources” are
placed in the client location, to fill up vacancies in their IT organization.
I find both these references as extremely denigrating to the
employees. I do understand that for an IT company to function, it does need to
do the dirty work of its clients; hence hire people trained in certain skill
sets and/or send them abroad to work in their client locations. But labeling them
as resources or bodies, commoditizing human beings under the context of making
profits for an organization, a non-living entity, is as belittling as it gets.
Any organization prides itself on its professional ethics.
But dehumanizing their employees by tagging them as resources/bodies? Will never sit right with me. What could the
alternatives be? .Net Skilled professionals? I don’t know, it could be anything
but resources. As for body shopping, just ban the abominable term. It sounds like
something a cannibalistic clan would go about doing on a Saturday evening.
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