Young and Impatient in India

Workers raised in an age of economic optimism want it all, and they want it now

By Steve Hamm

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MindTree HR chief Jetli (center) revamped the tec outfit's initiation process NAMAS BHOJANI

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Ravikiran's parents are career civil servants. At 24, he's plotting career moves NAMAS BHOJANI

Ravikiran's parents took the safe route. In post-colonial India, even though they had college degrees, they chose low-paying but secure government jobs. Today, they live with their three sons in a modest concrete house in a working-class section of Bangalore. While colorful paintings of Hindu gods adorn their walls, the furniture is mostly plastic chairs and steel cots. For Ravikiran M.S., their eldest son, security and stability simply aren't enough. The 24-year-old programmer is brimming with ambition. He rides a motorbike to work and hopes to buy a car. And he expects quick promotions, dreaming of becoming a CEO. "I want the posh life," he declares.

Ravikiran is typical of India's in-a-hurry younger generation. With the tech-services boom, the country's college grads are coming of age in a time of economic optimism, and unlike their parents and grandparents, this group has vibrant job prospects and high hopes. The challenge for companies is to harness their energy while reining in inflated expectations. If these young people feel they're being short-changed in terms of either salary or advancement, the best and brightest will find work elsewhere, shift careers, or leave the country. "It's a very different generation," says S. Gopalakrishnan, chief executive of Indian tech giant Infosys Technologies (INFY). "They want immediate rewards."

PROVING GROUND

This pattern will be repeated in other emerging nations as prosperity spreads. So India is becoming a proving ground for managing the global workforce, with companies developing new schemes to keep the younger generation engaged. The likes of MindTree Consulting, Infosys, and IBM (IBM) have revamped their orientation programs to better engage young people, tapped men and women under 30 to serve on management committees, and launched mini-MBA programs for eager young managers. "India is going to be a lab for lessons that we'll apply to other countries," says Lyndon Rego, manager of innovation at the Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro, N.C., which develops leadership training programs in emerging markets.

The challenge for companies is to address both the desires and frustrations of the younger generation. These become abundantly evident in the cafés and bars of Bangalore. As the city has developed into India's Silicon Valley, it also has become the country's bar-hopping capital. "We need capitalism with a human face," says P.B. Devaiah, a 20-year-old industrial engineering major at a local college. Sitting with friends at Java City, a crowded coffee shop, he complains that much of the programming in India is the equivalent of sweatshop labor, where new hires are expected to spend as much as 12 hours a day writing code. "We're being used as machines," Devaiah says.

When the conversation turns to social issues, India's young people are likely to erupt in grousing about arranged marriage, the caste system, and interactions with Westerners—all of which should concern employers. Caste attitudes, for instance, clash with merit-based corporate values, and young techies sometimes feel they're treated poorly by American and European clients. "We're not Martians. We're human beings," says a young woman engineer at a Bangalore tech firm.

One of the biggest concerns is the changing role of women. The tech industry was once almost exclusively male, but by last year about 35% of employees were women. Nasscom, the software industry trade group, says that will rise to 45% by 2010. The rise of women in tech has taken companies by surprise, and they're scrambling to react. At software and research outfit MindTree, for instance, 40% of new hires last fall were female, compared with just 23% of the company's overall workforce of 5,500. And these young women tend to be more outspoken than their male counterparts. At MindTree, a council run by a top female scientist now addresses gender issues.