The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : IT crowd and the long weekend

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Nov 08, 2007
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

IT crowd and the long weekend

Staff Reporter

With Deepavali falling on a Thursday, many
are heading home for a holiday

BANGALORE: For all the cogs in the Information Technology (IT) wheel in Bangalore, every holiday is measured in terms of how close it is to the weekend.

With Deepavali falling on a Thursday this year, it is a perfect opportunity for all out-of-towners in the IT/Business Process Outsourcing sectors to be homeward bound.

“Eighty per cent of my office will be empty, but then the year-end is a good time since all projects are in a state of freeze,” said Kaushik, a software engineer with HP, Bangalore.

Freeze phase

“Freeze phase” refers to the fact that companies abroad do not prefer to release new products during their festival season.

“The fact that Thanksgiving is round the corner works out to our advantage,” Mr. Kaushik said.

While employees in some companies are free to convert it into a “long weekend”, they have to work extra time to compensate.

Most software companies work with deadlines. So taking a holiday means working that much harder to make up for lost time. It’s all about partying hard and working harder, for these twenty-something-year-olds.

On the other hand, BPOs which cater to the international market have no holiday at all.

For they live in a different world which functions on the concept of global holidays. They look forward to Thanksgiving, while Deepavali is just another day to spend cooped up in their office cubicles.

“Employees who do not take leave in November have been offered Rs. 3,000 in addition to their salary,” said S.P. Joseph, (name changed) an employee of Accenture, Bangalore.

Incentives

While many companies offer such incentives to prevent people from going home, Wipro, at the last minute, has declared a holiday on Friday.

“We wanted our employees to enjoy the festival. They got together and mailed the management, offering to compensate by working next Saturday,” said Sunanda, Corporate Communication manager for Wipro.

Hosting parties

Most IT firms celebrate Deepavali by hosting parties and decorating their offices.

While they try to foster the festive spirit it is no substitute for spending time with family, said Kaveri Krishnamurthy, (name changed) an employee of IBM (BPO), Bangalore.

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