or an outsider, "IT" is it, a la Cinderella-like career, promising phenomenal salaries, e-sops, travel and vacation allowance and a host of other benefits to anyone who has climbed the bandwagon, a career where burgeoning demand and an acute lack of manpower has apparently transformed traditional employer-employee equations in the latter’s favour and finally flattened hierarchy-ridden organisations.

But there’s a flip side to earning 60 grand a month and being able to address the boss by his or her first name. The corporate goal of trim bottomlines and high productivity levels breeds work environments which demand super-heroic employees, who can plug away at the terminal day in and day out and machine-like jump from one project to the other. The unrelenting pressure of deadlines, the mouse potato existence in a five by five cubicle, can exact a heavy toll in the form of techno-stress and professional burnout, which if unchecked experts say can assume epidemic proportions.

Burnout, a reaction to work-related stress, is a medical psychological condition, characterised by prolonged physical and emotional exhaustion, boredom, lack of interest in one’s work loss of satisfaction, negative attitude, irritability, rage, depression, anxiety, inflexibility and sense of powerlessness. The condition is difficult to detect as unlike chicken pox or flu it has no visible symptoms. Burnout long in the making, often don't surface for years till the business professional feels physically exhausted and emotionally depleted, and all alone with his or her problems. Recently, a software engineer from Bangalore, unable to cope with intense work pressure committed suicide by jumping off a building. Although a stray incident, studies show that stress graphs of individuals are showing a worrying and dramatic upward trend. A recent study undertaken by students of the Columbia University found that sixty per cent of software employees are stressed and more than half are susceptible to professional burnout. According to Achala, a lecturer in psychology at the Bangalore University: "Previously, individuals pursuing service related professions such as social work, nursing and teaching were known to suffer from stress and burnout, but last month’s incident indicates that stress levels are rising".

Strangely, there is a general reluctance on the part of software professionals to name the problem. The word is taboo, a term of opporbium, not to be spoken loud. Most software professionals this writer spoke to admit that they work twelve to thirteen hours a day, and during critical hours of a project may clock eighteen hours. But mentioned the word stress in hushed tones. Stash, a software professional states: "Stress levels are high, but is quick to add, it depends on the individual, if you enjoy your work, you can work 20 hours a day without feeling stressed". Girlish, a twenty three-year-old software engineer, scoffs at the very mention of the word. The reports are exaggerated. "We get high salaries and I do not think one should complain if there are occasional deadlines".

If one reads between the lines (a disease which plagues most media persons) the individual and not the organisation is responsible if despite the fancy title and high salaries, one lets signs of stress surface. Fearing peer ridicule, demotion or even the organizational axe most employees deny or hide signs of stress. "Moreover organisations with the exception of three quarterly performance reviews rarely pay heed to individual variances and types". The employee is, usually, not competing against himself but against a standard and invariably the measuring rod is the employee who can withstand the maximum amount of stress, states a leading business consultant.

Carl Limpets president of the Trachoma Group in an article which appeared on Wired admitted "When we look for somebody and it does not matter whether it is at the executive level or the entry level, the personality we look for is pretty standard. They have to be innovative, confident in what they know and totally multi-task oriented. It’s not two or three ball that have to be in the air at one time. It is ten or twenty. It is a pace that is very incredible".

Stress, however, results not only from the organisational demands but due to the very nature of a software professional’s work. Each project is divided among various teams in charge of developing various consoles. The piecemeal nature of the work breeds alienation. Moreover, with rapid changes in technologies, there is no concrete sense of accomplishment. Technologies which software engineers drive themselves hard to develop become either uneconomical or redundant within less than twelve months. Unlike an architect or an artist, who can view their work even after years and derive a sense of satisfaction, software engineers are denied a similar sense of achievement. This coupled with long hours of work can trigger a sense of powerlessness, and loss of satisfaction, negative emotions which characterise burnout and stress.

One of the biggest PBO threats executives face is, ironically, not on their climb up the ladder but in their leadership roles. According to Sativa who has worked in various companies as a Human resource specialist, "Stress is not generic in nature but increases as one scales up the ladder". Being a decision-maker exacts a price, as one is expected to know the answers. In an industry faced with an acute shortage of info-tech workers, many software engineers with limited experience find themselves in managerial roles and the strain begins to tell if they cannot scale the learning graph quickly. The new managers simply try to do much because they feel they must live up to their fancy designations organisations expect of them.

Although work-related stress is the single largest factor contributing to PBO, individual psychology also plays a critical role in determining the stress levels one can withstand. Most neo managers who suffer burnout are unable to come to terms with alternative periods of peaks and crests in a career. Possessing inflated egos and obsessed with their organisation and market value, in a low performance phase, employees may drive themselves hard and may touch a low emotional nadir when they are unable to fulfil expectations, says Savita.

While one cannot deny that stress does not act in the same manner on every employee, many organisations see this as a convenient scapegoat to ward blame of foisting oppressive unfeasible and unrealistic demands on employees. Admits a business consultant, "Many software companies in a bid to earn dollars promise to complete work within unrealistic time spans, and it’s the employees who feel the brunt".

Hence, it is imperative to sensitise organisations to the problems of stress. Last year, in the US around 800 stress law suits were filed in 1999*, almost all were judged in favour of the employee. IT industry. In India organisations are sheltered by law, as there is no legal provision under which mid-level executives can sue employers for stressing them out. This can only be done by making corporates conscious of its fallout in monetary terms. According to Americandoctors.com, premature 'burnout' of professionals and an estimated lost of 40 million working days each year, no small consideration in an industry so prone to skills shortages. Another study conducted by students of the Columbia University purports that stress related disorders cause US corporates $150 billion annually. Are organisations in India listening? Are they willing to drop the mask of being flexible organisations and shed the we know best attitude and become real proactive organisations receptive to communication from bottom down.