HYDERABAD: Besides weekly offs, a typical workday of a software professional can be well extended beyond eight hours of work coupled with targets, and the need to be always online to solve additional issues. While this can take a heavy toll on work-life balance, a researcher has set out to study how tech professionals are getting ‘burnt-out’ while working in one of the biggest knowledge economy - IT/ITES sector. After spending 12 years in the tech world, Bhupathi Raju, a researcher from IITH, faced burnout due to the work culture promoted in the sector.
For the first four years he was in the US, then in Bangalore, and later was working as a freelancer. “The work was exhausting because I would work for clients across various time zones,” he said. He observes that many HR professionals do not know labour laws. The welfare programmes are dysfunctional and there is no unemployment aid when a person loses his job, he added. Through his research, Raju aims to study the reasons why tech professionals are getting burnt out. “There are several aspects including legal, economic and social that have to be safeguarded so that a health work-life balance can be maintained,” he said.