The Corporation's Children

The routine of my life has made time fly by. The same classroom every day Mon-Fri makes everything just blend together. It's September and I got here in mid July. The realization this week that school is starting in Boulder without me has brought a refreshing thought to the surface: I am in a new phase of my life. That new phase of my life finds me in a unique situation, unlike most people that graduate from college- I started my first job overseas. Not only that, but we as employees here are part of a delicate and complex experiment in outsourcing and foreign recruitment. A journalist from the New York Times came into our classroom to take pictures and interview us which was kind of a wake up call: we are a strangely special group. About 60% of the company's business comes from US clients and we are in the minority of nationalities here. With that in mind, there is a feeling among us that we are an elite group of individuals, not in the sense that we are the best at what we do, but more in the sense that we are immensely important. We are stared at everywhere we go, we are heavily guarded, whispers and laughter from the Indian trainees combined with respect and admiration greet us at every turn. "Here come the Americans...there go the Americans".

A tale of precisely what I mean:

About a week ago, the Mysore police department issued a warning mostly directed at foreign nationals that there have been reports of muggings and assaults. The police chief asked companies who harbored said nationals to step up their safety measures. The company responded--a 10pm curfew every night. As one would expect, this was met with opposition from the group of people from places like DC, Detroit, and the South Side of Chicago where you are probably more likely to be mugged than Mysore, India. After arguing with HR over the course of a week, they brought a compromise (slight change in curfew) to the table, but it became clear that the table was set for them and not for us. A few days later, the CEO came to speak to all of the trainees on campus. After his speech about values or something...it was 8am, I was asleep for most of it...the Americans were told to go to a private auditorium for a special session with the CEO. The hustle and bustle of anxiety and irritation regarding our new "rules" fell silent as soon as he walked in the room. One could hear a pin drop. When one of our student leaders articulated that we were being unfairly treated and borderline imprisoned, the CEO shot a look at the HR representatives as if to say "How dare you!? These people are our lifeblood!" The rules were immediately revoked as if he had a magic wand. It was then that we turned to each other and realized that as American employees in this Indian company, we wield a power and an influence that we would never have in an American company. We went from being treated like children, to being cared for like children.

My guess is that we are coddled in this way so that down the road, the company hopes we can be ambassadors of a program that was exciting, interesting, and worthwhile--and that we spread that word to other upcoming college grads. If something goes wrong over here, American recruiting will collapse because the idea of going to India frightens a lot of people in the first place. I guess we'll see how everything turns out.

I hope to write more often on here. I've been pretty busy and haven't been able to put down in words whats been going on but I will try my best.