Jack of All Trades and Master of None? The Development of IT (Compatible) Qualification Between State, Company and Individual Career Planning

Abstract

Given Friedman’s assumption that the “world is flat”, especially from the perspective of transnationally operating IT (information technology) companies, upward mobility should long be achieved, in this part of the economy. As a matter of fact, however, even software companies subscribing to an equal distribution of labour, responsibility and influence between IT workers in different world regions tend to keep Indian software engineers in a position in which they function as “the jack of all trades and master of none”, as one of our interviewees has put it. What are the conditions for and impediments to an upgrading of IT (compatible) skills in India, then, which might pave the way for an upward mobility of the employees in question? Based upon empirical case studies in one German software company and its Indian subsidiary as well as in one Indian software company and its German subsidiary, it will be argued in this chapter that, in the Indian IT industry, social upgrading is impeded by a complex interplay between state policies (with regard to higher education), corporate policies (with respect to skills, careers and employment) and, finally, the ways in which Indian IT workers plan and organize their (working) lives.