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The Smart Techie was renamed Siliconindia India Edition starting Feb 2012 to continue the nearly two decade track record of excellence of our US edition.

June - 2006 - issue > Cover Story

Knotting Techies

Keerthana Venkatesh & Mohammed Shariff
Thursday, June 1, 2006
Keerthana Venkatesh & Mohammed Shariff
If you thought, “Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity,” then you have just concurred with George Bernard Shaw. Temptation, whatever the master dramatist meant, is a different topic to discuss. While, opportunity in all sense has ruled the roost in today’s matrimonies. Recently one of the leading newspapers organized a matrimonial event called Swayamvar (marriage fair). And its tagline read in a caustic tone: For Software Professionals Only.

Over the last decade Indian tech professionals have irrupted close to 1 million in number, and their growing riches have made them very choosy. A perfect tech-couple in today’s India is not matched on their once worshipped kundali (horoscope) instead it’s now salary-matched. Or should it be called the match of equals? Some argue the equality is stationed on intellectual measure of their would-bes versus the monetary measure.

Intellect being the root of every married techie couples; bedtime conversation of a neo-techie household is being prehensile: “Honey, the QA and measurement process composite model that we were working on got patented today,” says husband. While the wife, “Wow! How many common elements does it incorporate?”

Welcome to the world of IT couples! With nearly 20 per cent of techies (employees) in every MNC having married to another techie—may be or not in the same company—the Indian tech-world is leading the way of emerging knowledge professionals tying the nuptial knot. While tech-couples are inventing new solutions to compliment each other scaling the career pole, HR managers are still baffled with this new trend. Some are afraid, “employees who come in tandem, might go in tandem.” Some others just don’t like the dynamics behind co-working couples. Some else, perhaps, need a pushing from the couples themselves.


It is a 9 A.M. As soon as little Sachi enters her school van with her usual ponytail hair-do, her schoolfellows laugh at her. It is an indication that her mother is not in town and her father has messed with her hairdressing. Nivruti Rai and Sumit Tyagi, Sachi’s parents who work as Senior Manager of Chipset Group and Director of Microprocessor design at Intel India, are the new age tech couples fighting hard to bring balance to their work and personal life. In the Kannan household, their 12-year-old son greets them every time with “So, what’s the PoA for the day?” or “Whom did you fire today? Vandana Malaiya and Vanamamalai Kannan, Director of Trianz and VP of Engineering at C2Silicon, are embarrassed at their son being fed with professional jargons at home. Some few miles away is the house of techie-couple Ganesh Raj and Rashmi Vasudev of Tata Elxsi, who recently relocated to Bangalore to reside together in the same location, after a year at different locations. And they are already discoursing about a stable grounding for their yet-to-be-born child.

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