I came back to India due to professional and personal reasons,” is the common chorus of India returnees at Philips Software. It isn’t surprising considering the booming Indian economy.

Project Leader Anil Thattil says “When I was asked to return to Philips India from Philips Radcliff, I never looked at other opportunities back in the U.S. I was excited to work in India because of more work-related responsibilities and I wanted to enter wedlock.”

Many returnees opine that with fairly less amount of experience a person can become a senior level software professional in India, which does not happen in the U.S. The growth curve is slower in the U.S. and a good position is obtained with a decade’s effort, unlike the swift rise in India. Titles like Project Leader, Technical Leader, Program Manager and Senior Architect is what the motley crowd of tech professionals aspires for and receives in India. These titles hike up one’s intrinsic worth in the status-conscious Indian society. American corporate hierarchy with titles like Senior Software Engineer do not excite designation crazy Indians.

The irony is that Indians do engineering to get these jobs but detest being called ‘just’ engineers. They want titles of authority like ‘manager’ or ‘leader’ and not ‘engineer’ after ten years of work in their chosen vertical. This culture might change in India with more senior professionals returning to the country. This would mean the evolution of a more flat structure similar to the U.S.

The technical and program management ladders are currently becoming more defined in India. The technical ladder is a reality now in India and this creates opportunities even for those who want to buck the trend of being called managers. “Previously India had only the managerial ladder,” chips in Tech Leader Mona Shivaram. In the U.S., even after 20 years of experience people management is not required but in India after just ten years you are assigned managerial responsibilities. “In the U.S., a company might have just two or three Project Leaders and one or two Project Managers but the situation is just the reverse in India, which has a Project Leader for every five software engineers,” reveals Thattil. The software hierarchy in India follows this pattern: Project Lead to Project Manager to Program Manager and other titles spread over five or six levels. Whereas in the U.S. it’s more flat with a broad designation like Software Developer with three levels. Hence two or three Indian layers can be banded together as a single layer in the U.S. That speaks of the keenness of Indian IT companies’ HR departments who want to keep employees satisfied. “A software engineer in the U.S. gets to do as much as a technical leader in India.

Work wise the equations are the same only the packaging of jobs is different,” claims Project Manager Aravind Soundararajan. They aver that the conferences and training held in India for software people is similar to those held in the U.S. The question of missing out on knowledge and skill acquisition by returning home does not arise.

The negative aspects of returning to India, are, there is lesser emotional attachment to your work; the working hours are longer partly because of interruptions and the boss-subordinate relationship is very rigid. There is also lesser autonomy here in India regarding carrying out workplace responsibilities and roles. “Appreciation for good work done is minimal in India where as in the U.S it is the de facto culture,” reveals Shivaram.

Reasons for shifting from the U.S. to India have more personal connotations. Married Indian software professionals want to raise their family in India for varied reasons and in a familiar culture. Leading the list of reasons is the much-admired educational system in India. The three interviewees vouch that Indian English is better than American English. Returnees - they now come in droves to India like moths attracted towards a flame but the only difference is that they don’t get burned.