Software production is a very mechanical process around the world, not only in India. They do not see themselves as being adjunct to the machine, but certainly they see themselves being stuck in a way in a very routine factory type of a setting. Hierarchy is very much there and yet there is a whole story about denial. People will say that they have flat structures and a lot of flexibility, giving the workers a lot of space and freedom and so on. This is again based again on the Silicon Valley thing. It is true in some surface kind of way, but Upadhya argues that actually it is a highly structured system and if it were not highly structured they could not do the work they are doing. They have huge software projects with hundreds of people working in them, everyone is working on a little piece and someone has to pull it together. So it is like a car assemble factory where the guys in the car factory probably have more autonomy than the software workers in the outsourcing industry, Upadhya suggests.
Seemingly flat and open structures
When inquiring about the nature of the work, very few people are self-conscious and can articulate such things. By reading in between the lines, Upadhya got the notion that people think about their work as very much driven by machines, as very mechanical.
