I worked at an Indian engineering organisation by the name of Lhussen and Bhutto. Hypothetically. This might or might not have any resemblance to a real private limited company. I now live in an actually free country, with real freedom of expression, despite vocal disagreement from members of a certain convoy. Do with that information what you will.

I am documenting this for posterity, for a very specific audience. That audience is Indian engineering students, usually aged between nineteen and twenty-one years old. This is around the time in your engineering studies when Lhussen and Bhutto trawl the various engineering colleges, looking for fresh blood to feed their meat grinder. I want you to know what sort of organization this is, to know what you are getting into. Ultimately, I want to arm you with the facts and to make a decision being fully aware. I was not.

Here is my story.

Caveat Emptor

I must add a few disclaimers. Lhussen and Bhutto is a large organisation with many thousands of employees. Most are Indian, some are not. Much of the information below is my direct experience so be careful with generalising it. Many generalisations are valid, some are not. I heard several anecdotes that track my experiences but I cannot conclusively tell you what life is like for every one of the thousands of employees there.

The Start

I am an average engineering student. Above average in certain aspects, below in others. I am Indian, hence I was ordained from birth to be above average at taking tests. I studied Electrical Engineering and employment opportunities in the actual Indian engineering sector are generally bleak with only a few bright spots. L&B (reminder, Lhussen and Bhutto) were touted as one of those bright spots, although “bright” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. Most mid-tier engineering colleges in India have several rounds of campus placements. In essence, organisations dispatch hiring teams to college campuses and conduct interviews and administer tests. Yes, Indians administer tests to other Indians, almost like the ghost of the British Empire still runs Bharat.

Now, L&B are among the first organisations to arrive on most campuses, riding high on their supposed “good” reputation, and aiming to scoop up the best talent before other organisations. Several Indian engineering colleges also limit the number of times each person can attend these interviews, with only the very first round being open to everyone. As employment offers come in, the pool of available candidates dwindles, until the least employable are left.

L&B do not pay well. When you start, you make around ₹ 3,50,000 a year. This number has gone up slightly but it has not kept pace with inflation. Importantly, depending on where in Bharat you live, this could be borderline unliveable.

As luck would have it, I made it through the rounds of interviews and L&B offered me a job after I completed my degree. This was right as the 2008 financial crisis was kicking off. This was a full eighteen months before I was scheduled to complete my degree. Again, as luck would have it, L&B ran into hard times (supposedly) and decided to send my comrades and I a communiqué, saying that our job offers were cancelled. Tough luck for us but they wished us well so that fixes everything.

I hustled for a bit and found two jobs within weeks of graduating. One at a gas company called Mahanagar Gas and the other at a German company named Ziemens. I took the Ziemens offer but they had me managing the office infrastructure. I was printing labels for desks, asking people about printers and other such drivel that I considered beneath my skills as a person with four years of engineering studies behind him. Yes, I was quite arrogant although I have become humbler with time. Alas, I did not appreciate the work at Ziemens and when I heard through the grapevine that L&B were now recruiting fresh engineers again, yes, those very folks whose job offers were rescinded, I was elated. The call arrived and I told Ziemens to go manage their building without me.

I joined L&B a full three months after I completed my engineering degree. I was happy but this delay was just a taste of what was to come in the years ahead.

Gujariot

I was dispatched to work at L&B’s offices in Gujarat, an Indian state that was once the home of Gandhi but one that is now an alcohol free, xenophobic wasteland. I use none of those words lightly and many Gujaratis I met were (and likely remain) horrible people. In general, they hate Muslims, the state administration was involved in a pogrom against Muslims in 2002 and they are irrationally proud to eat meat-free food that is low in protein but high in fat and carbs. Let’s just say that not a single moment I spent in Gujarat was happy.

While we are bashing Gujarat, I will add one illustrative anecdote. The offices I worked at were called No Ledge City and this name could not be further from the truth. True knowledge would tell you that people are born equal, that discrimination is bad and that hating people solely because of their religion makes you a bad person. “No Ledge” City had no shortage of bad people. Upper caste Hindus dominated the office and Diwali was one popular festival. People would dress well and distribute sweets. The floor I worked on had three people who were not Hindus. One was Sikh, one was me and the third was named Arif. The Sikh was an honorary Hindu so that left two people – Arif and me. I was in the office for Diwali, Holi and one Gujarati festival involving sticks. All three times, the gaggle of smiling men distributing sweets skipped my desk. The first time, I assumed it was an oversight. The second time, I was suspicious, the third time I realised that only one other desk was passed by – Arif’s.

“Engineering”

L&B’s supposed engineering work consists largely of purchasing technology and equipment from foreign manufacturers and installing it in India. They are – fundamentally – glorified contractors that add very little engineering value. Several of their own manufactured products are poor imitations, which would be fine if this eventually led to incremental improvement and growing skills, a la the Japanese or Koreans. This being India, it rarely did. L&B’s primary competitive advantage is the low cost of Indian labour, which is how they are profitable. As you likely know, if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.

This is entirely consistent with Indian engineering standards that are generally low and which produce poor-quality results. L&B also suffers from the typical Indian infections of the caste system, spinelessness and blind deference to authority. My colleagues were mostly decent engineers but as soon as someone more senior walked by, they all lowered their voices. Whatever the boss said, was the literal truth, the sacred gospel that no one could question. It did not help that most bosses were rude, power-tripping maniacs with loud voices but few redeeming qualities.

Toxicity

One member of management, my boss two levels up, was this Bengali fellow, short and stout with a pot belly and glasses. He looked like Hanuman so that’s what everyone called him. He compensated for his diminutive stature by shouting. He had a loud voice, no doubt trained by years of yelling to get his way. The man literally yelled at people when they made mistakes. Now, everyone makes mistakes but no one deserves humiliation for an honest mistake. Hanuman disagreed and regularly yelled at his subordinates. People fell in line out of fear, not respect. This Bengali Hanuman certainly did nothing to deserve respect.

My job was mostly low-level work that no one else wanted to do, light on actual skill and impact. No one showed me how things worked but that is understandable. I learned through trial and error. One of my tasks was “expediting”. This is one of the most pointless tasks that anyone can have. It consists of looking over the shoulder of someone doing actual work, while adding no value to that work. It is essentially harassing people to do things. Now, why such a role exists at every Indian workplace is a conundrum I will leave to you to solve. The conclusion should tell you a lot about the general work culture of India and Indians.

Site

After about one year of “expediting”, I was told to relocate to one of the project sites in Andhra Pradesh, a gas power plant. This was an active construction site in the middle of nowhere with no large cities nearby. The closest city was Hyderabad, separated by an eight-hour train journey. I had no say in this decision and was told “this is what will happen, do it”. You should know that the gas “reserves” fuelling this power plant were entirely bogus and the plant sits idle in 2024. This location was where things got worse, fast.

My contract said that I must work eight hours a day, not counting a thirty-minute lunch break at noon. At L&B’s project sites, you are given a “site” allowance of around ₹ 1,500. My monthly salary at the time was around ₹ 27,000 in 2010 rupees. Here is the problem – at L&B’s project sites, you are expected to work from 08:00 – 19:00 – eleven hours, often in hazardous conditions with biological threats like mosquitoes. That transaction of ₹ 1,500 made you the company’s bitch. Indian labour laws are poorly enforced so there is no room for negotiation or for involving the authorities. Employees back in Gujarat got alternate Saturdays off. We had no such luck because – like I said – we were the company’s bitches. The shit cherry on top of this was the fact that many people willingly worked on Sundays. I played the religion card every Sunday and most Indians are too meek to question it. The insane part was that almost all of my colleagues saw this as normal – working seven days a week, without extra compensation. They literally devalued their already devalued work and worked additional hours for free. All for an organization that did not care about their well-being or health. This is why slave-drivers in the Middle East love Indians. We are – as a group – spineless and willing to bend over backwards for anyone with money. Some of this is born out of a culture steeped in poverty but the caste system also has a significant role.

Oh and, I must add, we had zero recreation facilities at our accommodations. Zilch. In fairness, my meals and accommodation were paid for but the standards were terrible. Meals were cooked by people who had no concept of hygiene. They cooked food on an unclean floor, in the open, left raw food exposed to flies and rarely washed utensils well. I was sick several times and no, despite what Indians tell you, no one develops “immunity” to faecal matter and filth. The accommodations were two people to a room, without air conditioning in the sweltering South Indian summer. Eventually, ACs were installed but only after much hand-wringing. Clearly, L&B really did believe that labour was cheap, plentiful and hence worthless. This justified mistreatment.

Racism

The gas turbines at this power plant were designed and made by Western firms who sent technicians to supervise the installation. Now, safe to say, very few people from the West genuinely enjoy the oppressive climate of India, especially when working with Indians in the middle of nowhere, in places with questionable hygiene and sanitation standards. The worst part in this was the clear and blatant racism. No, this was not a case of double standards. We, the Indian scum, did not deserve clean toilets. Our “office” was a hastily constructed, single storey building with a tin roof. Yes, it had air conditioning but for some reason, it was set to 18 Celsius. Eighteen degrees Celsius when the outside temperature was north of 35. Anyhow, the toilets had urinals but the commodes were unusable. The flushes did not work, there were no lights in the stalls and the darkness meant that mosquitos loved the stalls. Oh, there were no toilets for women because the entire staff on site were men. So much for equality and feminism when the patriarchy deems women “too sensitive” to endure the harsh environments on a construction site.

Yes, terrible toilets are what Indians deserve and here you see yet one more aspect of the caste system. No upper caste person would clean the toilets the Indians used. None. Not a single one of them. A group of lower caste folks arrived twice a month to clean the toilets. Otherwise, those toilets remained in a perpetually disgusting state.

Here’s the kicker – the white technicians received their own offices. Spotless, with locking doors and unrestricted internet access (we no access to the public internet), and clean toilets. Yes, the white man in India had his toilets cleaned daily by the upper caste folks. The very same folks who refused to clean the toilets used by the Indians. The Indians did not deserve clean food, clean toilets or privacy.

Eventually, I discovered that when our white masters were not at the project site, their offices were unlocked. No one dared enter but when you need to void your bowels, you will find a way. I was not prepared to do my business while mosquitoes drank my blood so I used the white man’s toilets. Proudly, I must add.

Chetan

At this particular L&B construction site, one of the employees was a sad, miserable, middle-aged man named Chetan. Everyone called him Chhota Chetan because he was a short Gujarati man. He was not directly involved in my work but on a few occasions, he depended on me to get his work going. One example was the electrical systems in the water treatment part of the power plant’s water supply system. The man regularly raised his voice and believed that he who was loudest was rightest. I disagreed and regularly told him to go speak to my boss instead of approaching me directly. He hated my guts and the fact that I treated him like a regular person, not royalty. I did not respect him, I did not stand every time he called my name and I replied in English when he spoke Hindi. I looked him in the eye when he spoke to me. Everyone else stared at their feet, likely in fear. He soon realised that he had no power over me. There are many Chetans at L&B. I wish them painful deaths and poorly attended funerals.

Safety?

Aside from the racism and the Indian cultural problems was the lackadaisical attitude to safety. L&B take great pride in their “safety culture”, splashing it on several adverts. What it actually is, is a culture of hiding problems until someone dies or is hurt, at which point, they pretend that the problem was a lack of training.

I was put in charge of the power plant’s battery system that used valve-regulated lead acid batteries, batteries with sulphuric acid as the electrolyte. Time “pressures” meant that the first battery charging cycle was done with an incomplete set of safety equipment. The technicians (Indians, of course) were given two pairs of gloves and were told to share. Two pairs among four people. The gloves eventually dissolved in the sulphuric acid. Making matters worse, filling the acid electrolyte involved lifting the 40 litre buckets about one meter off the floor and pouring the acid into a funnel. Of course, some spilled and the two technicians had only one apron between them. Electrolyte landed on their clothes and skin. Clearly, safety was only an illusion.

During the first battery charging cycle, lead acid batteries are usually charged for an extended period, around eight or twelve hours. This is also the point where the electrolyte reacts with the electrodes for the first time, creating a voltage and hydrogen sulphide gas, among other gases. When you have over one hundred cells in a room, all gassing simultaneously, that gas fills the room. It did not help that this room had four walls, and no windows. It was in the inside of the plant building – remember, this was an active construction site. The room’s ventilation fans were not yet installed and we used dinky domestic fans as a stop-gap. This is equivalent to using a ceiling fan instead of an aviation propeller. The hydrogen sulphide filled the room. We were required to regularly measure the specific gravity of the electrolyte during this time, while the batteries were charging. Our lung protection equipment? A rag wrapped around our nostrils. The “Safety officer” did not have the budget to purchase actual safety equipment, and worse, the man had no idea what equipment we needed in the first place.

I spent most of my time outside the H2S-filled room, but the technicians? Their lungs were worth less than mine.

Safety at L&B is a cruel joke, one that would be funny if it were not innocent, ignorant and poor people in harm’s way. The safety person on site was there solely to claim compliance with some standard. I saw welding happening with zero safety equipment in reach. Worse, I also saw welding happening in closed rooms with poor or zero ventilation and people climbing tens of meters vertically with frayed safety harnesses.

As far as general engineering work went, things were bad. Once again, because of time “pressures”, sensitive equipment was delivered to the construction site quickly and then stored outside, uncovered and exposed to the elements. Instead of proper planning, everything had to be delivered quickly and haphazardly, without thought or consideration. Worse was that the person involved in procurement had no idea how long something took to manufacture or what the storage requirements were. That was someone else’s problem to consider and yet another person’s to fix.

The quality of engineering work was also suspect. I regularly saw instances of designs proceeding with mostly incomplete information. Yes, some degree of assumptions are part of all engineering design but you simply cannot manufacture equipment without knowing what connects to it or what it connects to. This is less of an issue when labour is cheap as the cost to fix design problems is lower but that doesn’t solve the original problem itself – poor planning leading to poor engineering design.

People power

Regionalism was another problem. A Bengali boss had a favourite employee who just happened to be Bengali. Same with the Gujaratis. This was out in the open and people just accepted it. We are like that only, as they say in Bharat.

Finally, HR, or human resources. I always found this name problematic because humans are complex, multi-dimensional creatures who contain multitudes. We are not resources like steel or copper. Anyhow, HR at L&B was largely powerless. The man at the construction site had no power to do anything to improve our conditions and hated me in particular. At the time, I did not have age or wisdom on my side so I regularly asked the man to just do his job. In true Indian fashion, he kept trying to deflect and when I pointed out that certain things were literally his job, he scowled.

General training is an important part of anyone’s working life. An entire system existed for this but no one used it. Speculation, but this likely was because management viewed soft skills as unimportant, compared to engineering knowledge. This was likely why almost everyone in management was toxic. This was made worse through the use of “bonds”. Every time the company invested more than one rupee in you, they expected unquestioned loyalty for a certain period. You should know that bonds are legal in India, and employers use this as a threat combined with a bargaining chip. Note that no employer can seize your property in exchange for a bond. They cannot hold on to your education certificates and cannot enforce the full bond amount right from the start. L&B rely on you not knowing your rights, plus the knowledge that the Indian legal system is a hot mess to coerce you into hanging around in a toxic work environment. The key piece of information you should know is that the worst that a company like L&B can do is not give you a certificate of employment when you leave. They don’t do anything innovative anyway so there is very little to lose. In any case, you have power, despite what they tell you.

At the end here, what should you know? L&B is a bad place to work. Period. If you have some dignity and the privilege to not fall into poverty, don’t join. If you do, work on your exit plan from day one. As one data point, seventeen people joined at the same time as I did. I was number fourteen to leave and this was in just over two years. Think about that – in around 25 months, eighty percent of people who started with me quit. We even had a running joke about wickets falling. Consider this also – other engineering companies in India are worse. If you work in IT or are generally in an office, consider yourself lucky.

When I left, I was asked during a group meeting whether I intended to return. I said no and everyone around me was visibly stunned.