Life in TCS (Tata Consultancy Services)
We face unexpected incidents…Bad things happen during some phase of our life. But in my case it happened at the perfect time!
I was fed up, infect depressed with the way things worked in my firm. For example, if I write a mail to someone in other department, he will never respond until I call him or write a mail to his manager.
Try talking to the HR and she will treat you like you are the most useless person on earth. Ask your manager what task you are supposed to finish and he will ask you to wait. After a week, suddenly, he will start shouting at you. Why? Because, I am not proactive and don’t take initiative.
And if that’s not enough of insult, one fine day I would be told that I am transferred to another location for no justifiable reason. Once I join the company at that location but before I settle down, I am asked to move to another…Why? Business Requirement…..Anything that can’t be explained will be summarized in two simple words –‘Business Requirement’
And unfortunately, I have to listen to everything and do what I was told to do. You know why? Because out in the market there are million of people looking for a job and anyone among them can replace me. I know very well that there’s ample of talent out in the market to replace me. The company can slap two months of notice period anytime on my face. And mind you, only ethical companies give you 2 months notice period, others just a single day.
One Question before going further….Can anyone explain me the meaning of loyalty to a company? Shouldn’t there be a level playing field. Shouldn’t a company be loyal to its employees before asking loyalty from them?
Well…enough I think. Things are not so bad always. I mean, when business is good, things will look cool. The HR guys will be so polite; they will talk about employee benefits and employee morals. And any fault of yours will be overlooked because you are making money for the company……in corporate terms it means you are productive. As long as you are productive, no questions will be raised …whatsoever.
But when recession is prevalent, you will find your manager saying you are very slow… that you don’t know how to handle tasks given to you and the same HR who was talking about employee benefits and morals will be handing you your termination letter.
Well, it’s the glimpse of corporate world…It’s a machine and some one runs it from the top. You keep dancing for your manager. But it’s not something that should let you down….you know why….because your manager also dances from the whims and fancies of his manager and this cycle continues.
Anyways, coming to the point, I wanted to move to organization (I guess, I was searching for the ideal one) where people are honest, treat their colleagues fairly, where transparency prevails and where you are given work appropriate to your skill set. After trying a lot, I landed in a firm that was giving me the kind of work I wanted to do and a stable location. I was quite happy and thought that this might be the last days of torture. I resigned from TCS.
I took a month off before joining new firm to enjoy at home. It was a nice time, bad days were over, I thought. Home was cool, I had lot of fun and I was excited about joining new firm.
The month passed by quite fast and I landed Bangalore a day before joining. I reached my friends home and got a call from my new firm. You know what was it about? It was about their inability to honor their offer letter. I was shocked and the guy other side continued – you know we are sorry about it but due to recessionary trends and financial problems in our firm we can’t honor the offer letter.
Now, if you ask me about the reputation of the firm, it was $6 Billion strong company, supposed to be very ethical and with high moral standards. And so was my last firm. But when these MNC’s can’t make money they kick your butts.
By the way, people don’t believe my case. Some say, why did you left your last firm, it was such a good firm? Some say it was recessionary period; it was a wrong time to switch. Some say why you don’t try back in your last firm. And I feel myself like a biggest idiot on the earth.
One, people don’t want to take risks, two they don’t like anybody taking risk and three they try to make themselves happy with what they have and don’t try for something better.
By the way, while I started job hunt again, I found that the job market is quite inefficient, at least in India. There are employers looking for skilled people but always find it difficult to find the right resource. Similarly, there are people looking for specific job opportunities but rarely find the right employer. On an average, it takes around 6 months to find a right job.
Lastly, I want to appraise you about the company that rolled back the offer letter one day before joining. I hope it will help you and your close one’s to maintain distance from this firm. This was Affiliated Computer Services (ACS), a US based MNC with $6 billion revenues.
Hope you never have advised anyone to work in this firm
By the way, I started getting mails about job opportuities from my friends after posting this Article. I would like readers to know that I have found one…Of cpurse with the help of close friends.
Leadership Lessons from CHAK DE INDIA
It was few days back that I had a chance to watch CHAK DE INDIA for the second time.
For those who don’t know about this movie, this is one of the few good movies from our beloved Shah Rukh Khan.
I am quite impressed with this movie and it is one among the few movies of substance from Shah Rukh Khan. What exactly I mean, I will tell you later.
Anyways, so the story starts with the Indian Hockey Caption being harassed by his country fellows for his inability to hit a goal in Penalty Stroke in the world cup final against Pakistan. Unfortunately, the caption belonged to minority Muslims. Feeling insulted and dejected, the caption leaves home and disappears in the search of peace.
He appears again after many years with a motive, a desire to show his country that he is as patriotic as anybody else for his country. He takes the task of Coaching Indian Women’s Hockey Team with a mandate of bagging Gold in the Olympics.
Shah Rukh’s role of coach in the movie was center point of attraction. He played the role so brilliantly that it made the entire movie enthralling and captivating. As a coach he knew his responsibility was not only teaching the hockey players but also to gel them together as a team. Irrespective of best individual players in the team, the team can never win till the players play together with a common motive, and nobody understands it better than a coach.
As shown in the movie, the players were from diverse background with personal motives. All of them wanted to perform the best in the world cup hockey tournament but none of them was ready to compromise with their ego and personal objectives for the team to succeed.
Each of the two front attackers wanted to make most of the goals. They will never pass the ball to one another. The most senior player in the team wanted to play the game like one man army with complete autonomy. There was no leader in the team who could lead the team in the right direction. The team was lacking a mentor and the coach filled this gap.
During this enduring journey the coach faced significant hurdles. However, having learned lessons during his last world cup defeat, the coach had turned quite stoic and knew how to tackle those issues. He fought with the Executive panel for sponsoring girls hockey team to Olympics. The panel had headstrong people with opinion that girls are born to cook food at home and that’s the best girls can do. In another incident, the coach has to make whole team his enemy to unite them; this episode went to the extent that at one point the team decided to replace the coach.
I was completed enthralled with the direction of the movie. The director has done a great job in shaping the movie. This movie teaches excellent lesson on leadership qualities. And that’s why I say that the movie has substance unlike most of the movies of Shah Rukh where he do some funky stuff and moves along (Like Om Shanti Om and Don)
Life in London
It was start of August 2008 when I traveled for a project in London. This assignment came after a lot of uncertainty. I was interviewed by many clients and was waiting for a response. As a powerless employee of a powerful organization, I had no right to ask any questions. (Everything, you know, depends on business requirements!)
Anyways, I landed in London and looked forward towards a wonderful experience. This was the first time I ever moved out of India and I thought it would be an exciting time. My first impression about London was quite good. Although the city was quite expensive, everything seemed to be properly planned and managed in the city. Traffic Rules were quite stringent and 24 hours CCTV cameras were put all over the city for surveillance. It was difficult to spot any beggar.
London inhabitants are very courteous and understanding. Government regulations are enforced quite strictly and unlike in India, Police commands respect in public. Public facilities like healthcare are available to every one and if insured, you pay almost nothing for medical treatment. Almost all kids go in public schools managed by government free of cost. London is connected through underground Metro covering almost every part of London. This is the best mode of transport in London (although not the cheapest one).
What you miss in London is friendly culture that you enjoy at any roadside tea shop in India. People (though respectful) are quite discreet and formal.
But above all, my experience in London helped me in understanding that things that look rosy from far may be quite disdainful when you come close to them. London was not that exciting as I had thought, it proved not so good place for me. Personally, I faced cultural shock and professionally, I found annoying and disturbing characters.
The environment in London office was not so good. I found too much of politics, beurocracy and lack of transparency in office. I found myself stuffed with workload and often I had to stay 12 hours in office.
Second, services in London were quite unaffordable. I had to slog everyday from morning till night. I had to make breakfast, wash my clothes and clean my room. In short, I had to leave my royal lifestyle in India and live a penurious life in London.
I realized that a software engineer working in India can have lavish life style compared to his counter part in US or UK. Services are quite cheap in India compared to developed countries. The most prominent reason for cheap services in India is the excess of labor available due to 1.2 billion strong population.
Another bad experience, I had to change my home many times in London. During my stay of 5 months in London, I changed my home 3 times. It was either because I didn’t find a decent roommate or a good house owner or a right place to stay.
I met a guy in London in his late 50’s, from India. He was quite disappointed with the prevalent culture in London. According to him kids in London don’t respect their parents; girls live with guys prior to marriage and family is not given enough importance. He said that this culture is not good and our country is much better place. We respect and obey our parents and quite strong culturally.
I thought that the guy was missing many positive aspects. Whereas in India, we struggle for availing any public service, in developed world public services are efficient and predictable. The trust in the government and society in these countries is so strong that people are quite confident and sure that as long as they are right nothing wrong will happen to them. That’s the driving force behind optimism prevalent in their system.
This is strikingly different from India where you know that if something is stolen from your house, you may get it back only if you pay bribe to the cops. You know, that if you want to get justice, you need to know powerful person (MLA, MP, IAS etc). You know that if you are poor and get sick, you will not find any public health care facility.
The scarcity of labor in developed countries ensures that the labor is paid well despite lower skill sets. Due to this, financial disparity is minimal in developed countries and every one is respected for what they do unlike in India where labor lacks respect and lives below the poverty line.
Is the financial disparity and disrespect only because of excess labor? No… The difference in the quality of life of a common man in a developed country vis a vis India is the proactive and responsible government’s managing the developed countries. Corruption level in these countries is way below in India and the Taxpayers money does come back for the upliftment of the society.
Lastly, my stay in London helped me in understanding business of IT services Industry and the outsourcing model prevalent in Indian software services space. I think it would have taken me much more time in practically understanding the nuances of Indian IT Industry while working from offshore.
Power and Fairness
The circumstances that I faced during the last year were quite adverse. Events during this time triggered me to write this post on Power and Fairness. Everything turned opposite to my anticipation and for the first time I felt so powerless and vulnerable.
Though the experiences was quite painful, while facing the odds I learned very important lessons and I think it will be better to write them down before I forget them.
Here are they:
1) If you don’t have Power, Don’t expect that you will always be treated fairly.
2) During your bad time, only your true friends will support you and will help you in gaining back your lost confidence.
3) Irrespective of how atheist you are, you will start believing in God because when nothing works your way, you need Hope…..and God has to exist to remain hopeful.
Professionally, after facing various odds, I feel that one should have enough skills and competencies to stay in demand in market rather than staying on the mercy of a company. Until one is confident enough that if he leaves his present job today, he will have better offers the next day, he won’t feel secure.
Anyways, we all think that for equality to exist, fairness should prevail. But we also know that irrespective of how fair a system is perceived, it is always twisted by power and political relations to some extent.
Does it mean that to ensure fair treatment, you should possess power or liaison with a powerful person? To some extent, Yes, first because as I said, without power you can’t ensure fair treatment and second, without power you can’t be successful in making the system fair even if you want to.
As an individual, you may strive to make the system fair (for example – the role played by Ajay Devgan in GangaJal) or try to gain power in prevailing system (for example the role played by Ajay Devgan in Apharan) or wait for the right time to destory the unfair system (for example the role played by Tim Robbins in Shawshank Redemption) or lastly, disassociate with the unfair system.
Irrespective of which path a person chooses, he feels most secure when he commands power because with power he is sure that things will work the way he wants.
Only those with power and political connection rise in a society where raw power prevails and fairness is extinct. At such places, the poor remains poor and the rich become richer. Corruption is prevalent and the more one is corrupt, the more he rises. Education remains the right of selective few. Why is it like this in an unfair society? It is because with less educated and very poor people, powerholder can continue suppressing others and remain powerful.
I think that world can be a fair place if the Power holders can understand the popular adage “With Great Power come Great responsibilities” and act accordingly.
Before Closing, I will recommend a book “48 laws of power” which is about behavior one should possess to exude power in his surrounding environment. This book might be termed as Cunning and Deceptive by some but I think, that this book reflects truth in the world we live.
Yoga – my discovery and few facts!
I was new to Mumbai and I was looking desperately for a place to start daily jogging (Think of searching a place to run where you can’t find place to walk!). By the way, I call it “Daily jogging” but I seldom jog daily. Anyhow, I found a garden suitable for morning jog where I also found a instructor teaching Yoga to his disciples.
I had listened of YOGA and about our beloved Guru – Baba Ramdev and also about the healing power of yoga but I never thought of trying it. Fortunately, as walked around the garden, I was enamored with the different Yoga postures taught by the Instructor and the demanding positions of different Asanas. I was not sure if I could do it, but I thought to try my hands.
And that’s how I started practicing Yoga. I attended just 5 classes from the instructor before I was transferred to Bangalore. Those few yoga sessions were great learning experience for me. I was now convinced about the greatness of age old art of YOGA. It does refreshes ones mind and heals physical ailments, if any. But I also understood that YOGA is demanding too. One should have patience and commitment towards Yoga for achieving desired results .
By the way, I came to Bangalore and decided to continue Yoga Training. I attended another instructor for Yoga Classes. This instructor was not as great as my last one. In fact, he was sapping my desire to learn yoga. So, I soon stopped attending his sessions. Moral of the story – Do good research about the best Yoga Instructor in your area before attending one otherwise it will be difficult to learn and appreciate Yoga.
Secondly, whenever you come across a good Yoga Center, do rate it in different yoga forums so that people can take informed decisions. Presently (July 2008 ) i am attending following Yoga classes and I found it one of the best .
Yoga Vedanta Center,
79, 4th Cross, 4th Block, 16th Main Road , Koramangala , Bangalore- 560034
Ph : 080 25634991 | 9886683195
Website : www.sivananda.org
Try it out if you are looking for a good Yoga Tutor
Happy Yoga!
