360 Shenanigans

At first, the idea of a 360-degree evaluation seemed like the best thing in the world, when compared to the top-down boss-reportee evaluation. It is indeed better than a single track top-down feedback. But a 360-degree evaluation is not easy to administer. The reality is that, most people are not trained to give feedback. Even if trained, most people lack the maturity and perception to give good useful feedback. So, the evaluation for the entire year or half-year, could hinge on the most recent experience or the single worst experience during the evaluation period. The usefulness of the 360-degree evaluation is lost.

A 360-degree evaluation can also be a two-way feedback. It not only says something to the person being evaluated, it also says something to his/her supervisor/boss. It not only reveals something about the person being evaluated, it also reveals something about the people who are evaluating and the system in which they all function. If the ratings for the same person, on the same criteria, given by different people range all the way from 1 to 10 (on a 10-point scale), while touching almost every score-level in-between, what is going on? If two evaluators, give diametrically opposite scores and feedback, for the same person, on the same criteria, what does that mean?

Mediocre = Happy & Content

Humans are extremely social beings. What this means is that those who are closer to the average in smarts, skills, sensitivity are the ones with the highest chances for happiness and contentment in the socialized human life. Success and popularity is pretty much assured if you are slightly better than average. Not too much better. Just enough that you can do better than most average people and the average people can recognize that you are better than them.

If you are too far above the average, your efforts will be sabotaged by a system which tends to favor the average, and your effectiveness will be cramped by the average people who can't find resonance with you. If you are too far above average, you will not be appreciated or recognized simply because your efforts and ideas are beyond the comprehension, understanding and acceptance of the average majority. If you are too far above average, prepare to live a life of compromise (settling for less than best), frustration and daily defeats while you try hard to explain, convince and work with mediocre colleagues, bosses, friends, relatives and acquaintances, stuck in teams and social situations full of average pedestrians. And in the case of really unlucky geniuses - stuck for life with mediocre partners.

There are only a lucky few geniuses who -

• possess the skills to beat the system which is stacked in favor of mediocrity and/or
• whose success is so great that the world simply can't ignore them and/or
• who manage to end up in places where they are surrounded by others of equal or greater evolution and/or
• whose work and interests don't need much social interaction and recognition.

Even these lucky people may not avoid the daily compromises, frustration and defeats.

There must be a large number of 85-to-95 percentile people, who go through life frustrated and less than happy, being forced to live and work with the vast, oppressing majority of 45-to-75 percentile people. And the 76-to-84 percentile people? They are the lucky 'slightly above average' types who have a high chance for success and popularity, happiness and contentment.

21 Tips to my 21-year-old Self

I will be 31 very soon. If I could go back 10 years and meet my 21-year-old self, what advice would I impart to him based on the past 10 years of my life? The following for sure:

1. True love is built over a period of time, by two people who reciprocate the feelings and share many experiences together, both good and bad. That kind of relationship is worth your heart-break and heart-ache, if it does not eventually work out. A relationship in which you are the only person who is in love, while the other person does not reciprocate similar feelings, is not love in its true, real sense. It is just infatuation. Even if your feelings are extremely intense, sincere and earnest, it is still just infatuation. It is okay to feel a little disappointed and sad if such a one-way infatuation does not pan out, but it is certainly not worth your heart-break and heart-ache.


2. Even if the person reciprocates your feelings of sincere infatuation and affection, in their own way, but the two of you don't actually have a relationship, don't even call each other lovers or partners, don't spend time together, sharing the good things and the bad things which life has to offer, then it is not a true love relationship. It is just a two-way infatuation. If this does not turn into a true relationship, there is still no need to go through overwhelming heart-ache and heart-break. A little more disappointment and sadness is alright.


3. Never take more than three steps closer to someone you are interested in, without them reciprocating. In fact, the ideal situation is where both of you simultaneously, or at least alternatively, move closer towards each other taking one equal step at a time. But life is rarely ideal. You being a man, there will be many occasions when you have to take a few more steps closer to a woman, before she will take one step closer to you. Never let these 'few more steps' exceed three steps at any point of time. This is especially important at the beginning of the relationship when you barely know the woman. Don't throw yourself at her and pursue her unless she shows suitable interest and reciprocation. Of course, later on, when the loving partnership is steadily and firmly established, throw these calculations out the window and be totally generous and uncalculative with your beloved.


4. Women who don't express an interest in you during those first three steps, will almost never become interested in you later on. There seems to be an antenna in men and women, especially so in women, which subconsciously tells them very early on, whether they might pursue a relationship with someone. So, don't spend a lot of time and energy taking more than three steps towards someone who does not want to take even one step towards you. Don't think that you will not find love unless you work hard and take a lot of steps towards a lot of women. You don't need to. Repeat: YOU DON'T NEED TO.


5. You will come across women who will admire you and love you, simply for who you are, just for the way you normally live, talk and behave. With the woman who is right for you, you don't have to do anything different or extra, or put in a lot of hardwork and pain to make things work. Things will just work out naturally. All that you need to do is be yourself. Being yourself should include being sincere, being truthful, being clean and nice.


6. When a woman is interested in you, she will let you know. If she admires you or loves you, you will know. If she wants a relationship with you, that will become obvious to you soon enough. So, never ever deceive yourself with thoughts such as: "May be she will become interested in me, if I do this or that"; "May be she is interested in me, but just does not realize it herself"; "May be she wants me, but is simply not showing it"; "May be if I can convince her or just work a little harder, I can win her over"; etc.


7. You are smart, handsome, loving and love-able. There will be many women who think so. Even if you don't hear it from them aloud, you are all those things. So, don't pursue women, desperately seeking your own self-validation. Don't think that you are not handsome or love-able, just because someone you are infatuated with does not reciprocate your feelings. Don't think you are not all these things just because you don't have a girlfriend or a partner yet. There will be women who think you are all these and more, and who will love you for who you are. And, insha-allah, you will have that partner, who is right and perfect for you, who will admire and deserve all your good qualities, and will let you know that in no uncertain terms.


8. Value yourself, your personality, your feelings, your talents, your body. Do not throw them without restraint at every potential love interest. Remember that at the wooing stage, the more easily something is available, the less its perceived value is. By offering things to those who may not want it or seek it on their own, you are only devaluing those things. Don't spend a lot of time, energy and feelings in relationships which don't go anywhere either, or with people who you know will never be your long-term permanent lover-partner. In fact, don't spend any time or energy doing 'romantic' things with such people. Doing this also means de-valuing yourself. It is like throwing your highly valuable personal love into the trash can. You are wasting and throwing away something which actually belongs to your true love. Protect yourself, your time, your feelings, your energy. Keep them safe for the true love who will come into your life. Guard these things jealously for her.


9. Protect your virginity for your true love. It is okay to have pre-marital monogamous sex with your lover-partner, the person with whom you have a true, full-fledged (meaning steady and long-term sharing of life), loving relationship. It is definitely not okay with anybody else. Casual sex might be okay in theory, it might be okay for others. But it is not okay for you. It is an unclean and unhealthy food which won't suit your system nor your long-term health. Worse, it is addictive food; it will weaken your soul, and will cause considerable pain and drain on your emotions like all addictions. Just don't do it, regardless of the opportunities and temptations. You will regret if you do it. You will wish that you could go back in time and re-live your life, without letting yourself get into casual sex. Protect yourself.


10. Just as you have a responsibility to protect yourself, you also have a responsibility to protect other people whose paths will cross yours. Just as you might have weak moments in love and passion, they will too. Just as you will feel hurt and regret when things don't work out, they will too. Protect these nice people who come into your life, whose only mistake (if it can be called that) is to love you, admire you and care for you. Protect them from the hurt that you will cause them or they will cause to themselves. Be especially wary of hurting these nice people in the long-term, while you try to avoid short-term hurt. This is a trap you will fall into repeatedly because you want to be nice to these nice people. Nice is okay. But, be totally honest, open and truthful with them, even if hurts them (and you) in the short term. They will be protected in the long-term. They will admire you for your courage and integrity, if you do that.


11. This needs repeating again: You don't need to do anything to find true love. Just be yourself. Be nice, be clean and truthful, be sincere, be healthy, and above all, be happy and patient. Take all that time and energy you will put into romance and love, and put it into your career, education, hobbies and other interests, into social activities, into smiling. True love will find its way to you on its own. You don't need to do anything else.


12. After that typical Libran Lover brand long lecture about love and romance, let's turn to your career. You will get into a software job. That means, you will have opportunities to go abroad. That means, you need a passport. For god's sake go get it done AT ONCE. Don't be the fool who runs from once government office to another, dragging your father and uncle with you, when opportunity comes knocking and you need a passport in a hurry. Just get it done IMMEDIATELY.


13. The very first time you come to the US, you will want to stay here long-term. Only you won't define what long-term is. You will have some vague notion in your head of long-term being "at least two years or more". Well, guess what, you are going to end up staying here for well over six years. Incredibly, you will spend almost 5 of those years, without actually taking any concrete steps to build the right foundation for a career and for visa/greencard processing, which will both help you stay here for the long term! You will just spend those 5 years with your head buried in the sand of a dead-end job. It will be FIVE long years of no pay increments, while the company's stupid policies will bring in new, junior people who will work under you for higher pay, and the prospect of your work visa expiring at the end of 6 years, which will finally get your ass moving. Do yourself a favor, and start doing something at least at the end of your second year in the US.


14. It won't help your career to be a jack of all trades, and master of none. You will spend much of your career in roles which will give you good exposure to a lot of different things, but just not enough mastery or authority on any one thing. It is an undeniable reality in life that great performers even if it is in lesser jobs get more recognition and satisfaction, than average performers in bigger jobs. The best way to grow in a career is to consistently be a great performer, going from smaller to bigger roles.


15. If you want something in your career, just go get it. This is the exact opposite of the love advice, where you just have to be yourself and love will come to you. In the realm of the career, waiting for things to come to you, or for the company or your boss to give you what you want, will never work. You just have to get it yourself... even if it means quitting the job and getting a different one. Just be clear about what it is exactly that you want, then go get it.


16. Never spend more than 1 hour at work, browsing the Internet for news and technological developments. Make every one of the other 7 hours count for productive work or directly work-related knowledge gain.


17. Don't buy that house in early 2006. Wait until late 2007, when the real estate market in the US is even more in the doldrums, and it becomes a buyer's market with a lot more inventory waiting to be sold. And, don't buy the house until you can make 20% down payment. 10% is just not good enough.


18. Get all the features you want the house to have, right when you buy it. Don't let others talk you into thinking that you can add extra features (like tiled floor rather than the carpet) later on. The "later on" might never come.


19. Buy real tangible gifts for your parents and other family members. Avoid giving them money to buy what they want. They usually won't buy anything. One fine day, you will realize that you have been working for 10 years and not bought a single real gift to your parents, despite sending money for birthdays and such!


20. Don't stop hiking when your regular hiking partners stop. You will find that a year or more has passed by without you hiking a single time, and you are out of shape! Shameful. Get out and hike by yourself, or find new hiking friends and groups. There are plenty out there.


21. Smile more. Don't be lost in your own world when people are around you. Take more interest in them, socialize more.

Rare Display

Today, I had a rare display of strong emotion at work. That is so unlike the cool, calm, unflappable me. I was so angry I kicked my desk drawers and dustbin several times. Nobody noticed. But one of my coworkers heard the commotion. I am feeling a little silly and immature about it now. But at that time, I was boiling and seething. If an enemy had shown up and irritated me at that moment, I would have picked him up and broken him in two.

What happened was that, a support guy came to my desk to help fix a minor issue with my laptop... more specifically, my Windows profile In the process, he did not fix the issue, but ended up deleting my Windows profile... essentially wiping out all the custom settings, bookmarks and shortcuts I had on my machine. Most importantly, he deleted a file which contained important information for my new home mortgage loan application process and appointment. After he was done deleting, I was left with nothing. Not even the phone number of the loan officer I was supposed to meet tomorrow. Fortunately, I was able to Google and then make 2-3 phone calls before I was transferred to the loan officer, who re-sent most of the information to me.

Right now, it looks like all that volcanic emotion was unnecessary. But at that time in the morning, I was feeling very edgy. Two reasons for that:

1. Like most IT people who have great confidence in the simple steps of computer operation, the support guy at my desk did not take one or two simple precautions which could have saved my data. I am actually lucky that he did not end up deleting some really critical, unrecoverable data.


2. At that point of time, I had lost important information about my mortgage loan appointment. I did not know how easy or quick it was going to be to get it again. It was the busy time of the day for me at work. I also wanted to call my real estate agent ASAP and share the information with him. And I knew that I'd feel like a fool to call the loan officer and ask her to repeat all the information she had given me less than one hour back (this is what I had to do finally).


3. The more important reason for my anger is that what happened today is part of a bigger problem. My new employer's IS systems and processes have fumbled and botched at every step in converting me from a contractor to a full time employee. The bungling has been unbelievable and indicative of very immature processes. Things are not only botched, they are done at a really slow pace.

I was really tempted to shoot off an angry mail to the support guy's supervisor. I am glad that I didn't. I would have regretted that even more than I regret the kicking of my desk and dustbin. Yes, the guy made a silly error. But that's no big deal. He has already learnt his lesson. However, I definitely need to give feedback about the overall lack of process maturity. Meanwhile, I hope to god there are no more emotional outbursts at work!

Update on April 2nd, 2006: Last Monday, we had a staff meeting with the VP who asked us to send him an email about one major bottle-neck we have seen at the workplace. I emailed him about the issues with IS Support. Meanwhile, the deletion of my profile screwed up something which is preventing me from using some of my applications. I have reported it to IS Support. They are yet to fix it for me!

Assign, don't ask

Learnt a small lesson in management today: At times it may be better to just assign tasks to individuals and not ask them.

We have two main developers who have been working closely together on all of the programming for the project. We were reviewing the project implementation plan today with the objective of assigning specific tasks to specific individuals.

Everytime we came to a task that a developer needed to do, I'd ask who wants to do it and I got the answer, "Put both our names, one of us will do it." The developers were simply not able to decide who wants to do what. I wanted to put a specific name against each task so that there are no confusions during the implementation and no task is missed. It would also be good for later accountability if any questions or issues came up, to know exactly who did what.

Since I did not assign the tasks myself, at the end of the meeting, I found that most of the tasks for the developers ended up with both their names, leaving room for ambiguity as to who would do what.

Workplace Name Calling

In the old days (before I was born?) the respectful way to address superiors and co-workers was to use their last name. This started to change in the late 80s and 90s, especially in the technology industry, with everybody, at all levels in the organization addressing each other by first names. This change happened well before I started my career. So, I have always addressed coworkers and superiors by their first names.

Today I realized just how much this practice has become ingrained in us: I noticed an email I had sent yesterday to my boss's boss, which started by addressing him by his last name. I have spent all morning wondering if that mail sounds disrespectful and if I should send out a clarification.

I was surprised to discover what I had done and am still not able to understand how/why I did it. It was most probably because our email system displays people's last names first, and I had just entered his last name in the address field of the email. So, his last name was stuck on my mind when I began the body of the email.

I thought it was funny that today I am feeling awkward over something which would have been the norm only a couple of decades ago - to address a superior at the work place by his last name. I think I will just let this pass and won't send any clarifications.

Good mentor and a good team

A good mentor and a good team are two invaluable things to have at the work place.

Today, we had the project status review with managers, leads and our project team, for the project I have been leading since July last year. We have completed the system testing. We will complete regression test by the end of March and then implement.

I was quite happy with how the review went. A few people came upto me after the review and expressed their appreciation. That made me happier.

A large part of the credit goes to KathyG, my mentor, and the rest of the team. I just kept it all together and on track. KathyG, was the project manager who did the initial project plan, estimation and kick-off. She then guided us at some important stages in the project. That set a great foundation for the rest of the work which followed. The team is experienced and mature, and most of the time they only need to be told what to do and when. They figure out the best way to do it on their own.

It is indeed highly helpful to have a good mentor and a good team at work. I hope I will always have those two through my career.

Last day with my first company

Today is my last day with the first company for whom I started working full-time in my life: W Technologies (referred to henceforth as W). Being in the young Indian IT industry, when I started with them on 12th August 1997, I never thought I would stay with them for eight-and-half years! Makes me nostalgic.

• We were studying at home for the final exams of my bachelor's degree course when one of my friends came home and mentioned the newspaper ad for a training program through which W accepted B.Sc. degree holders as 3-year trainees, after which they became employees. If my friend did not happen to mention that ad, I might not have joined W! Interestingly, three years previously, when I was joining my college for the B.Sc. degree course, a lecturer in the Electronics department told me that if I joined the Electronics or Computer Science courses and scored well, W had a program through which they would take me as a trainee. I did not heed the lecturer's words and joined the Physics, Chemistry, Math (PCM) course, simply because the Electronics or Computer Science courses were relatively more expensive. I thought I would do an MCA (Master of Computer Applications) after my B.Sc. Thankfully, during those days, W took non-Electronics and non-Computer Science graduates for its training program, as long as Math was one of the subjects. It no longer does that.



• When I joined W, there were less than 5000 people in the company. Now, there are over 40,000 people. It has been an exponential growth.



• During those days, W was so small that everybody in the company and their families could get together in one place (Bangalore Palace Grounds) for a celebration.



• During those days, everytime someone completed 5 years in the company, an email about them would go out to the entire company. The email would congratulate them and briefly describe their career. Invariably, almost all of them would be at project management or higher level! One of my colleagues used to say that after 5 years in W, even a dog would become the project manager! These days, 5-years-in-W emails are sent only to the vertical/horizontal to which an employee belongs. One rarely comes across a project manager among them. Most such people are at the team lead level, usually onsite.



• I came to the US in Oct 2001. After that, I never worked for W at the offshore center in India. At that time, Electronics City office of W was not as big as it is today. I have never worked in that office. When I visited there in recent years, I felt quite lost with so many strange faces. I have been away in the US for so long and so much has changed in those years that, I am quite alien to the current workplace culture of W.



• I am relatively happy with my career in W. Every assignment I have had has always been better than the previous one.



• Strangely, I have had a good or great relationship with almost none of the supervisors to whom I directly reported in W! The relationships could at best be described as neutral. The only exception to this is Mala, with whom I had a good relationship.



• It is quite true that employees are loyal or not loyal more towards their managers than towards their companies. This is the main reason for me to quit W. Of course, there are some policies and processes in the company which allowed me to be treated unfairly, but I think a fair and mature manager would have easily neutralized those policy- and process-gaps. In my case, the manager did not do it despite my explicit feedback. In fact, he actively piled onto the unfairness.



• In contrast to my W managers, I have had great success with managers in the client companies, for whom I worked through W. I have always been able to quickly establish a great working (and at times personal) relationship with them. My W managers have recognized this as my special forte. (They even offered an onsite account manager position to me last year in Canada. I turned it down because I felt that the compensation they offered for the position was not fair!)



• From mid-2000 until now, I have almost never directly worked for a W manager from the functional perspective. I have worked in roles which were always independently reporting to the clients. My W managers only received feedback from the clients and filled my appraisals. I have greatly enjoyed this independence and that is one of the reasons I have been able to establish good rapport with the clients. The downside to this is that, most of my W supervisors have never had a complete picture of the good and bad things I have done at work nor about my strengths and weaknesses. They have mostly received second-hand information, at best.



• Despite spending eight-and-half years with the company, I have been in love with only one girl in W! That is something of a rarity for me because I am a sucker for romance and prone to falling in love quite quickly. With so many girls in W, most people would think I would have a longer romantic history in the company. But I don't. And, I still resent losing that one person. (This has zero reflection on how I feel about the others I fell for after that one W girl).

I am moving to a new company from Monday, Feb 13th, 2006. From a core-IT company with more than 40000 employees, I am going to a company which has only around 6500 employees! My new company is not even in the IT business. So, the number of IT people in the company is probably around 400-500 only! It will be interesting trying to be a bigger fish in a smaller pond. We shall see how it goes.

I have mixed feelings about leaving an India-based company and working for a US-based one. I hope it all works out in the long run. It is definitely starting to work out in the short term because I am starting at a pay-level which is 50% greater than my W pay. And no, I am not getting a spectacularly high salary. It is just that my W pay has been lousy, to put it mildly.

Flying Under the Glass Ceiling

Note: Most of this post pertains to the Software Career Soldiers, the people who work in big software companies, the code factories.

The Peter Principle of management is stated as, "In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence".

I have a corollary to that: Every employee is competent only upto the limits of his assignment/organization.

I also refer to this as Flying Under the Glass Ceiling.

Over the years I have seen many bright people stuck in assignments which use only a fraction of their potential. Most of them do a great job on their assignments. But I always wonder what more they would have done if only they had the opportunity to do something bigger. Would they have been successful if they were on a bigger and better assignment? Would they have achieved more for themselves and for the company? Are these people flying under a glass ceiling which limits the heights to which they can fly?

What if the guy who is so good at testing other people's solutions, was in the team which actually designs solutions? What if the extremely bright and creative guy was on a team designing user interfaces, instead of slogging on a job which monitors nightly batch billing processes? What if the guy who is always fantasizing about future technologies and spotting innovative opportunities, was actually working in the innovation department instead of the application maintenance department?

In big technology companies, in the code factories, people are randomly assigned different tasks with little or no regard to their inherent skills, competencies, interests. This is especially true at the junior levels, specifically with fresh graduates. Bright young people are picked up from colleges and randomly assigned their first projects and tasks. For many people, this first assignment sets the tone to the rest of their careers. It will define the path along which their careers and lives will go.

It is amazing that young people don't usually have a say in this crucial first step of their careers. No one looks at them and their resumes to assess what skills and interests they have to match them with suitable assignments. The assignment decisions are probably arbitrarily made by someone (in HR), who knows the candidates as little more than fresh names to fill body count requirements of projects.

In the initial year or two of the career, there may not be a big difference in the pay scales and the market values of the people who are doing different types of entry-level tasks, in different technologies. However, as more time passes, the type of experiences and technology skills that are on a person's resume make a major difference in how much s/he is paid in the company, what the person's market value is, what opportunities s/he has in the industry, etc. They have a major bearing on his/her career's quality and life experience.

So, every step, every task, every assignment, every year in the career of a person is highly important in determining the rest of his/her career and life. One can never afford to take on or dismiss anything simply because it is just the first assignment in their career or just a short assignment. As such, it is very important to take an active part in decisions and choices that affect one's career. It is also important to be aware of what is happening in one's own project, department, company and industry.

When we are young, we may not be so worldly-wise. We may not have the smarts needed to negotiate with supervisors, managers and HR people to give us the kind of assignments which help us achieve our short-term and long-term career goals. We may not even have well-thought career goals. When we are working in a big company, it is easy to get comfortable and complacent in the structure, order and process inherent in such organizations. We may even be lulled into a false sense of security thinking that the big company has so many diverse projects, so many different activities going on, and it would be easy to change over to something exciting if we get bored with what we are doing now. And perhaps, most common among tech-workers, we may get so caught up in the work we are doing right now, we may not give much thought to our long-term career objectives. Five years may pass in a flash, and we may find ourselves in a place which is far removed from what we had dreamed of or what we really wanted. Affecting a change at this stage might be tougher.

An army needs brilliant strategists and tacticians who can conceive winning battle plans. It needs smart and effective leaders to execute those battle plans and ensure a win. It needs specialists for special assignments behind enemy lines. It needs skilled people who can do reconnaisance on the enemy from the forward-most positions of the battle lines. An army also needs cooks, drivers, guards. Everyone cannot be a battle planner or field commander or a commando. The cooks, drivers, guards are also important to win the battle. This is true in all industries including the technology industry. As far as your company is concerned, as long as the battle is won, the profits are rolling in and there is no screw-up, nobody might really care if you are assigned the task of a battle planner or a commando or put on guard duty. When there is a screw-up, they could simply fire you and replace you with somebody else. So, it is imperative that you take an active interest in deciding what type of assignments you work on and what turns your career takes.

Every assignment we work on, every project we are assigned to, every company we join comes with its own glass ceiling. There are limits to how much one can achieve, how much one will be challenged and encouraged. This is not bad in itself. This is the nature of things. When we sign up for an assignment or join a company, almost nobody will tell us where exactly the glass ceiling is. So, it is upto us to carefully assess at each step where the glass ceiling is and ensure that it is high enough that we can fly as high as we wish.

When it starts to appear that you could fly higher than the glass ceiling, it is time to look for another place where the ceiling is higher. When we feel that we are not challenged enough, our competencies are not used effectively, our assignments do not require the best of us, we should do something about it. Nobody else will.

Related:
Software Career Soldiers Vs Software Mercenaries
Epiphany of an IT Coolie
Demand the best possible salary from your employer

Epiphany of an IT Coolie

A few hours ago, I had one of those epiphanic moments we sometimes have only in the rest room. I realized that how much an organization values its employees, and how it treats them depends on what they directly contribute to the organization.

"Well... duh!", you might say. But hold on for a moment. Of course, that is common sense, and I always knew that. The special thing about today's realization is that, it reveals to me my job situation, my entire 8-year career in the software services business, in a new light. The key concept in my realization is, what we contribute directly to our organization.

What I realized was this: Suppose you are employed by a company, whose basic business is to provide services to other client companies. Meaning, your company deploys you to work on projects/systems of clients, and bills the clients for the work you put in. Consequently, your main direct contribution to your own company is simply the money your client pays for your work. All the hard work, passion, dedication, emotion, heart and soul you put into your work do not go to your company. They go to your client.

No wonder that so often, the experience of such professionals who work on client projects is that, the clients seem to understand and appreciate the value of their contributions and talents, more than their own employers. The employers just treat them like bodies which earn a certain X number of dollars per hour. Why would they not? From their perspective, that is exactly what those professionals are. And unless that amount X which an employee brings in is really, really big, the company has no reason to take special notice of her/him. What is worse, since the average amount X is just homogeneous cash, the company does not even truly look at the employee as a unique, individual person. S/he is just one of many other homogeneous employees who can bring in the same amount X. S/he is dispensable and replaceable.

The situation is not very different from a pimp and his prostitutes. The pimp sends out prostitutes to earn money by the hour, by the day... or er, by the night. For the pimp, the prostitute is only a body who brings him some money. Money is his only real concern. He is concerned about her well-being only so far as she can get him money. If something goes wrong, he is more than willing to replace her with somebody else who might bring in equal or more money. He has no more interest in her health or feelings.

This is not a very pleasant realization to have after putting in eight years of work for my company, the best years of my 20s! But that is the bitter reality.

I work for one of India's foremost software services companies. I have spent most of the last 5 years of my career at client locations in the US. During this time, I have worked alongside employees of the client organizations, doing equal and at times, more work than them. I have seen these employees progress, get yearly pay raises, promotions, etc. Some of the more deserving employees have received big promotions. In contrast, I have gained precious little mileage within my company. I am embarrassed to admit it myself, but that is the truth.

Oh, sure! I too have received pay increases and enhanced roles. I have received pay increases about 6 times in the past 5 years. And, I now lead projects, rather than just work as an individual programmer. But all that brings little personal benefit to me. The pay increases are all applied to my Indian salary. Meaning, I would start getting the higher pay only if/when I go back to India and continue working for my company there. My pay in the US has not changed in the past four years. So, effectively, I have not received any pay increases at all during that period! And my enhanced roles and responsibilities have not come with any corresponding increase in grade. Not at all!

When I ask my supervisors for enhancements to my pay and grade, the kind of responses I get can only be described as bull shit.

Today's epiphanic moment is important because it has revealed to me why this is so. As far as my company is concerned, there is no big difference between what I was five years ago and what I am now. Five years ago, I was a body that earned X dollars per hour for my company, today I am a body who earns X+delta dollars per hour. All my work, knowledge, experience, enhanced competencies over the years have not directly contributed to my company. They have been useful only to the clients. So, the clients recognize and appreciate them. My company does not. Even the enhanced responsibilities and roles I have received have been awarded by the clients, not by my company. That is why the higher responsibilities and roles have not come with higher grades and pay. That is the nature of this business, the nature of this system.

I know that if I had been directly employed by one of my clients, my work would have directly affected my employer's business systems. It would have made a tangible difference to their business. Consequently, I wouldn't be just a dollar earner for the company. I would be the person who made the business function better. So, the work I have put in over the years would have been suitably recognized and rewarded. I would have been in a much better position, than I am in right now. I have seen how much clients value, respect, recognize and reward their employees who put in good work, who have good talent and potential.

If you are in a situation like mine, where your day-to-day work and talents are not directly contributing to your own company's systems, if all that your company is getting from your work is a few dollars per hour, let this be a lesson to you. Do not stay in such a job for long, unless one of the following is true:

1. The personal rewards/compensation you are getting are significantly high. You can afford to put your long term career interests on hold for sometime, while you earn some good money.

2. It is only a temporary situation and you are confident that you can quickly move into a position where your day-to-day work directly adds value to your company. By value, I don't mean the dollars per hour you might earn your company.

3. The dollars you earn for your company is very, very high. So high that, the CEO or his direct reports know about you.

If either of these is not true, you would serve your long term career interests better by looking for a job where you can directly contribute to the company.

I have decided that I will never again let myself be trapped in this kind of a system on a long term basis. I want my company to recognize and reward me for what I am, for my talents and contributions in making things better for the company, for my contributions to the company's business. I don't want to be just a coolie who adds another buck to the maestri's* kitty!

*maestri - Indian word for the leader of a group of laborers. The maestri negotiates the laborers' rates with the clients, supervises their work, gets money from the clients and pays the laborers.

Optimum Ecosystem

Consider a young sapling which will eventually grow into a tree. The sapling will flourish and grow into a healthy tree, if it is planted in an ecosystem which will ensure that:

• It is adequately protected from the forces of nature, including other beings which may harm it. The type of protection the tree needs may be different at different stages of its lifetime.



• It gets adequate water, sunlight and nutrition. Other trees (of the same or different kind) do not take away its fair share of water, sunlight and nutrition.



• If the tree is too crowded in by other plants and trees, it may not flourish. On the other hand, if it is too exposed to the sun, winds and seasonal changes, it may die young.

The tree needs an ecosystem which is best-suited for its growth. I call such a best-suited ecosystem as the Optimum Ecosystem. An optimum ecosystem is an environment in which a living being can flourish, grow and lead a happy, healthy life, achieving the best possible life expectancy.

The same concept can be applied to a person who works in an organization. A person will experience good learning and progression, and make useful contributions to the best of his/her ability in an organization which is an optimum ecosystem for her/his talents and career. Such an organization will have the following characteristics:

• It will be of the right size for the person's energy, drive and opportunities he seeks. Some of us do better being big fish in a small pond, others do better in being a small fish in a big ocean.



• It will provide the right kind of learning opportunities and challenges to the individual at different stages in his professional life. Too many challenges might overwhelm a person and cause a breakdown, too few challenges might waste his/her time, talents, energies and corrupt the person. Too many opportunities might cause confusion and induce complacency. Too few might cause frustration and adversely affect the morale.



• It provides the right quality and variety of colleagues to the person. If most of the people in the organization are no different from the person, s/he is just one of many and s/he may not be adequately valued. It is also important to have colleagues who can guide, coach and inspire. If the benchmarks for talents and performance of everyone in the organization is low, even the new employee will perform at lower levels.



• It will value and reward the person right. Most people usually think they deserve more pay than they are actually receiving. Most organizations are willing to offer a higher pay package to a new hire from outside, than they actually pay to a person within the organization with same/similar qualifications, skills and experience. These are hard facts of today's organizations. Despite these facts, a good organization will not let it's people think that their pay-packet is too unfair, too far below the market rates.

These are only a few of a long list of qualities which make an organization the optimum ecosystem for a person's career. In addition to being a great working place, an organization has several other important objectives, such as profit-making. It has to balance all these objectives. In the bargain, it may sacrifice some of the qualities which make it a great work place.

Moreover, everybody is not suited to all kinds of organizations. Despite our best efforts, we may not be able to know everything we would like to know about an organization before we join it. There may be times when we discover only after joining an organization that it does not suit us. Also, different organizations suit us at different stages in our career. In modern times, very few people find the same organization to be an optimum ecosystem for their entire career.

Fortunately, unlike plants and trees, we are not rooted to one place. We have the option of leaving and moving on. We must always be conscious about the kind of ecosystem our organization provides for our careers. We must know what our career needs and aspirations are, and be aware of the kind of ecosystem in which we can flourish. We must constantly keep ourselves informed about the kind of ecosystems offered by different organizations. We must make educated choices and not be afraid to move on, if that is necessary.

To stagnate in a non-conducive or adverse atmosphere is to do a great disservice to ourselves. At the time that we are actually stagnating, we may not realize how much it is costing us. However, everything in life is cumulative. What we do in a particular year does not go away easily. The costs and benefits accumulate and influence the rest of our life. That applies to our work life also. Hence, complacency regarding our career ambitions and aspirations must be diligently avoided.

Everything I have mentioned above about the optimum ecosystem for our careers, can be extrapolated to cover all aspects of our life as well.

Hard Workers vs Smart Workers

Are you a hard worker or a smart worker?

Most of us know a few people who work long hours, who don't seem to have a life outside of work. It is fairly easy to see if a person is at his/her desk for 8 hours or 12 hours or 16 hours of the day. However, unless you are a very close teammate or the person's immediate supervisor, it is almost impossible to know what the person is actually getting accomplished in all those hours.

Is the person who is spending long hours at the desk, actually working hard or hardly working? Is s/he actually getting more stuff done in those extra hours? Or is s/he simply taking longer time to do something, which could be done in a much lesser time by a smarter person? In short, is he just a hard worker or a smart worker? There is a simple way to answer this question.

Before we go further, a disclaimer: What is written below is a generic statement which is applicable for a majority of people. As always, there are definitely unique individuals and special circumstances which are exceptions to the observations below.

I have often seen that people who are smart and organized in one aspect of life, are also smart and organized in other aspects of life. Similarly, the people who are not smart or are disorganized in one aspect of life, exhibit the same qualities in other aspects of life as well.

Note that when I say "smart", I am not talking about a person's knowledge. It is not possible for anyone to be experts in all aspects of life. When I say "smart", I mean the ability to quickly learn new stuff, the ability to apply the learnings in making useful choices or educated guesses, and equally important, the ability to recognize what one knows, what one doesn't know, and where to look for additional information/knowledge.

If a person exhibits one or more of the following qualities in personal life or in non-work aspects of life, it is a good bet that s/he is not a smart worker on the job, regardless of how much time s/he spends at the desk:

1. Flaky - Does not deliver on commitments; doesn't live upto expectations s/he has set explicitly or implicitly; is not dependable; is not punctual.

2. Sloppy - Disorganized with space and time; unclean person and surroundings; not able to find/remember things; forgets things, especially commitments.

3. Indecisive - Does not make an assertive choice or statement; is easily swayed/persuaded by others; takes a non-committal approach/attitude in negotiations or discussions.

4. Dumb - Is just dumb; no explanation required.

Why really did Vivek Paul quit Wipro?

Disclaimer: Everything that follows is merely speculation on my part, in my individual capacity. Everything I have written below is based on the information freely available in the public media, like the newspapers and the magazines. I have no access to any non-public or confidential data/documents which support or refute what is written below. Specifically, I don't have access to any information or documents internal to Wipro, nor have I been privy to any discussions, which support or refute what is written below.

Background info:

Rediff Article: Why Vivek Paul quit Wipro: The inside story
Rediff Interview: Vivek Paul: It was the right time to go
Times of India Interview: Why Vivek Paul really quit Wipro


I was very surprised when I heard about Vivek Paul's resignation as the Vice Chairman of Wipro. The reason is that Wipro still has a long way to go in dominating the world software services market, and there are still a lot of great things he could have achieved through Wipro. Why really did Vivek Paul quit Wipro? The question has never been satisfactorily answered.

Vivek Paul's 4-by-4 vision - to make Wipro a 4 billion dollar company by 2004 - was not realized yet. Regarding this vision, Vivek Paul admits in the Rediff interview, "Wipro didn't get anywhere close." Granted that 2004 passed by before the 4-by-4 vision could be achieved. But, I don't think Vivek Paul is the kind of person who would abandon his vision just because the deadline he set for himself has passed. He seems to be the kind of person who would be all the more determined to achieve the vision or something bigger.

In the same interview he says that he asked himself, "Do I declare a new vision and sign up for it?", then decided not to do so, and quit! That is not very convincing!

"The inside story" from Rediff tells us that Vivek Paul quit Wipro because he had become "restless" within Wipro, and wanted to do "something else". It is hard for me to believe that Vivek Paul felt "restless" because he did not have anything more or anything exciting to do within Wipro. There are still a lot of miles for Wipro to travel on its way to the top, and Vivek Paul simply does not come across as a restless young buck who gets bored and changes tracks just for the sake of change. No, if he felt "restless" and frustrated, there must be some other reason.

In the TOI interview, Vivek Paul was asked, "Was there any kind of pressure that forced you to quit?"

His answer: "Well, there was some push and pull. If you have $15 billion ( market capitalisation of Wipro) in family business, how can you not tend to it? I would do the same if I were in his position."

I am willing to bet that the above quote alludes to the main reason for Vivek Paul's departure from Wipro: he did not foresee significant and lasting rewards and returns coming his way for all the work he was doing for Wipro. Granted that Vivek Paul earned one of the highest salaries among Indian professional managers, but that is nothing compared to the giant organization he was building with sweat and soul. When you build something like that, putting the best years of your life and your best efforts into it, you expect more than just periodic compensation and a relatively tiny share allocation.

It is true that Azim Premji has often said that his sons won't have easy unearned right-of-way into Wipro management and start tending the company. However, he has never said that his sons won't get the over 83% of the company that he holds (Source: Wipro Shareholding Pattern for quarter ending Mar 31st 2005, see the percentage sub total of "PROMOTERS HOLDING").

I am speculating that Premji fully intends to retain this over 83% of the company within the family. This must have made Vivek Paul realize that despite putting in so much effort to build up the Wipro business, in the long run, he would be nothing more than just one of thousands of Wipro employees who came, worked hard and left. He must have realized that even after producing great results for the company, he would not have anything really significant (comparatively speaking) and lasting for himself.

I feel that this is really why Vivek Paul quit Wipro. This is also the reason why many senior managers and super-achievers quit Wipro often at the height of their careers in the company, and venture out to work for others or start their own businesses. After spending a certain number of years with Wipro, senior people seem to leave with a certain disappointment, and a belief that they could achieve more for themselves elsewhere. Is that a case of the person growing bigger than his role and seeking higher goals, or is that a case of the person hitting a glass ceiling within the company beyond which he does not see rewards commensurate with his contributions?

Wipro seems to believe that bright young people will come in and put their best talents, energies and efforts to help the company achieve success, and that they will do all this just for the thrills and satisfaction of a challenging job well done. That is true to a certain extent. Every year, Wipro manages to find people - at junior and senior levels - who do precisely that.

However, Wipro should not get complacent and think it is invincible. It should carefully consider the cost of consistently losing senior people, and the effect that has on the company's growth. Wipro is a large, robustly administered company and a senior person leaving now and then may not affect the status quo adversely. However, there is a cost to growth: not only because the senior people take away with them valuable knowledge, experience and drive, but also because these people almost always add fuel to Wipro's competition.

Wipro should realize that it is not an organization like the country's defense forces. Bright, capable young people join the defense forces. They put in good work. They rise to the highest levels. They work for a monthly salary during their entire careers, and retire with a pension. That cannot happen in the business world. In capitalist organizations, people at the highest levels want to own a part of the business and share in the profits. Not just draw a salary and retire, no matter how high the salary is. A company which does not fulfill this aspiration, cannot keep the loyalties of its senior-most people.

Demand the best possible salary from your employer

A recent question/comment on an Indian message board was as follows:

Friends,
A recent trend in the IT jobs show that people takes it like a business or even we can call it as a blade business(A guy who charges 4% interest per month on the finance, he lend to his customer). Is this professionalism?

Recently I have seen a resume with around 5 yrs of exp and trying for the 8th job!!! Also seen another person in last 1 yr worked with 3 major Indian IT companies!!! How can we call this as Professionalism? What they gain from this other than money? Or do you think money is the only thing we leave for? What about our learning’s, career, growth, value, contribution etc etc? Do we won’t give any priority to these things? Or only money is the first & last priority in our list??

I had just brought this for debate which I believe it’s unethical & un-professionalism. You might have a different opinion… Also this is not against anybody.



There are several questions above. However, my response below is limited only to the part about demanding the best possible salary from the employer. Please keep in mind that this whole topic is in the context of Indian tech companies. My response follows:


I don't find fault with the guys who negotiate the best possible salary for themselves, for the following reasons:

1. Almost nobody in the industry is a passionate artist who works simply for passion and soul satisfaction. Organizations and individuals are always looking to make the maximum profit. It is only common sense and good survival strategy to be as high on the profit/pay scale as possible for both organizations and individuals.

2. The pay scales within a company always grow at a rate much lower than the rate at which pay scales in the market grow. Meaning, the longer you stay in the same company, the lesser you will earn compared to the pay being offered in the job market for the same job and profile. This difference between personal pay and market rate only increases as the years roll. It is almost like a depreciation of the person's worth in the eyes of the company. Believe me, it does not feel good when you have put in years of solid, sincere, dependable service to the company and you see that the company values a newcomer in the market more than it values you.

3. The disparity between what a person is billed for and what he is paid is quite high. The employee is being paid much less than what the company earns from his work. This is the most important reason why Indian tech companies are so spectacularly profitable. For example, I am work at the client site in the US and the ratio of my pay to the ratio of my billing rate is roughly about 40:60. That is a huge difference, when you consider that a typical contracting company in the US pays between 70 - 85 percent of the billing rate to the employee. If you are working offshore in India, this difference between your pay and billing rate would be even higher. So, someone (read, the company) is making a lot of money out of your work. The least you can expect in return is competitive pay, good facilities, good treatment, respect and recognition of your value. How much of all these are you getting? We are not ignorant medieval farmers who can be kept in the dark while middlemen and rich merchants make a huge profit. Yet, that is how the situation is and that is how people are treated by many Indian tech companies. So, if a guy negotiates a great salary from the company, I say, "good for him"!

4. If you have spent a few years working in any company, especially a big company (where you are a small fish in a big ocean), you know what a hassle it is to get satisfactory increments and promotions. Although the policies and rules are supposed to be well defined and everything is supposed to be transparent, that's not the ground reality. There is an element of arbitrariness, luck, bureaucracy, politics, etc. which come into play, making the whole experience of increments and promotions less than satisfactory. So, it is always better to negotiate a great salary and great role before you join the company. Suppose two people A and B join the company at the same time. A joins for X pay and B joins for (X + d) pay. Suppose over the next few years, both of them get average pay increases. Notice that A will continue to get lesser pay than B throughout the career. The initial pay difference 'd' continues to affect a person throughout their career in the company. Heck, it will even affect them when they are negotiating pay with a new company they want to join, if the pay at the new company is based partially on what he is earning now.

-- End --

Software Career Soldiers Vs Software Mercenaries

Posted on February 7, 2004 0:15 AM EST

I am a software professional. I have often thought of and said that the software professionals are like soldiers - career soldiers or mercenaries.

Throughout human history, there have been "soldiers" (for want of a better word) who have gone out to explore and conquer new areas and worlds. Some soldiers have gone out with weapons to capture other lands. Some soldiers have gone out with trading goods to conquer other markets. Some have gone out with religious teachings to conquer other cultures, minds, hearts and souls. Us software people go out to explore new geographies and conquer the world with our products and services, with our paychecks and personal presence. Our products and services attempt to influence everything, everything in the world and life is fair game. With our paychecks, we want to buy everything we can afford to, software people being some of the most highly earning groups. With our migrating personal presence (not to mention our products), we are enabling greater cross-cultural interactions than there ever was in currently recorded and known history.

Software professionals can also be compared to professional fighters, in the way their careers play out. The similarity is quite remarkable. Among professional fighters, there are two groups: the career soldier and the mercenary.

The career soldiers are loyal to the country and their force. They most probably joined the force very young and work their way up the ranks in well-defined, predictable career paths. Meteoric rises and downfalls are exceptions rather than the norm. The culture, attitude and behavior of their force become strongly inculcated in their personalities and lives. They seldom change their loyalties. They might have comparatively less varied experiences. The dangers of reaching a dead-end in their professional experiences and career due to bureaucracy and very nature of a large organization is quite real. At the same time, almost all of the top brass are made of career soldiers and not newcomers. Like their careers, their earnings are also very predictable and limited.

The software professionals who join a big organization and spend a greater part of their career in such an organization are very similar to career soldiers. They are usually quite loyal to their organization. Most of them join young. Number of new joinees gets comparatively lesser and lesser up the career path. Most of the top management members have had long proven innings in the same organization or very similar organizations. All the other things I have mentioned above about career soldiers is certainly true for this kind of software professionals also.

And then we have the mercenary soldier. The mercenary soldier is primarily loyal to himself and sells his talents to the highest payer or whoever can help fulfill his own personal goals. A mercenary's rank and title could vary from one assignment to another, depending on the nature of the assignment, the size of the force, etc. So, during his career, a mercenary might bob up and down several times. If suitably talented, a mercenary's chances of quickly shooting up to the higher levels in his force, bypassing several intermediate levels, are better than a career soldier's. Although it is the same task of fighting and killing, the risks and rewards are comparatively higher for mercenaries. Dead-end in career and experience would only be due to a mercenary's own choices or limited talents. There is very less chance that career dead-ends would be reached due to the bureaucracies or nature of the organization, since the mercenary is always ready to change loyalties. Within the same span of time, a mercenary might see more varied types of action in many different places, compared to a career soldier, who could theoretically go through his entire career, without seeing any significant action. The chances of a mercenary being left high and dry to fight his own way out of a mess is higher than that of a similar thing happening to career soldiers.

All the above points that apply to mercenaries also apply to opportunistic software professionals who frequently change jobs for what they perceive to be a better choice.

As we can see, there are pros and cons to both kinds of careers. I will speak from personal experiences now.

I am a career software soldier. I have spent all my working life with one company. I have had several friends who are software mercenaries, by choice or by circumstances. Here is a rough comparison of our careers so far:

• My job has been relatively secure and predictable. During my career, I have had timely expected progression in career and increases in paycheck. My mercenary friends have had to struggle more. Their job situations have gone through iffy and insecure phases. They have had to work on very short projects and move on to another organization.
  
  
• My entire career has been spent working with just three clients and their systems. All the clients and systems have been more or less similar / comparable, the technology has been more or less the same. In the same period of time, my mercenary friends have worked for a handful of companies, with many different clients and their systems. These companies, clients and their systems have significantly differed from each other giving my friends a rich diverse experience with different technologies and people.
  
  
• During my career, I have dealt with professionals with a certain kind of work ethic, work style, workplace behavior, etc. My experience has been with more or less predictable professionals. There have been a few difficult / tricky / trying clients to be sure, nevertheless we have had a common platform of accepted professional behavior, habits, and so on. My software mercenary friends have had to deal with more varied people than I have - some good, some not so good, some downright ugly and bad. They are certainly more street-smart in dealing with difficult people. Heck, they are better than me at even negotiating their salaries with their bosses (present or prospective).
  
  
• I have had almost predictable increases in my paycheck. My pay has been somewhere around the industry average, for my profile and work, at all times. There have been no insecurities or risks as far as pay is concerned. My software mercenary friends have not had such a secure experience. They have sometimes had to work for very less pay. Due to the changes in assignments and jobs, they have gone through periods of financial unpredictability. If we were to add up our total earnings since we started working, I suppose my total would be higher than theirs. But it's not all bad news for them. There is another side to the coin: if today my mercenary friends were to join my organization, their paycheck would be bigger than mine because of their varied experience. It's ironic but true.
  

By now it's obvious that both paths - the software career soldier's and the software mercenary's - have their pros and cons. How would a young professional at the beginning of her/his career decide if s/he wants to be a career soldier or a mercenary. The answer depends on what her/his long term goals are.

In my opinion, following are some of the main reasons for you, a young professional, to stick in the same organization for a long time.

• You intend to rise up the corporate management (not project management).
  
• You are one of those few people in big organizations who manage to land a different assignment every 12 to 18 months. Different in technology, different in responsibilities, different geographic location, etc.
  
• You manage to rise up the organizational levels very very fast.
  
• The organization let's you work at the fore-front of cutting-edge technology which has very promising potential.
  

If at least one or more of the above does not apply to your case, you are better off aggressively seeking different assignments every 24 months or so, or changing the organization you work for. If you are not interested in rising up the corporate management chain, if all you want to do is have a lot of fun doing what you are good at and gain expertise in your chosen fields of interest, you are better off making sure that you get as diverse work experiences as possible. The more diverse your experiences, the more your market value will increase. Moreover, you will end up making lots of industry contacts, which will be invaluable in your career. Of course, any career decisions must be made in light of prevailing job market and personal life circumstances.

Good luck to all fellow soldiers who are out to conquer the world. All the best and have a terrific time.