My half yearly appraisal has not gone good at all. I had tried to work hard, and I indeed worked hard for at least as long as I was present in office. I discussed with my supervisor, and I was informed that my growth curve in the first half of this financial year has been a downward progressing curve - my performance was not up to the mark! I was just amazed, and simultaneously taken aback also.
Well, my being taken aback or getting upset doesn't matter to these people at all. After all it is a private company that I am working in. So I decided to do an analysis of my experiences in the past two years of working in this company.
My analysis and what I have learnt in my professional life of just two years is summarized below:
1. It does not matter how much you work and how much you perform and how many critical issues you solve, the value added to your rating is in arithmetic progression. However, the number of leaves taken by you (no matter how distressed you may be) counts very distinctly, and contributes to your rating getting diminished in geometric progression. ( I had to take almost a month's leave to get my father treated at one of the best hospitals in India).
2. It does not matter how much overtime you have worked, and how much time your supervisor has wasted in useless gossip about nude girls, and abusing his boss, and all sorts of similarly ugly stuff (all during office hours), he will always rate you lower than himself, no matter how big a moron he himself might be. After all he is your boss - he is somebody SUPERIOR to you, and that needs to be proved!
3. Whatever good work you do is never reported by your supervisor to the management. However, just commit a single mistake - the issue is immediately escalated and an entry is made into the performance record file for the employee for the same.
4. For any good work that you do, you have to maintain your own records and keep on reminding your supervisor about that. However for any small mistake that you commit, which might have little or no impact on the actual production environment, the supervisor immediately makes a record of the same in his register and keeps on reminding you about it all the time to negate all the good work that you might have done, and eventually lowering your confidence in your work, which is even better for him, because that is an additional negative point which he can highlight during the appraisal process, and of course that is the result of all his hard work of keeping only all your bad records.
5. The moment you ask for a release from your project, your importance gets lowered in the team. You may do something outstanding, but that is rated as just very ordinary work - something anyone can do! However, you will be made to work like an ass, treated like a pig, and eventually you will not be released from your project - you will have to resign from the company itself.
6. Your supervisor will speak with you in whatever tone he may like, and whenever he wants to in that tone. However, just try to retort once in the same tone that he is speaking in, and hell comes down upon you. You may also be threatened of being handed a pink slip. (Well, that does not matter - all those threats are empty).
7. Your supervisor will be the biggest coward that you will ever see. Raise an issue that might result in challenging your supervisor's peers or his boss, and your supervisor will never appear at the scene of the fight. He will always have some useless meeting at that time - he will suddenly become very busy within seconds of getting any premonition that he might have to speak against his boss or his peers for some employee from his own team, even though that might be for a just cause. After all he has to maintain a good image. He cannot hurt his image for a member from his own team, because he also cares for his own appraisal. He will literally curl his tail in between his two legs and vanish from the scene just like the ghost from Alladin's magic lamp used to vanish in the twinkling of an eye. And if by any chance he is forced into the scene, instead of protecting you, he will humiliate you publicly, and make the just cause unjust.
8. Even if you have an accident and your colleagues come to know of that, there will be only one or two in a few hundred who will be ready to take you to the hospital in his/her personal car or motorcycle. After all burning petrol will drain out your colleagues' hard earned money. You might even see more brazen people who will take you to the hospital and charge you for petrol that was burnt in doing you this much of charity.
And I supposedly work in an IT company that is considered to be one of the best of its kind in employee welfare management. God knows what is happening elsewhere!
7 comments:
These are the most straight forward things that you have dotted down, that any one could say. Rather than straight forward it would be better to say the filthy environment behind well decorated and so called "posh" offices in glass buildings. A simpleton gradually, who cannot raise a voice against these behavioral discrimination, losses his interest in the way that life goes on, unable to figure out a reason for this. I almost every time find this similar to college ragging. I was ragged and I need to rag my juniors, similar situation here, my manager was not good so I will not be good with my sub-ordinates. I cannot understand why these managers who talk of new ideas cannot inculcate this within themselves. So why not go for a change and start behaving good, be compassionate at times to understand someone's miseries. See, if this can motivate the sub-ordinates and draw more from of what they are capable of. Why have they forgotten their roots? I doubt if they joined directly as a manager. Were they never what we are? "Sub-ordinates". Will we also be the same when we reach there? Will we also become some emotion-less pig? Will we forget that we were sub-ordinates some day and we did not like our managers and do the same with our sub-ordinates without even giving it a thought? Long time back in my school days, i read "Respect is commanded not demanded". Did they never come thru this? I pray to God if I reach there some time, please God be on my boat to remind me my days when I did not like my manager so that I can be good with my sob-ordinates.
I have been in the industry for 8 years and Ihave had both positive and negative experiencesn some of the challenges mentioned here are seen in other day to day non-IT jobs as well. Office politics is unavoidable. I have seen politics even between school teachers at school. One need to learn the tactics...earning money is jot easy in today's world.
I respect your POV,I have been through such stages as well. I hope you are not using office network for this purpose and abusing boss on an open forum. It may lead to breach of HR policies.
The name that I have mentioned for myself in the blog is not my original name. I have also not mentioned the name of the company in which I work. There can be thousands of Shubho's in this world, among whom at least a few hundred will be there in the IT sector. I think it will really confuse an HR personnel when (s)he sees the name Shubho, and (s)he might not take up that much of pain to find out who it is, since it will not be worth the effort.
I am sorry that this post has fetched so few corroborative and sympathetic comments: it deserved better. I know for a fact that several hundreds have visited it through the link I provided on my blog. Evidently most people, faced with this kind of very unpleasant truth, prefer to keep quiet about it - it's exactly like ragging in college, or the way we treat our women or other underprivileged classes. We prefer to continue with all the nastiness in our lives than to admit that they exist, and organise and fight to get rid of them. And so, I'm afraid, the situation will continue to remain as bad as ever. Most people will tell you, in typical Indian style, 'Kindly adjust'! Things are actually much worse now than in your dad's time: the IT sector refuses to let its workers to join trade unions as in other industries. The ruling motto is - there are millions unemployed, so even if your job is lousy, stick to it without complaining, or get out. And millions of young people and their parents, having no better options, call this 'success', that's the real pity of it!
There is nothing to be sorry about so few people leaving comments on this post Sir. Some of the reasons why people may not comment here are:
1. Unlike me, a certain section of people is frightened that their supervisors may see their comments here by chance and that may ultimately lead them into trouble.
2. There is another class who have just gone through my post, and after finding the harsh reality something quite difficult to digest they have just forced themselves into believing that it is rubbish, and they are better off mentally if they do not think of all this stuff. Whenever a person starts to think, worries follow, and ultimately frustration is the result. Not many people have got the courage to accept facts. Enslavement is something that Indians have learnt to accept with glee from the time of the British rule in India. Accepting the fact that one is a slave causes frustration, so it is better to shirk such thoughts.
3. The third section of 'happy slaves' is busy showing off status in the form of cars and houses and bank balance. Those are morons. They will not understand what I have written. They cannot think - they find life in the IT sector a luxury. The less said about them, the better!
So what's the way out? If you really can't 'adjust' then try changing your job. Not all companies are the same. Or try out doing your own business. Or get back to studies and try for a change in career.
Yes Rajiv, I am thinking of alternatives. Anyway, thank you for your suggestion.
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