An open letter to Indian employers
This is my response to the "Open Letter to India's Graduating Classes", currently doing the rounds. On reading the load of grouse that the esteemed "employer" considers as good advice, I am, to say the least, shocked! On the basis of what I personally went through, 12 long years ago, and what I am sure millions of graduate / post-graduate freshers go through even today, I think I need to reply. I am replying because I thought then, and I still think, that employers are short-changing the fresh graduates, especially the fresh B-school graduates. Over the last 12 years, I have seen no improvement in the "employer" attitudes.
Feel free to reply with bouquets or brickbats. This is the truth as I have felt it. It's the concept of "employers" and "senior managers" whom I target. And in all fairness, I am a "senior manager" now, and hope the freshers under me don't have the same complaints as I did, all those years ago!
Dear Employer,
It is with interest that I read your "wish-list" of expectations from India's fresh graduates. Thank you for reminding us of our duties! However, I would here like to point out that as responsible corporate citizens, which you are so fond of calling yourselves , you also have some duties towards the employees apart from transferring the salary into his/her account every month. Let me just search out from my memory of 12 years, some places where I disagree with your contentions.
You want Indian graduates to be good in English. Good. I have no objections to that. English is, after all, an international language. However, with your much-vaunted clout and influence, why can't you let the types of Mulayam Singh Yadav know that anti-English drives in schools are not helping the cause of India? Or is it really what I have long suspected? That your advertised Fortune 500 influential lists only work on the golf course and bar with fellow "employers"? A student today is over-burdened. Over-burdened with the hard work involved to obtain all the qualifications you, respected employers, ask for. On top of that, you ask him/her to learn a language which in all probability no one in the family or close circle speaks? Or are you just camouflaging your intentions to hire the elite from the elite? Thus perpetuating your kind of people? The old "us v/s them"?
You, dear employers, are the people who are impressed by high-falutin' (excuse the colloquialism) sentences in CVs. We do it, just because it works! Moreover, you, the respected companies, are well-known for your own "resume padding". Based on one or two management trainees and/or clerks who have become VPs in your esteemed organisations over the past 100 or so years, you come to give a PPT: "you, young people, can grow to be in the management committee", making it sound so damn easy!
Which company, in its PPT at graduate / post-graduate schools, talks of the grinding hard work, the mind-numbing "clerical jobs", the humiliation from seniors, the sheer physical fatigue which accompanies a job in the company? You, sirs, give us a totally false rosy picture, and you expect us not to do the same? Of course, you have the power to take away our livelihood (i.e. sack us), so we, the poor humble new employees, must bow down and comply!
I will not go into your fantastic, too-good-to-be-true growth plans! Double the sales in 2 years (when it has been dropping over the last 5 years)!!! And the superb pictures you paint for your shareholders is not even part of this discussion! We freshers, after all, have learnt resume-padding from the experts in the field, i.e. youselves, dear employers!
The graduate joins you, and on day one s/he gets his first disillusionment. S/he is told that the VP Marketing (or Sales, or Operations, or whatever) cannot meet the new batch at the appointed time, as s/he is in a meeting with the MD. "Because the sales are on a decline, all the top bosses are in a flurry", says the HR guy. The poor new joinees see their fairy tale world come crashing down. And s/he can't even complain. Their parents are so proud that their son/daughter has got a good job, the poor trainee can't bear to give them the shock of their lives by being sacked on the first week!!
You want new employees to think out-of-the-box (another ulteriorly nice, but utterly meaningless phrase coined by some self-deluded consultant). Dear employer, maybe the years have taken their inevitable toll on your memory, or maybe the shock of finding yourself unexpectedly in senior management has caused selective amnesia, but you have seriously no idea of what results from such independent thinking. Let me refresh your memory. Whenever a new employee comes up with a new suggestion, out-of-the-box, s/he is met with one of the following answers (there maybe more variants of a humiliating refusal, but these are the ones I have come across):
1. We have always done it this way.
2. You first get settled down, then you can give your suggestions.
3. Who the hell do you think you are?
4. The MD / CEO / Chairman (aka God) doesn't want it this way.
5. The company policy does not allow this.
6. The mother company policies do not allow this. (if it is a foreign MNC).
7. Best one, can you substantiate this from your experience? (the question being asked to a young person with a total of 3 weeks experience).
The unspoken here is: "listen kid (a big emphasis on "kid"), just shut up and do what you are told". The egos of the senior management are so fragile (obviously, because they are based on absolute zero), that they just cannot take a kid giving better ideas than them! Result, the kid, who is actually smart enough to get into a top B-School, gets into order execution mode. "Dear Sir / Madam, may I visit the loo?"
Moreover, with increasing competition, a kid in IIMB today is likely to be smarter than me, who passed out 12 years ago, hence the kid is probably better than the VP, who probably passed out when the Beatles were just arriving on the scene!
Moreover, as you have yourself mentioned, the education system of this country is geared to rote-memory. And you really, really ask the students solve that? I believe that the amnesia which I mentioned earlier has caused you to forget how things work in this country. You, dear employer, might just have the necessary clout (and the cash-in-hand) to persuade the government to change the education system, provided your clout does extend somewhat outside the 18-holes of the golf course. A student is only a victim of the system. It's somewhat akin to blaming a Holocaust victim for the loss of his entire family to the gas chambers.
The statements I have used above regarding out-of-the-box thinking will apply to "asking questions" too. After all the "5 whys" is a Japanese concept, not an Indian one. Our first "why" is met with one of the responses I have enumerated earlier.
You want us to "question hierarchy"!! Are you really serious, Mr. Employer? Do you honestly think our families have money growing on trees, that we don't really need the jobs? You really, really want me to ask why the chairman's 20-year-old, class 10th fail son is the deputy MD? Or why that incompetent nincompoop who knows less than me, is my boss, just because he was born a few years earlier? Just for the record I have had more than one boss who knew much, much less than me. And they made out my appraisals!!
You say it is "our responsibility as well as yours to challenge existing hierarchy". Oh yeah? A management trainee asking a VP, "sir, how did a complete buffoon like you get so high?" Who has created the hierarchy in the first place? The company or the fresher? Is it more practical for a good GM to question a bad GM, or for a fresher? So, if the good GM does not really object to being classed with a complete idiot, why should the fresher? Someone should show the way! Someone should practically assure whistle-blowers!! It is very, very tough even for senior managers to be whistle-blowers, and you actually want fresh joinees to blow whistles? Whistles that can make some of your top honchos tumble?? Sir, our parents, families, etc. have spent all their life savings to ensure our education, we have education loans to repay, and you are asking us to risk it all?
On training, I wonder why you, dear employers, think that people can "self-study", especially after the insane hours you ask us to keep? You do have a department known a HR, right? So why can't those lazy jokers track people's performance, especially with all the online appraisals, 360 degree feedbacks, and other gizmos? And then send, actually pay for and send, the employee to a course where his/her weaknesses can be addressed? That, gentlemen, is what employees need. Is this fair? Of course! Because what we learn in these courses will benefit you, not us, at least not to that extent. So, if you are asking me to take a training which benefits you, you bloody well pay for it!! And schedule the training not on weekends or after office hours, but during office hours. Just to give an analogy, I really love reading about the Second World War, so I do it on my own time and my own money. So, what is in your interest, dear employer, will get done in your time, and your money.
Spoon-feeding. I'll tell you what spoon-feeding is. A VP getting his company car serviced through HR/Admin people is spoon-feeding. The VP is 50, 55 years old, (I am of course making a big assumption that the VP has the requisite IQ to get the job done) he can get the car serviced himself. If repairing the VP's car by HR people is common practice and not spoon-feeding, then a company-planned, company-sponsored, company-time training is not spoon-feeding for a fresher. Sorry, dear employer, sauce for the goose (VP) has to be sauce for the gander (trainee)!
And as for e-mails, if HR got over their back-slapping, high-fiving false bonhomie-type communications, probably we would think it worth our while to open an e-mail from HR before sending it in its deserved pace in the trash bin!
Job hopping, asking for fair raises, etc., is unprofessional and unethical, right? And Boeing sacking (oh, sorry, that was "right-sizing") 35,000 - yes, thirty-five thousand - employees, just because a madman called Osama Bin Laden knocked down a couple of buildings in NYC, and the demand for aircraft went down, was an example of high ethics? You treat employees like dirt, and you expect your employees to treat you like gods? You know what, dear employer, we do! We treat you like gods (as long as you pay us), and when we find a god who places better value on us, we treat you like false gods! We do all sorts of funny things on your behalf, some of them borderline illegal, all because you have the power to take away our livelihood. And then, when we sell our talents (however little they might be) in the same fashion as we have been selling your goods / services for the last so many years, you get all holier-than-thou?
I know of sales people leaving companies for reasons like "daily allowance on tour". Seems really trivial, doesn't it? Well, of course, you employers with your suites in five-star hotels wouldn't really know the difference between a hotel room in a C-class town for Rs. 500 and another for Rs. 750, would you? If you don't want people "padding" expense accounts, you can increase salaries, so that the percentage the employee gets from such padding would be insignificant. Anyway, the padding was more common in the earlier generation (those who would have risen to VP level by now) than in the current generation. Personally, I don't see the fun in travelling by local train and claiming taxi fare; I would much rather travel by AC taxi and claim normal taxi fare!!
Asking for raises seems so bad, doesn't it? And that too for "no increase in ability"!!! Let me tell you, dear employer, just give flat percentage increases across the board, we'll all be happy. What I mean is, if the MD/Chairman/CEO gets x% increase in CTC, let all employees get the same x%, we will be ecstatic! In so many cases, I have seen the management committee (aka MC, which also is a rude word in Hindi) members take variable salary in a declining, loss-making company, while other employees are fobbed off with the same decline and loss as an excuse not to pay variable!! Can you, dear amployer, tell me exactly what the Chairperson / MD has added in his/her ability, so that s/he gets increases? And more so, since you are an Indian company, can you tell me what skills the MD's son/daughter/nephew/illegitimate child brings to the table as a board member, age 16?
The companies ask for loyalty, but what do we get for loyalty? A person who has been slogging like a donkey for 10-15 years sees his juniors being given "lateral placements" at senior levels? Top management talking publicly about looking outside for talent? You want us to feel vested in your success, when people (including myself) have been called to office for long hours at a time when their child is newly born and their wife is in neonatal care? Long hours, yes, we are ready, but when I am told during appraisal that "you are good, you get things done, you are forward thinking, blah blah, but you don't sit late, hence we can't promote you", then I have to say, sorry Mr. Employer, you are a bit too accustomed to your own incompetent ways of working. I can do thrice as much as you, dear oldie-goldie, can do in the same time, and hence, while you, Mr. VP need to sit in office for 16 hours to finish your miniscule workload, I can do much more in eight, and hence don't really need to sit late!
At the end, dear Employer, thanks a lot for your good advice. We will surely improve skills - to make ourselves more suitable for job switching every six months! We will learn new languages, so that we can get new jobs in different countries, rather than have to listen to an Indian boss, whose only qualification is an accident of birth (being the MD's little baby). Thank you, sir, for letting us know what you employers really think of us!
Thanks & warm regards (I was once told to write "with respect" while ending an e-mail to a senior person)
An ex-fresher!
Feel free to reply with bouquets or brickbats. This is the truth as I have felt it. It's the concept of "employers" and "senior managers" whom I target. And in all fairness, I am a "senior manager" now, and hope the freshers under me don't have the same complaints as I did, all those years ago!
Open Letter to India's Employers
Dear Employer,
It is with interest that I read your "wish-list" of expectations from India's fresh graduates. Thank you for reminding us of our duties! However, I would here like to point out that as responsible corporate citizens, which you are so fond of calling yourselves , you also have some duties towards the employees apart from transferring the salary into his/her account every month. Let me just search out from my memory of 12 years, some places where I disagree with your contentions.
You want Indian graduates to be good in English. Good. I have no objections to that. English is, after all, an international language. However, with your much-vaunted clout and influence, why can't you let the types of Mulayam Singh Yadav know that anti-English drives in schools are not helping the cause of India? Or is it really what I have long suspected? That your advertised Fortune 500 influential lists only work on the golf course and bar with fellow "employers"? A student today is over-burdened. Over-burdened with the hard work involved to obtain all the qualifications you, respected employers, ask for. On top of that, you ask him/her to learn a language which in all probability no one in the family or close circle speaks? Or are you just camouflaging your intentions to hire the elite from the elite? Thus perpetuating your kind of people? The old "us v/s them"?
You, dear employers, are the people who are impressed by high-falutin' (excuse the colloquialism) sentences in CVs. We do it, just because it works! Moreover, you, the respected companies, are well-known for your own "resume padding". Based on one or two management trainees and/or clerks who have become VPs in your esteemed organisations over the past 100 or so years, you come to give a PPT: "you, young people, can grow to be in the management committee", making it sound so damn easy!
Which company, in its PPT at graduate / post-graduate schools, talks of the grinding hard work, the mind-numbing "clerical jobs", the humiliation from seniors, the sheer physical fatigue which accompanies a job in the company? You, sirs, give us a totally false rosy picture, and you expect us not to do the same? Of course, you have the power to take away our livelihood (i.e. sack us), so we, the poor humble new employees, must bow down and comply!
I will not go into your fantastic, too-good-to-be-true growth plans! Double the sales in 2 years (when it has been dropping over the last 5 years)!!! And the superb pictures you paint for your shareholders is not even part of this discussion! We freshers, after all, have learnt resume-padding from the experts in the field, i.e. youselves, dear employers!
The graduate joins you, and on day one s/he gets his first disillusionment. S/he is told that the VP Marketing (or Sales, or Operations, or whatever) cannot meet the new batch at the appointed time, as s/he is in a meeting with the MD. "Because the sales are on a decline, all the top bosses are in a flurry", says the HR guy. The poor new joinees see their fairy tale world come crashing down. And s/he can't even complain. Their parents are so proud that their son/daughter has got a good job, the poor trainee can't bear to give them the shock of their lives by being sacked on the first week!!
You want new employees to think out-of-the-box (another ulteriorly nice, but utterly meaningless phrase coined by some self-deluded consultant). Dear employer, maybe the years have taken their inevitable toll on your memory, or maybe the shock of finding yourself unexpectedly in senior management has caused selective amnesia, but you have seriously no idea of what results from such independent thinking. Let me refresh your memory. Whenever a new employee comes up with a new suggestion, out-of-the-box, s/he is met with one of the following answers (there maybe more variants of a humiliating refusal, but these are the ones I have come across):
1. We have always done it this way.
2. You first get settled down, then you can give your suggestions.
3. Who the hell do you think you are?
4. The MD / CEO / Chairman (aka God) doesn't want it this way.
5. The company policy does not allow this.
6. The mother company policies do not allow this. (if it is a foreign MNC).
7. Best one, can you substantiate this from your experience? (the question being asked to a young person with a total of 3 weeks experience).
The unspoken here is: "listen kid (a big emphasis on "kid"), just shut up and do what you are told". The egos of the senior management are so fragile (obviously, because they are based on absolute zero), that they just cannot take a kid giving better ideas than them! Result, the kid, who is actually smart enough to get into a top B-School, gets into order execution mode. "Dear Sir / Madam, may I visit the loo?"
Moreover, with increasing competition, a kid in IIMB today is likely to be smarter than me, who passed out 12 years ago, hence the kid is probably better than the VP, who probably passed out when the Beatles were just arriving on the scene!
Moreover, as you have yourself mentioned, the education system of this country is geared to rote-memory. And you really, really ask the students solve that? I believe that the amnesia which I mentioned earlier has caused you to forget how things work in this country. You, dear employer, might just have the necessary clout (and the cash-in-hand) to persuade the government to change the education system, provided your clout does extend somewhat outside the 18-holes of the golf course. A student is only a victim of the system. It's somewhat akin to blaming a Holocaust victim for the loss of his entire family to the gas chambers.
The statements I have used above regarding out-of-the-box thinking will apply to "asking questions" too. After all the "5 whys" is a Japanese concept, not an Indian one. Our first "why" is met with one of the responses I have enumerated earlier.
You want us to "question hierarchy"!! Are you really serious, Mr. Employer? Do you honestly think our families have money growing on trees, that we don't really need the jobs? You really, really want me to ask why the chairman's 20-year-old, class 10th fail son is the deputy MD? Or why that incompetent nincompoop who knows less than me, is my boss, just because he was born a few years earlier? Just for the record I have had more than one boss who knew much, much less than me. And they made out my appraisals!!
You say it is "our responsibility as well as yours to challenge existing hierarchy". Oh yeah? A management trainee asking a VP, "sir, how did a complete buffoon like you get so high?" Who has created the hierarchy in the first place? The company or the fresher? Is it more practical for a good GM to question a bad GM, or for a fresher? So, if the good GM does not really object to being classed with a complete idiot, why should the fresher? Someone should show the way! Someone should practically assure whistle-blowers!! It is very, very tough even for senior managers to be whistle-blowers, and you actually want fresh joinees to blow whistles? Whistles that can make some of your top honchos tumble?? Sir, our parents, families, etc. have spent all their life savings to ensure our education, we have education loans to repay, and you are asking us to risk it all?
On training, I wonder why you, dear employers, think that people can "self-study", especially after the insane hours you ask us to keep? You do have a department known a HR, right? So why can't those lazy jokers track people's performance, especially with all the online appraisals, 360 degree feedbacks, and other gizmos? And then send, actually pay for and send, the employee to a course where his/her weaknesses can be addressed? That, gentlemen, is what employees need. Is this fair? Of course! Because what we learn in these courses will benefit you, not us, at least not to that extent. So, if you are asking me to take a training which benefits you, you bloody well pay for it!! And schedule the training not on weekends or after office hours, but during office hours. Just to give an analogy, I really love reading about the Second World War, so I do it on my own time and my own money. So, what is in your interest, dear employer, will get done in your time, and your money.
Spoon-feeding. I'll tell you what spoon-feeding is. A VP getting his company car serviced through HR/Admin people is spoon-feeding. The VP is 50, 55 years old, (I am of course making a big assumption that the VP has the requisite IQ to get the job done) he can get the car serviced himself. If repairing the VP's car by HR people is common practice and not spoon-feeding, then a company-planned, company-sponsored, company-time training is not spoon-feeding for a fresher. Sorry, dear employer, sauce for the goose (VP) has to be sauce for the gander (trainee)!
And as for e-mails, if HR got over their back-slapping, high-fiving false bonhomie-type communications, probably we would think it worth our while to open an e-mail from HR before sending it in its deserved pace in the trash bin!
Job hopping, asking for fair raises, etc., is unprofessional and unethical, right? And Boeing sacking (oh, sorry, that was "right-sizing") 35,000 - yes, thirty-five thousand - employees, just because a madman called Osama Bin Laden knocked down a couple of buildings in NYC, and the demand for aircraft went down, was an example of high ethics? You treat employees like dirt, and you expect your employees to treat you like gods? You know what, dear employer, we do! We treat you like gods (as long as you pay us), and when we find a god who places better value on us, we treat you like false gods! We do all sorts of funny things on your behalf, some of them borderline illegal, all because you have the power to take away our livelihood. And then, when we sell our talents (however little they might be) in the same fashion as we have been selling your goods / services for the last so many years, you get all holier-than-thou?
I know of sales people leaving companies for reasons like "daily allowance on tour". Seems really trivial, doesn't it? Well, of course, you employers with your suites in five-star hotels wouldn't really know the difference between a hotel room in a C-class town for Rs. 500 and another for Rs. 750, would you? If you don't want people "padding" expense accounts, you can increase salaries, so that the percentage the employee gets from such padding would be insignificant. Anyway, the padding was more common in the earlier generation (those who would have risen to VP level by now) than in the current generation. Personally, I don't see the fun in travelling by local train and claiming taxi fare; I would much rather travel by AC taxi and claim normal taxi fare!!
Asking for raises seems so bad, doesn't it? And that too for "no increase in ability"!!! Let me tell you, dear employer, just give flat percentage increases across the board, we'll all be happy. What I mean is, if the MD/Chairman/CEO gets x% increase in CTC, let all employees get the same x%, we will be ecstatic! In so many cases, I have seen the management committee (aka MC, which also is a rude word in Hindi) members take variable salary in a declining, loss-making company, while other employees are fobbed off with the same decline and loss as an excuse not to pay variable!! Can you, dear amployer, tell me exactly what the Chairperson / MD has added in his/her ability, so that s/he gets increases? And more so, since you are an Indian company, can you tell me what skills the MD's son/daughter/nephew/illegitimate child brings to the table as a board member, age 16?
The companies ask for loyalty, but what do we get for loyalty? A person who has been slogging like a donkey for 10-15 years sees his juniors being given "lateral placements" at senior levels? Top management talking publicly about looking outside for talent? You want us to feel vested in your success, when people (including myself) have been called to office for long hours at a time when their child is newly born and their wife is in neonatal care? Long hours, yes, we are ready, but when I am told during appraisal that "you are good, you get things done, you are forward thinking, blah blah, but you don't sit late, hence we can't promote you", then I have to say, sorry Mr. Employer, you are a bit too accustomed to your own incompetent ways of working. I can do thrice as much as you, dear oldie-goldie, can do in the same time, and hence, while you, Mr. VP need to sit in office for 16 hours to finish your miniscule workload, I can do much more in eight, and hence don't really need to sit late!
At the end, dear Employer, thanks a lot for your good advice. We will surely improve skills - to make ourselves more suitable for job switching every six months! We will learn new languages, so that we can get new jobs in different countries, rather than have to listen to an Indian boss, whose only qualification is an accident of birth (being the MD's little baby). Thank you, sir, for letting us know what you employers really think of us!
Thanks & warm regards (I was once told to write "with respect" while ending an e-mail to a senior person)
An ex-fresher!
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