Cut Throat Competition

I remember my Dad telling about his childhood and how he started his career. He started working with the Government services after finishing his B.A with a second class. He is still in the job, continues his successful career and enjoys a respectful position in the society. Anyway this discussion is not about my father. This is just my perspective on the changing times, the reality.

Today can we ever dream of a successful career (yeah, success is very subjective but you know what I mean) with a second class under graduate degree in hand? (I know you start frowning if I tell any degree apart from a professional one). From the moment a child starts walking, he is put to all kind of pressures. Even a nursery kid needs to clear aptitude test and interviews (At least I didn’t have to sit through all this).

Once my senior told when I was in 7th Std. “If you are able to score well in 10th Std. then you are through.” Hearing that you try hard and ‘hard’ means really hard, you score 90% in CBSE, and there you see more like you and many more in front of you. At that moment you realise, this is just a beginning. If you aim for higher studies, again it turns out to be a disaster. You feel the whole world competing with you wherever you go. Let it be CAT, GRE, GMAT you see and feel yourself in a deep shithole. Lots of people pointing fingers at you, that mystifying looks, that half-hearted console during your failure (With less than 1% chance to get through the CAT, you are bound to fail many times). These times I feel this nation is too crowded, over populated (I know, my marketing friends don’t agree to this. For them this country is the biggest possible market and everyone is a prospective customer).

After moving to a job, you begin to work hard (‘hard’ has attained a new meaning by now), work day and night, work from home and from office, and work on weekdays and weekends trying to get into the most coveted slot of top 5% among your colleagues in the rating scale. If you fail, you are looked upon as an ordinary and believe me; each and every one of us doesn’t want to be like that. Everyone wants to prove they are extra ordinary. The truth is if all earns for it, the bar is raised higher. You feel tired, you feel like giving up, and you slowly start losing. No one needs you. You are ousted and thrown out. Is this all we can get? Can we have little more space to breath? Can we get little more consideration and respect? (C’mon guys, we are humans at least!!).

If we are like this, how about the next generation? God help them all.

A Reality Check

What are my interests? What’s my ambition? These questions always troubled me from my college days (I guess no one has asked these questions in my school) when I was trying to prepare the resume for the placements. And it continued to trouble all the way throughout my job and even during my MBA. I am literally confused. It took 29 years for Gautama Buddha to look for the self realisation concept, am just 24. Long time left for me to go. But were there competition during that time? With no MBAs, no summer internships, no recession, no IIT grading and no ranking at any places he had the luxury of waiting till 29 years. Anyway let me try to find the answers to these questions. Let it be a reality check - a humble effort to reinvent myself.

People don’t get convinced easily with a truthful answer. And no one expect it to be in that way for the above questions. I am crazy about watching movies (everyone in the world likes that), I like blogging (with less than 10 blogs how can you tell that?), trekking (oh..poor boy..less than 5 treks), swimming(still unable to complete 50m stretch in one shot ah?), sleeping (no one wants the element of truth), eating, online gaming (hey! Are you listening?) – People frown at me for these replies and promptly counter me with their next questions. These interests changes with time. I believe I have moved a long way from a boy who liked Prince of Persia to NFS Undercover.

Ambition is another loggerhead. I really wanted to be a police man when I was young (may be the cap or the whistle might have played the trick), then I wanted to be a driver (cool job, at least you can visit lots of places), it changed to air force pilot (serving the nation factor), then to some job where I can earn more and become rich. At some point of time I even wanted to become the President of India (thought I will get whatever I want). This list went on and on. Later the options were converged to two – doctor or engineer (socially accepted norms which later the family enforced on me) on which I am an electrical engineer (hated to be a doctor as blood puts me off), worked in IT services sector, with domain experience in telecom with more knowledge in Java than in power electronics. And here am trying to reinvent myself and chisel my ambition plans by doing MBA (yeah...I know I haven’t answered the question yet. I just wanted to be successful, rich and famous. Am I asking too much?).

Sounds like a defective product? Am I the odd one out in the crowd? Don’t know. But that’s what I am.

The Let it go Attitude

Let it go - he told. He was a very nice friend of mine and was in a dire attempt to help his buddy; and this was the suggestion he gave. It was the moment when I had done fairly bad in the job interview. The advice was not at all a surprise to me, atleast am hearing it for the umpteenth time.

Whether it be the moment of performance appraisal where the company failed to give a fair evaluation (atleast that's what we feel all the time), or it be the time you scored pretty badly in any examination or interview (yes, as always the bad luck attributed towards this), or the times when you have a bad relationship, this advice is nothing new.

But how long? and for what this sacrifice? Are we losing away the power to fight back? Or are we so complacent to give away things like that? Life is never that easy. Where happened to the inspiration we gained from the great success stories during our childhood? What made us change? Are these things too simple and easy to let them go off easily? Are we too simple beings to accept these failures by trying to put the blame on the so called fate? It hurts really badly when you lose something in life you cared the most or you loved the most.

The frustration it develops in letting the things go in their own way, the inability at times when you can't change the destiny or fate of yours, the sheer sense of failure when things get out of our hand, all these accounts for sculpting out the so called professional and career success. How well you adapt to these changes, these uncertainties the life throws before us or how better you anticipate these outcomes-it all depends on the self evaluation of oneself.

Life is never an easy journey. Challenges always wait at the next corner.

Performance Appraisal - The corporate dilemma.

It was late in the night and I was about to go to bed when she called me up and told - "My manager ditched me at this year too. After a full year of hard work, staying late in the office I was made the scape goat. He might not have considered me during the moderation as am looked upon as a silent girl."

She was a good friend of mine in a reputed MNC, working with the same for the past 3 years. I could feel the desperation in her voice, the feeling of getting a year wasted with out the fruits of hard work.

Employees feel dejected, some of them feel their existence being questioned, few feel themselves being treated badly devoid of respect and some decides to quit when the appraisal ratings are out - hoping to get a better job and more respect. But the hard fact is this process remains more or less the same everywhere.

"Luck helped me again and Thanks to my manager. I got promoted. Join me for the party" - This was a reaction from my another friend. I could feel a huge difference in their voices. When the end results meet the expectations the outlook itself differs.

These two incidents clearly shows the difficulty faced by managers in the process of performance appraisals in the companies. As the corporate world turning to be more performance based 'everything' (be it promotions, pay packages, variable pays and bonuses..even onsite assignments) and when every one is rated relatively with their peer, the sheer pressure developed within the employees and managers when the results are announced are huge and most of the times it is unpredictable.

What is the role of the manager here?

As a manager needs to rate his sub-ordinates based on their performances, and divide them into different baskets depending upon the norms and policies laid out by the company, the job turns more tragic in case he needs to meet every ones expectations. The restrictions put forward by the organisation limiting the number of promotions and the distribution of ratings in mere percentage terms, makes the job more tough and critical. How to justify the act of appraisal, how to keep the morale of the workforce high and the attrition rates low? These questions always pose a headache to the managers.

Employees can also address this problem with few factors in mind.

• Never consider the quantity of work done is proportional to the chance of getting promoted or the chance of getting a better rating. That seldom happens.

• As the industry analysts suggests the work counts only 30-40% for the chance of getting a better rating. The rest depends on how you projects yourself to the wider community and the exposure you receive.

• Continuous improvement is the key. Functional domain knowledge along with technical skills adds upon your chances.

• Grab every chance you get to express your skills and experience.



• Build networks at all levels of the organisation. Who knows in what ways a help will come.

And for managers -

• Managers need to get more connected with the employees. Provide a clear picture on the expectations and the objectives.
  


• Show genuine interest in the improvement of the career of employees. This will make them feel more connected with the team and the organisation.

• Strike a balance in the behaviour towards an employee. Be a good friend, a mentor and a better supervisor.

Companies opting to be more transparent in the appraisal process are trying to extend the help to the employees to a great extend. As this process can't be made completely objective and the subjectivity leaves the option of lesser clarity this confusion is tend to continue. Anyway, the dilemma faced by the managers and the employees continues.

My first trek from DoMS - to TADA (16/08/09)

The journey to Tada started on 16th of August with 3 bikes (2 Pulsars and a Discover) and 6 trekkers (3 from the batch of 2010 and 2 from the batch of 2011) . Way behind our schedule (as the plan was to start at 5:30 Am) we started from the IIT Campus from Taramani gate at 7:00 Am. Its really hard to wake up early morning for a trek that too on a Sunday; still every one was sure that the trip is going to be an exciting one.

Now to know more about TADA, the original name for TADA falls is Ubbalamadugu falls, we came to know this through the sign boards on the way. This place is in the border of Andhra Pradesh and Tamilnadu. Its in Nellore district. You can take NH-5 from Chennai and drive for about 85 kilometers to reach Tada. Just before you enter the town Tada, you hit the Kalahasti Road going west off NH-5.


About 15 Kms before hitting the Kalahasti road, we stopped for our breakfast. We packed bottles of water and lots of fruits for our lunch as getting food near the falls is difficult. Thiru (an experienced trekker as he claims and a very rash driver) was really helping the people who are falling behind on the road through the process called Sweeping (Kinda vocab from trekking dictionary that i learned on the way).

After reaching the TADA village, we had to travel for another 20 minutes to reach Ubbalamadugu Falls check post and from there the road condition started deteriorating. We stopped for clicking some photos (as Vyas turned to be our official photographer for the trip and he did a wonderful job) posing with our bikes. We had to pay 20/- rupees per bike for the entry into the falls and another 50/- for each camera.


Before reaching the parking lot, Vyas misadventure with Balaji's bike toppled both of them down into a big mud pool. We parked the bikes and clicked few photos before starting the trek at 12. Instead of following the trail created by the others, we decided to make our own way forward. We followed the water stream, which was so clear that we could see the rocks and fishes inside and crossing all the way through the slippery rocks. This place was very rich in diverse flora and fauna with lots of colorful butterflies and colorful insects of different size.

As soon as we reached the streams, everyone jumped into water as it was less deep with lot of fishes. Vino discovered a natural way of foot manicure using fishes as there were plenty and were tickling our feet. Soon the rain started which added a new dimension of pleasure to our trip. The rocks turned more slippery and hence dangerous but still the mood of the nature was so exciting.

Then we resumed our trekking, to meet with a Shiva temple on the way. It was from here that the terrain was fully rocky, boulders and had to jump from one big rock to another. Every now and then, we came across small water streams between the rocks. Then came another beautiful water stream between the boulders. We spend nearly an hour over there.

Then came the most challenging part of this trek. We had to climb a big and vertical rock which has some support at few places. Thanks to few more people who joined us in our trek who were helping us to climb this vertical rock. A few were helped to climb, and the rest were pulled up the rock on its smooth and slippery surface.

After climbing the last vertical rock, we walked some distance to find a beautiful pool between the 2 vertical mountain ridges and that exactly is the origin of the falls. The water was very clear and freezing too. The pool was very deep, and definitely it would be around than 40 feet.

Our star swimmer Vyas managed to reach the middle of the pool where he could find a small rock to hold. Balaji was eager to swim but all of us advised not to take any risk with limited knowledge in swimming. The others including me, Thiru, Vino and Visu stayed at the shallow end of the pool. It was the time to snap photos.

We came down and started unpacking our lunch. All the fruits were in jelly form because of our rough handling of the bags. After finishing the lunch by 4, we started our way down. We had to face the same challenge again, but this time it was climbing down the vertical rock. Climbing down was much easier than climbing up. We reached the parking lot at 6 Pm and started.




TADA is the beautiful place, but spoilt by some enthusiastic alcoholics who had broken their beer bottles and filled the place with lots of broken glass pieces all over. So make sure you trek this place with your eyes wide open, so that you don’t step on some glass pieces.





It was 10 Pm when we reached DoMS. Everyone was tired but the enjoyment and fun we had was unlimited. It was a real biking experience and a good spirit showed throughout the trip by everyone made the trip a memorable one.