First two years of working life is not big on paper but would be the one where you learn the most. Other than shaping the career it leaves a strong impression on the professional attitude/behavior you display. I am about to complete it so here goes the flash back. My technical knowledge is of no interest to anyone so i will focus on the culture part.
But first have a look at the major points which are necessary to describe the company culture, which is infact a complex thing to do. So i have borrowed ideas from a professional to describe the culture of a company which is neither good nor bad but something which you cannot ignore, and here ends the plagiarism thing which started with the title.
Culture essentially is made of five different components:
1)Physical component-This shows how much the company is investing on the business. It includes infrastructure,computers,machinery and other things.
2)Systems-These are the systems which are used to run the business. It could be homegrown or according to universal standards.
3)Processes- Processes link the employees to the systems, it could be very specific to the company.
4)Employee to employee communication- This explains the co-ordination across departments.
5)Manager to Employee communication-This shows the freedom of expression enjoyed by a employee.
Scene 1:
A Indian brand known for its stock market performance and more for the ethics/values displayed by its founder member than the actual work it has done. And my first company after graduation.
This company is known for the large campuses it makes, it makes you feel “My company is growing”. The computers are sleek, the campus looks like a resort and it invests a lot in the business and making the brand. Other facilities like gym/sports are excellent(provided you get time for that).
As far as my project was concerned which required sitting in a restricted area and working on onsite machines(yes in US), made you feel you don't belong to either of the company, the outsourcing company gave zero facilities(kind of suspected Indians it seems) and the company paying the salary could not let us enjoy the internal facilities because of the restrictions imposed by client.
It was lose-lose situation as far as timing/work was concerned. At times the onsite machines were slow and tribal knowledge was a priced possession. The nature of the software package used made experience more valuable than it should be.
The employee to employee communication was nil it seems, after completion of my training in a city on the east coast of India i was transferred to a city near the west coast, after reaching there i was greeted with a one liner saying ”we were not expecting you please go back to some other place”. Yes advantage could be taken of that, like a friend of mine did by going to center other than the one where he was transferred. The departments here don't work in tandem if it is not like giving presentations one after the another in the induction program.
Manager to employee communication is also absent if you don't happen to be a beautiful gal and you manager a lustful man. But before leaving i managed to tell my manager everything i wanted to which made her feel angry, she was caring, but ..................................
And one more thing which i must mention about this company is the fact that it selects employees on the fact that they can speak English(so that they can tell the client the work has not been done as expected and bargain for some more time) and they should look sincere even if they are not.
As a result all the employees are criticizing the company, i like to criticize everything i see, so i found many people who could listen to me and give some more negative points about the company. If i continue to write all of them i will die before i end. So better end it here but with a note telling no one looked happy in this company even if they pretended to be happy. The frustration was there in all the eyes even for those who would fight with you if you criticize the company.
Scene 2:
A small R&D center of a core technical product, working on advance features of the product's newer versions. This company is a classic example of how merger ruins a company, that is merger of unequals. Well that is not the point here, the parent company of this product is in cost cutting spree and it has to take on the mightiest in the industry which forces it to outsource and cut costs wherever possible. As a result the physical infrastructure is average. The systems here better than what i had seen and so are the processes. But what baffled me most was i could find some happy employees. I had come to a conclusion that job satisfaction for software engineers is bullshit. Money was never a point and here it looked less than average, then how can someone be happy. May be the employees are not at all ambitious so they are happy with whatever they get, but this was true for my first company also, what is the difference here? Not everyone was happy but few were. Was this a local phenomena?
I am never happy even i try hard but would i be happy if i am paid for something i like to do. This is a valid reason. He is not happy for the money he is getting or the recognition he is getting but he is happy because this is what he wanted to do and he is getting to do that everyday 8 hours a day or may be more.
Coming to other points a small set up has its own advantage and disadvantage, everyone knows you but the choice of friends is less. I put this to an end but would like to mention this company takes average/below average guys who are interested in the technology they work on. Dedication is valued more then intelligence and the interesting thing is what makes these employees happy is the struggle they have to make while solving problems. May be a more intelligent person would have solved them in seconds but you enjoy challenges only if you can solve them with a bit of a struggle and they are not far beyond your reach.
And the usual stuff where “Appraisals are not there to rate performance but to drive performance” is true at everyplace. In my first company people were graded every year which led many to work/boot lick only to get the reflection in the grades.
Scene -1:
I need to go back in time and relive the 2 months experience i had as part of summer training in a family owned manufacturing industry. This company is a leader in India as far as production is concerned for that particular product. This particular plant was bought from a multinational company which spoke for the good physical infrastructure. There were not very specific processes or i could not understand them as i could not connect to the people there as they came from a background which is not the same as mine. There was a sluggish attitude which could be seen from the body language of the people. But it made me understand dynamics vary from industry to industry. There was no question of communication at any level, departments used to fight out every issue. Manager-employee relationship is beyond definition, it could be anything.
Well i stop this as there are two important questions:
How to stop Congress from implementing reservation?No i don't want to send forwarded mails?Is there a practical and effective way?Is hunger strike a way??
How to stop BJP from bullying film producers? What will happen to payment/future of unit members if films are not screened because of whims and fancies of political parties.
