The “Mere paas Maa hai!” factor

Re: much blogged about …

One of the basic things is knowing you’ve made a difference. But it is hard to achieve in a job and unless you get in the ground floor of a company, that’d be hard to do. [the other way is to build something that almost everyone uses, aka platforms *heh*]

> what were your expectations from your boss/seniors and the management in general?

One of my basic expectations from a boss was transparency. I don’t really appreciate being told to work on something that was going to be cancelled at the end of the year or something that would probably never make it to production.

For them to be able to do that, I’d have to be treated as something other than as a ‘resource’, but as a ‘person’ with my own motivations and goals. This is something that becomes exponentially harder according to the heirarchy above me. When there are three people between me and the eventual decision maker, I can probably get my message pushed through with a bit of screaming. But when the number’s raised to five, I’ve found it literally impossible to communicate upwards in any useful way.

Secondly to be treated as an induvidual, you need to be seen as an independent entity – which also becomes progressively harder when the company base grows broader. To preserve the small company ethos while growing, is hard – the solution (IMHO) is to not to rush through the 500 people barrier quickly, but to do it over two years or something.

> In your opinion what could they have done to stem that rot?

One of the biggest things which can stem the rot is internal growth. I’ve worked with a couple of people in Wipro who’ve been there since mid/late nineties. I’ve found that people who are home grown have a better relationship with the heart of the company, than someone who is brought in late and pushed up above/with the old timers.

Hiring external talent might be a necessity, but when you start growing by hiring on top, rather than hiring upwards laterally from other places – you essentially are borrowing a bit of company culture *and* playing down your own. The practice is not limited to the leadership rung of career growth.

For example, take a hypothetical someone who has been performing very well individually at a task. Now having gained the confidence of the upper management – he (or she) should obviously be augmented with team members. But the particular kind of rot I’ve seen happen is when the person’s left to do the same task in a sort of “Don’t fix what ain’t broken” and hire new people to do the next iteration/generation of the product. And then to hire a team lead to satisfy the pyramid of power.

Having an outsider come in and do further development, while you’re being made a victim of your own performance is very very depressing. It is one of the most common ways you can destroy somebody’s work ethic, without realizing it. And then there’s performance inversion – something which’s on my ‘to blog’ list.

Last but not least : Nothing motivates a man more than to see his boss put in an honest day’s work.

Essentially, you have to give people something to work for rather than their monthly paycheck.