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Old 31st January 2025, 13:00   #391
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Re: Work Culture in India's Corporates

Two wrongs don't make a right. Otherwise every thief would want to plead 'not guilty' because some policeman took a bribe somewhere at some point in time.

Not giving a dignified work life to one's maid or servant or sub-ordinate must be deplored, regardless of who does it.
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Old 31st January 2025, 16:13   #392
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Re: Work Culture in India's Corporates

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I think this is false statement. Maybe Dutch are the second largest "exporter" of farm produce but not the producer.
Correct

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The Netherlands is the importer of agricultural products within the EU, and continues to be the second largest exporter of agricultural products in the world. Products from other EU Member States lead Dutch imports of consumer-oriented products. In 2022, the United States was the nineth largest supplier of these products to the Netherlands, with imports valued at over $1.5 billion. The port of Rotterdam is the largest port by volume in Europe and the eleventh largest port in the world. The Dutch are excellent traders, and much of the agricultural imports are re-exported directly or after adding value through mixing, repacking, or processing. The Netherlands is the world’s second largest exporter of agricultural products after the United States
Source: https://www.trade.gov/country-commer...%20the%20world.
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Old 1st February 2025, 14:36   #393
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Re: Work Culture in India's Corporates

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Originally Posted by hothatchaway View Post
It is a misconception that domestic help and people in related occupations are treated badly as a rule. This is no longer true. How many of us on this forum and the educated elite who work in the corporate sector do that?
I agree, they are mostly not over worked in typical apartment cultures these days. In-fact, we as a service getter are on the mercy of their time, absentisum without notice. In my apartment the house help have Sunday off + she took 2 days compulsory vacation (11th and 21st- we are thankful that these dates are well known to us) for his kitty party group. The house help these days are quite aware as well about the rates, qty of work and relatable salaries.

Dealing with these pain, we (& kids) are self reliant on most of the house chores now.
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Old 1st February 2025, 23:33   #394
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Re: Work Culture in India's Corporates

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Was getting into a lift with quite a few others. I hear this: “Told my HR that if I don’t get vada in the cafeteria by 5pm I am resigning.” Reply from his friend :”Good you did that. Its the least they can do” This attitude was a reflection of the extent HR would bend over backwards to retain staff.
There was a time when we used to get unlimited booze (beer) at one of the startups I was working at. They also gave imported gourmet snacks. However, people stole them for family and friends often, so they stopped giving them away

In recent times however, gen z wants remote work. People are tired of the WFO, spending several hours commuting and showing up regularly.

But IT is no longer in a boon phase. It is now harder to get jobs unless you are very well connected or willing to work for very low salaries. After a certain age, it is also so hard to keep up with the pace of tech, and if you can't establish yourself, you will be replaced by a more motivated junior at less than half the cost.

The game of politics, that is more subtle. In your friend circles, you can become unstoppable. All mistakes you make are pardon, even at the cost of company's progress. However, if you can't make friends, even working hard won't get your recognized well.

Then comes layoffs. These are unpredictable, especially in startup world and rapidly expanding companies.

Last edited by wheelspinner : 1st February 2025 at 23:39.
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Old 1st February 2025, 23:42   #395
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Re: Work Culture in India's Corporates

I think the work culture what we have now is an import of the western, specially American culture.

There's too much emphasis on achievement - measured not just by how well you do your job in reality, but showcase it, and show above and beyond contribution.

On one hand, we keep reading how surveys put about 6.5 hours as truly productive capacity but official capacity is always measured at 8 hours, work assigned is for 12 hours with a timeline of 6 hours. How often we see Job Descriptions asking ability to prioritise in a dynamic environment and be self-motivated? The only thing they mean is that as an organization we are as ad-hoc and unplanned we can be, and we don't actually know or have the time to tell you what needs to be done! Go figure!

I had a change in my management about six months ago. They changed things so arbitrarily that they are having to reconsider their decisions every now and then. When I tried to tell them, I was branded as resistant to change. But whenever I or my team questioned, they said - oh! It's an iterative process. The boss has given this mandate! And so on.

They even lacked the basic understanding that in a manual process, a 100 percent accuracy cannot be realistically or sustainably achieved. I had to fight about a month to get a quantitative method designed to measure quality. They even refused to acknowledge work planning based on effort estimates and arbitrarily fixed SLAs. Does it sound familiar? The key thing to note is that all this happened from people sitting thousands of miles away, while the management on this side is happy to play along with whatever the other side says. And a middle level manager like me is left with having to manage expectations of my team and my management - needless to say, they are on opposite directions.


So much about data driven decisions, change management, EQ, etc. Much of it is only for LinkedIn posts. Ultimately all rests on managing perceptions. End of rant.

Last edited by theabstractmind : 1st February 2025 at 23:44.
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Old 2nd February 2025, 00:00   #396
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Re: Work Culture in India's Corporates

I find it difficult to find any logic between India development and people in salaried jobs working without any balance.

If India has to grow then it can only do so if on multiple fronts work happens and not just flogging salaried class. Eg
- Farm sector is largest job sector in India but per capita income is super low. Why not structurally solve.
- Resources are limited but population exploded since Independence like there is no tomorrow.
-Govt jobs are less on nation building and intellect driven and more on British era clerkal side (not all, there are some really good ones).
- So many laws that building a business in India is so difficult. Compare this to lets say Europe or US etc.
- No one / few sectors where India has a lead. Every country to grow needs it eg China has manufacturing and now in science, Korea has Technology, big industries, K pop, Thailand has tourism, Russia has oil and arms industry. What one big sector does India has that attracts the world?
-Lastly no amount of hard work can replace civic sense. Even if we compare ourselves to other countries in SEA we will find ourselves on civic duty at very last.

So it takes multiple things to work in tandom and not just flogging salaried class to death.

Last edited by heydj : 2nd February 2025 at 00:02.
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Old 2nd February 2025, 09:10   #397
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Re: Work Culture in India's Corporates

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Originally Posted by hothatchaway View Post
It is a misconception that domestic help and people in related occupations are treated badly as a rule. This is no longer true.

Many of them are no longer live in servants and work in multiple households. The time that they spent at each house is also fixed and they will not slave away just because you want them to.

Anybody who lives in Mumbai and has employed maids will know what I am talking about. And now this is true in most other cities too.
.
While mandatory holidays are indeed decided up front in cities like Mumbai, and pay has also improved, pls realize that costs have also skyrocketed. Nobody is doing a favor by paying these folks a (somewhat) living wage.

Anecdote (happened twice):
The lady who works at my place has twice taken a day off because she was sick. However, she was back the next day while still clearly unwell.
When I asked her why she came in to work, her response was that people in the other houses she works at yell at her if she takes any additional time off. This while she could very well pass on her illness to those families.
Callous and illogical both.
We have a long way to go on the equality and dignity of labor front.
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Old 3rd February 2025, 19:54   #398
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Re: Work Culture in India's Corporates

The discourse on this thread has narrowed down to the unhappiness of the IT employee. This happens often on Team BHP on a soft topic like work, jobs, bosses, remuneration. I would like to broaden this discourse to make it more meaningful as a discussion. Many on Team BHp may not agree with me at all.

Work Culture is not just about what employees think or feel or want. Work culture is also about the employer and his point of view and of what the employee brings to the table. It takes two hands to clap as we all know. To their credit most Indian employees are sincere and hardworking. Further more to their credit most stretch when needed. The destabilizing and ani-investment union culture that was rampant in the 1960s and 1970s has all but disappeared except in West Bengal and Kerala. By and large the Indian employee is obedient and willing which helps the employer and the team. You'll never hear in India statements such as, "this is not in my job description". This was a statement I heard more than once in Hungary and Slovakia from junior & middle employees.

On the flip side our entry level employees in almost most lines of trade except for example doctors, chartered accountants, pilots & mariners come with limited practical knowledge, skills and ability to apply. Companies must perforce invest time simply getting them upto base one to become productive. Some training period is understandable and essential but our young people {not their fault} enter the work force too raw to be useful. Wages in India for the most part have risen way ahead of inflation in the past 25 to 30 years. This is actually making us less and less a low cost economy while saddled with high costs of weak infrastructure, inefficient & costly supply chains & transportation, expensive financial capital and so on.

In several posts on bosses, work hours, IT companies as employers etc I sense high indeed very high anger from the writers. My humble advice to these young men and women, from my own life experiences, are two -- first if you are so deeply upset then move on; second if we are so deeply upset then at least a part of the problem lies with us and our inability to cope with the issue or to solve the issue. The fact that employees have a boss or employer to rant against does them {the employee} a disservice because it takes away mental bandwidth & attitude bandwidth needed to resolve the matter. An entrepreneur has no one to rant against he can only either get his head around the alleged unfairness being meted out to him or die.
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Old 3rd February 2025, 23:09   #399
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Re: Work Culture in India's Corporates

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Originally Posted by V.Narayan View Post
first if you are so deeply upset then move on; second if we are so deeply upset then at least a part of the problem lies with us and our inability to cope with the issue or to solve the issue.
While I agree with a majority of your post and yes, there are two sides to work culture, unfortunately I feel this above comment is something that does not seem to align with me.

If it was this easy to move on to different jobs when as an employee I'm very upset, then we would not have so many people pouring out their experiences here or social media in general. And comments from the esteemed business leaders on work hours would not have triggered immediate reactions from many of the employees a majority of whom are just cogs in the wheels that keep their leader's business moving forward.

And to attribute part of the problem back to the employee themselves only shows the blind spot of the employer in my opinion. I believe from my experience most employees do what they can within their ability to remedy challenges they run into in their roles/jobs and try to cope. It's not that all situations or circumstances have a solution where everyone comes out a winner. In fact, trying to figure a way out of making the problem manageable is the first and only recourse available to an employee because the option of walking away to another job requires non-trivial effort.

While I don't have experience of non-IT, but I've been in consulting type engagements long enough to have seen customer counterparts across industry verticals and domains in most geographies. Unless someone is a super specialist or has niche skills, moving on from a job when faced with difficult situations is not something I've seen very often as the first option. Most employees do make the effort to change their work environment so that they can continue to put in a meaningful effort.

But even if their ability prevents them from beginning unable to move to a different job or change their current one for the better, I'm not able to get why it becomes the employee's fault when they express an opinion about the worthies in leadership positions. If the larger point is everyone on both sides have issues to sort through, yes that's understood, but why should employers or CXOs say what they want and expect no feedback?
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Old 4th February 2025, 07:23   #400
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Re: Work Culture in India's Corporates

Dear @vijaykr, Thank you for reading my post and for your thoughtful response. I am not here to stand on a soapbox to advocate for employees or employers in India. The point I am making to the good young members on our forum is what I tell my grown up kids, nephews and nieces - there are always two sides to a coin and the agency to manage the situation at work is at least partly in your hands if you can grow out of being caught in the web of social media's echo chamber of ranting. Social media has done a great dis-service to the young where ranting is encouraged and sucks people into a vortex of no solutions. Social media tells young people employee good, employer/boss bad, ranting good, thinking like an adult bad. It encourages a crab like mentality.

For old hands like me who were 3/4ths of the way through our careers before the explosion of social media this observation is stark. Sure there are bad bosses, plenty of them. There are, in the same vein, troublesome neighbours, politicking colleagues, dishonest Govt officials, even bad spouses and so on. The way out is to learn ow to cope with them and get around or over them. Grumbling and ranting, so endemic on social media, takes away your bandwidth to think through your solutions with a calm mind. To each his own I guess. Some want solutions. Some want sympathy and reassurance over their ranting. Ranting didn't get anyone anywhere. But it helps us spin our wheels and have others reassure us we are doing a great job jogging on the spot. Just my views based on my experiences. Quite possibly these will not find favour with several on Team BHP.

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And comments from the esteemed business leaders on work hours would not have triggered immediate reactions from many of the employees a majority of whom are just cogs in the wheels that keep their leader's business moving forward.
Not sure what this has to do with my post. Can't see any reference to SNS, NRN or 90-hour work weeks in my post. Apologies but the sarcasm is lost on me.

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And to attribute part of the problem back to the employee themselves only shows the blind spot of the employer in my opinion.
We can't change the employer. The only lever we have is to improve our skills to deal with challenges. Our bosses who are usually only a few years senior to us are the easiest problem cases life throws at us. And if we cannot handle that even or willing to learn, then the bigger problems that may come later in life and career will drown us. The social media echo chambers won't tell us this.

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I'm not able to get why it becomes the employee's fault when they express an opinion about the worthies in leadership positions. If the larger point is everyone on both sides have issues to sort through, yes that's understood, but why should employers or CXOs say what they want and expect no feedback?
Employees are most welcome to express their opinions. Similarly they should accept that the same right accrues to the employer too! If you see this and similar threads on Team BHP you'll find about 95% of the posts by employees and only 5% from employers. Feedback works both ways.

Last edited by V.Narayan : 4th February 2025 at 07:28.
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Old 4th February 2025, 09:43   #401
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Re: Work Culture in India's Corporates

Dear @Narayan sir - I have always appreciated your ability to provide another perspective to not only this but on several other topics on this forum which I follow.

My intent was not to nitpick and argue for the sake of it. For context, I was also half-way through my career before the social media frenzy started. So, my comments were not coming from my own personal and others' experiences I have observed directly; not so much the current situation of most issue first getting aired on social media to be discussed threadbare.

I agree with you that venting/ranting is by itself not a solution for any situation and won't get the individual any further along towards resolution. But just complaining about it doesn't mean that nothing else is being done or will be done. I feel the vocalization or expression of frustration at a difficult situation is a common precursor for most people. Then folks likely ruminate and evaluate possible options to address the problem - note I am not going into whether or how much practical or reasonable the solutions are here. Granted there would be some who stop with the venting/ranting or keep continuing in that vein to the exclusion of any further action to actually resolve their situation. But it would be a gross simplification for us to assume most young (or even middle-aged folks) don't do much beyond complaining about their employers and job-related issues without taking corrective steps - move out or fix things.

The point around long work hours was not meant to be sarcastic, but just to show that if it was easy enough to move jobs, then folks who were upset by those leaders' remarks would just do that without spending time explaining their perspective. That said, I believe that at least some of these people would give a thought on what/how they can change themselves or their work situation for the better

All this said, I am with you totally that work environment feedback goes both ways (benefit of lots of varied life experience!) and most bosses & employers have a reasonable and valid point of view too. Regarding the % of posts in any media, it is expected to be skewed towards the employees since the # of them is much higher compared to the other side, no - be it bosses, leaders, employers, business owners etc. But I personally don't set too much store by the number itself but look to the points being made themselves. End of the day, we have to be open to hear out and consider a viewpoint different from our own even if (and especially if) it doesn't resonate with our world view. Path to self-growth and all that... Cheers!
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Old 4th February 2025, 10:01   #402
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Re: Work Culture in India's Corporates

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Originally Posted by V.Narayan View Post
The discourse on this thread has narrowed down to the unhappiness of the IT employee. This happens often on Team BHP on a soft topic like work, jobs, bosses, remuneration. I would like to broaden this discourse to make it more meaningful as a discussion. Many on Team BHp may not agree with me at all.
@V.Narayan - well said. I am not quoting your entire post, but will allude to some of the gems you have posted here

I am not sure whether I mentioned in this thread or another one on the 4 day work week, we really need to broaden the discussion and move away from being focused on IT/IT Services.

Work culture is a combination of guidelines defined by the employer as well as the response by employee. It does not happen on day 1, the culture develops over a period of time. It is also not static. Work culture changes as times change. If you see most of the firms that have been in existence for the last 40 years, you will see that culture has changed to embrace new ideas, paradigm shifts etc. We are all part of building the work culture of an organisation and need to look at it in the context. It is akin to societal culture which develops over time

Today, I find a lot of fresh work seekers have little patience for the job at hand. Fresh workers want quick turn around on success, renumeration, hikes, benefits, growth etc. A regular job done needs a pat on the back and if that does not happen, somehow they have a problem. I am sure there are exceptions, but I am talking about the larger group. I have had the fortune to work with some of these folks both as a colleague in my previous job as well as a Coach in my current vocation. Some of the challenges I hear as a Coach is that people who have been at work for 6 months to a year have a challenge in recognition, renumeration and growth. Enough said as I might be digressing from the core topic

As Narayan said - you can either move on or be part of the solution. There is no point in ranting and expecting things to change. Unless the broader group that you are in is geared up for change, you cannot expect that to happen. I also find that employees do not want to have an honest dialouge with their employer. Unless you put your expectations to employer - you will still be a square peg in a round hole
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Old 4th February 2025, 10:03   #403
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Re: Work Culture in India's Corporates

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On one hand, we keep reading how surveys put about 6.5 hours as truly productive capacity but official capacity is always measured at 8 hours, work assigned is for 12 hours with a timeline of 6 hours. How often we see Job Descriptions asking ability to prioritise in a dynamic environment and be self-motivated? The only thing they mean is that as an organization we are as ad-hoc and unplanned we can be, and we don't actually know or have the time to tell you what needs to be done! Go figure!
I worked as a sub-contractor of one of the Big 4. We spent hours on meetings about a small decision, which needs a very simple fix. Several meetings back to back with no outcome because someone doesn't understand the fix or, we lack approvals from another team that is supposed to do some kind of risk analysis of the decision or, take approval. Productivity in real life is not as high as 6.5 hrs. Because you have at least 4-5 hrs of meetings. Then some chit chat with other team mates. Finally, you get to the work but you can be distracted by that time
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Old 4th February 2025, 10:05   #404
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Re: Work Culture in India's Corporates

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Originally Posted by V.Narayan View Post
The discourse on this thread has narrowed down to the unhappiness of the IT employee. This happens often on Team BHP on a soft topic like work, jobs, bosses, remuneration. I would like to broaden this discourse to make it more meaningful as a discussion. Many on Team BHp may not agree with me at all.

Work Culture is not just about what employees think or feel or want. Work culture is also about the employer and his point of view and of what the employee brings to the table. It takes two hands to clap as we all know. needed.
An entrepreneur has no one to rant against he can only either get his head around the alleged unfairness being meted out to him or die.
Fair. But much about the rant is not frustration. It is about how humans are not treated as humans and made to work like machines. The work culture is not just about the employer but also about the tone the employer sets, the kind of managers they hire. At what cost is the achievement of objective is achieved. Treat employees like people and not machine, treat them with empathy and most would happily go that extra mile. Ask a middle manager like me who has to put up a fight with my managers on one hand to bargain a good deal for the team, yet meet the unreasonable expectations of the higher management. You might understand.

All said and done, many of us understand that going a bit extra is often required and we are all ok with it. It is just that when after all that, you are told this won't be enough, culture issues crop up. It is when bloody is squeezed out and no more sweat, that the issues crop up. I could go on. But I think I have said the most important bit.
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Old 4th February 2025, 13:11   #405
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Re: Work Culture in India's Corporates

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Originally Posted by V.Narayan View Post
To their credit most Indian employees are sincere and hardworking. Further more to their credit most stretch when needed. The destabilizing and ani-investment union culture that was rampant in the 1960s and 1970s has all but disappeared except in West Bengal and Kerala. By and large the Indian employee is obedient and willing which helps the employer and the team.
Obedience should not be an expected quality from an employee, that will be equal to considering them as slaves. It is true that Indians are willing to help employers with work outside of their job description. This is employee doing a favour and employer should be thankful for that. But from my personal experience, such people end up being the least compensated and most exploited in IT sector.

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Originally Posted by V.Narayan View Post
You'll never hear in India statements such as, "this is not in my job description". This was a statement I heard more than once in Hungary and Slovakia from junior & middle employees.
I'll give you an example. You call a person to clean your home and agreed to pay 600 rupees. Next day when the person has finished cleaning the house, will you ask him to do the dishes as well for no extra payment? You know that the person might help you out of kindness or fear of loosing a customer.

Last edited by Joe367 : 4th February 2025 at 13:28. Reason: Issue with Quoting
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