[anti21]

This is why anyone looking for jobs should get multiple offers. They should even make it clear to the HR that you are talking with other prospective employers just as they are looking at multiple candidates.

If you are going with someone else's offer, inform the other company that you are rejecting their offer. A decent HR/Company will always understand. Those who will start throwing tantrums, good riddance. They are impractical people/company and generally what I've seen is that not working with them is better for your mental health. This way you maintain relationship with reasonable HR and if for some reason the other company pulls out on the last minute, you can go back to them informing that you can start ASAP. If they haven't found another candidate, you should be able to start there.

I had 4 offers and at each of the stage I kept HRs informed that this is what I am doing. The company that gave first offer, their HR understood, informed me that they can't offer what other companies are offering and wished me best for future. One ghosted me. Two others knew and left on me to finally decide which company I will join on the week before joining. When I decided to go with one for other, the other HR, while being a bit disappointed, congratulated me and wished me luck for future. The first one even reached out after 3 months to check if I wanted to join them. And I am sure the other ones also would have taken me back if they the position still open because I was absolutely transparent with them. One more company did ask me after first interview what I will do in this scenario and I simply answered that I will go with the best job overall which includes Quality of Work, WLB, CTC, Company Reviews etc. They decided to not go ahead with me and that was fine.

Also, always keep interviewing even if you are not looking for a opportunity. The benefits of this are:
1. You always have a interview pipeline setup. You never know why you might need it. Your resume will also be always up to date.
2. Interviewing is a different skill than what you do at the job most of the times, and you need to master it for when your "dream" company comes or just because that is how the world of hiring currently works. The best way to master is via practicing.
3. You stay on trend what market is demanding and stay on top of it. You also learn to explain what you are currently doing to an interviewer.
4. You get to learn what your market value is. Your market value is what a company is willing to pay to hire you to do your job. You might even learn that your market value is 100% more than what you are being paid. It becomes an important data point for you.
5. Interviewing is a 2 way street. You are judging them as well when they are judging you. Some times you might find some people during the interview process that will make you go I want to work with them or on what they are working on or even "I will never want to work with such a condescending set of people".
6. It is always OK to turn down an offer. Just because you interviewed with them and they gave you an offer, it does not mean that you have to accept that offer.

In the end, no one is going to have your interests first and foremost except for you. You owe your employer a duty of care, and a duty of confidentiality, but you don't owe them loyalty. Always remember "One day you might have a surprise meeting with your manager and someone from HR whom you've never met before, they don't offer you coffee, and now it's your former company" is always on the table. Plan accordingly.

Some of the above advice might not apply in outsourcing/consulting company, but as you climb the ladder, it would be applicable there also.

PS: I love the fact that WITCH companies carteled the 3 months notice period so it would make it difficult for an employee to leave. But now it is coming back to bite them and a potential candidate can easily get multiple offers during that time. So generally, now they look for people willing to join within a month but when you ask about their notice period, the call gets disconnected.

Also, software engineering and system design is a very complex task with no one size fits all model. Pick any 2 random companies and you will find that their codebase and system architecture will differ vastly 90% of the time. It is also not an easy task to break it into smaller chunks which is needed currently to automate any job. It might get automated one day, but by then most of the other jobs that rely on fixed knowledge like if x then y, would already have been automated. The example of these type of jobs are like Doctor, Lawyer, CA etc. In fact, IBM's Watson is already better at diagnosing cancer than any human doctor. There is already an app DoNotPay that lets you draft legal letters based on a chatbot where you provide info on what your issue is in US. This is what I see from inside the industry and I might be completely wrong or heavily biased on this though.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by anti21

1. You always have a interview pipeline setup. You never know why you might need it. Your resume will also be always up to date.

Wow, this is a like sales pipeline/funnel.

Originally Posted by anti21

3. You stay on trend what market is demanding and stay on top of it. You also learn to explain what you are currently doing to an interviewer.
4. You get to learn what your market value is. Your market value is what a company is willing to pay to hire you to do your job. You might even learn that your market value is 100% more than what you are being paid. It becomes an important data point for you.

Does this work both ways? I mean if the demand goes down after you joined at X amount, will you accept reduced salary?

I see what you are trying to do. You are trying to behave like a business. That model has been around for many decades. It is called independent consultant or contract worker. They usually get better pay than full time employees and can join and leave with limited fuss. They usually have readily usable skills, very up to date skills, they can be productive on day one. And either party can part with a short notice. I have worked with such people in the past, they are very common in USA. But they are expected to be professional, as in complete the project before leaving. Otherwise, they never get a repeat gig.

What I find strange is that you are applying those rules in a full-time employment scenario. I can understand you may want PF, gratuity, group insurance. Then you should join a placement company, which will give you PF/Gratuity/Insurance, but will place you in different companies as a contract worker for short durations according to your market value. Of course, they will take a cut for overhead and their margins. Still, you may make more than an employee and will be able to switch companies fast as market value raises and falls. You could also be a one-man company, to offer your short-term services according to market value.

Originally Posted by anti21

Also, software engineering and system design is a very complex task with no one size fits all model. Pick any 2 random companies and you will find that their codebase and system architecture will differ vastly 90% of the time. It is also not an easy task to break it into smaller chunks which is needed currently to automate any job.

Exactly. Some roles require high stability, especially product development, where the value of a long-term employee is hard to overstate. However, web development can be a short-term gig, and resource is rarely required after the work is done. Then there are jobs that are occasional, like network administration, where after the initial setup, you may need them only once in a month or so. It is cheaper to outsource that than hire a full-time employee or contract worker who won't have any work.

However, most IT work is not transactional like a doctor or a dentist. You could change doctor/dentist every month and still get good service. But for most IT work, prior knowledge of codebase/architecture is very necessary. Otherwise, the engineer has to spend months to become fully productive, and that time/expense is the investment made by the employer in the hope that the engineer will stay in the job long enough to justify the investment. Therefore, stability is one of the most important attribute an employer expects from a full-time employee. Full-time employees who don't have any plans to offer stability are a nightmare for employers. Such engineers should stick to independent consultant roles offering high value skills on short term basis.

[Abhiram]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

In my uneducated opinion the current business model has a finite life. Sooner rather than later some or a substantial part of the coding being done by software employees will shift to machines. In what time frame I cannot say, but likely within my lifetime.

Dear sir,
Take it from an educated expert, this will not happen. Humans have a hard enough time understanding the requirements of other humans, there is not much hope of a machine understanding the requirements and building code for humans yet.

The progress of machine learning and data science has been greatly exaggerated. We are capable of doing amazing things now, but these things need two essential resources - a brilliant technology (where all the new techniques come in) as well as a brilliant mind to go with it.

Data Science and machine learning are just helping us keep up with the astronomical amount of data that we are generating these days.

[anti21]

Originally Posted by Samurai

Does this work both ways? I mean if the demand goes down after you joined at X amount, will you accept reduced salary?

Well COVID was a very good example where many IT companies reduced employee salaries/stopped their bonuses/provided minimum hikes. We all know the record profits many of them made but they never gave back employees the back pay.

An employee always has to provide a minimum 2x value of what he is being paid. If he is not, the company will most probably make him redundant. This is just the reality of economics as businesses are also not charitable institutions. I know if I am not able to deliver a value of 2X of what I am being paid, I will be laid off. Generally companies don't tend to reduce salaries because they know it will make employee uncomfortable and they will anyway start looking out for jobs. Instead, they just sack them. If you being underpaid, most the companies will not bring you upto market standards unless you bring a competing offer. So yes, it kind of goes both ways.

Originally Posted by Samurai

I see what you are trying to do. You are trying to behave like a business. That model has been around for many decades. It is called independent consultant or contract worker. They usually get better pay than full time employees and can join and leave with limited fuss. They usually have readily usable skills, very up to date skills, they can be productive on day one. And either party can part with a short notice. I have worked with such people in the past, they are very common in USA. But they are expected to be professional, as in complete the project before leaving. Otherwise, they never get a repeat gig.

What I find strange is that you are applying those rules in a full-time employment scenario. I can understand you may want PF, gratuity, group insurance. Then you should join a placement company, which will give you PF/Gratuity/Insurance, but will place you in different companies as a contract worker for short durations according to your market value. Of course, they will take a cut for overhead and their margins. Still, you may make more than an employee and will be able to switch companies fast as market value raises and falls. You could also be a one-man company, to offer your short-term services according to market value.

No sir, this is not what I am saying. I am not advocating for switching hard and fast just for market value. Market value is just one of the components that you should consider. There are others like tech stack, quality of work, work life balance, independence giving, ability to try and fail, blameless postmortems etc. Some of these might be worth upto 20-40% of CTC in terms of value i.e. even if you get a 40% hike on your current CTC, you might not want to leave because your current company has this. What I am saying is ideally give 3-5 interviews in an year, even if you have no intention on leaving your company. This keeps you updated on your interviewing skills, keeps you aware of what the market is demanding, the trend it is moving towards and keep opportunities in pipeline if you are sacked suddenly. You can apply all this in your existing job also and see if your tech stack is updated with the market. This might improve you tech and result in saving costs. Also going with the tech prevalent in the market, makes hiring easy.

In fact I am against short term gigs because there the target is just do deliver X by Y no matter how you do it. So to achieve the target date, a long term thinking is not implemented where you try to forsee the problems which might occur 1,2 or even 3 years down the line and you make changes now to deal with it. In shot term gigs, the long term issues becomes someone else's problem. In a full time gig, you know it will be your problem so better to solve it now because there isn't contractually bound deliver by Y date. It lets you do a better job and makes you a better engineer.

In summary, I am just saying you don't owe loyalty to a company just like company doesn't owe you a loyalty (seen time and again). You are just one meeting away from being asked to leave.

Originally Posted by Samurai

Exactly. Some roles require high stability, especially product development, where the value of a long-term employee is hard to overstate. However, web development can be a short-term gig, and resource is rarely required after the work is done. Then there are jobs that are occasional, like network administration, where after the initial setup, you may need them only once in a month or so. It is cheaper to outsource that than hire a full-time employee or contract worker who won't have any work.

Yeah, I agree with you kind of there. Product companies need long term employees. Even the networking administration part has shifted to cloud and now you need to generate is a code when an where required. So even they need a long term. But the definition of long term has changed. It shouldn't take more than 2 weeks to get up to date on the codebase and architecture for a new developer if you have proper documentation. So if you are in a role of 1-2 years, you've already satisfied the criteria for long term in Engineering job.

The employees that need to really stay long term (5-10 years) are the CXOs and the VPs/Directors as these are the people who drive the long term vision of the company. They should be there when it is executed. If it fails, to take the blame and if it succeeds to distribute the credit.

Originally Posted by Samurai

However, most IT work is not transactional like a doctor or a dentist. You could change doctor/dentist every month and still get good service. But for most IT work, prior knowledge of codebase/architecture is very necessary. Otherwise, the engineer has to spend months to become fully productive, and that time/expense is the investment made by the employer in the hope that the engineer will stay in the job long enough to justify the investment. Therefore, stability is one of the most important attribute an employer expects from a full-time employee. Full-time employees who don't have any plans to offer stability are a nightmare for employers. Such engineers should stick to independent consultant roles offering high value skills on short term basis.

Honestly, if it is taking months for an engineer to become fully productive, there needs to be a serious relook into the on-boarding and hiring process (Unless a company is using in-house developed language which does not follow coding conventions and a running it on your own in house developed OS in a data center and have zero or old documentation). Most of the good engineers should be able to start working on day 1, and be uptodate within 2 weeks while working with some help on bugs/small tasks and 4 weeks where they don't need any help anymore and can easily pick up big tasks/improvements/epics. For this to happen, you need to have an up to date documentation on each of your services, your updated architecture and code flow, a defined coding convention, proper CI checks, proper local environment for devs to tinker on, and one click dev setup on a new laptop. They should get a laptop and all the rights they need on first day itself (ideally shipped to them before they join), have a reference to see what is where (which cloud, where are pipelines, how deployment happens, how to spin up local environment, how to setup your laptop to begin developing, how to commit, how to test, CI checks criteria, how to document etc). A buddy should be assigned who can clear their doubts that they will have. A good engineering manager should establish these as base practices in the company. Trust me, it has great benefits over long term.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by anti21

Honestly, if it is taking months for an engineer to become fully productive, there needs to be a serious relook into the on-boarding and hiring process (Unless a company is using in-house developed language which does not follow coding conventions and a running it on your own in house developed OS in a data center and have zero or old documentation). Most of the good engineers should be able to start working on day 1, and be uptodate within 2 weeks while working with some help on bugs/small tasks and 4 weeks where they don't need any help anymore and can easily pick up big tasks/improvements/epics. For this to happen, you need to have an up to date documentation on each of your services, your updated architecture and code flow, a defined coding convention, proper CI checks, proper local environment for devs to tinker on, and one click dev setup on a new laptop. They should get a laptop and all the rights they need on first day itself (ideally shipped to them before they join), have a reference to see what is where (which cloud, where are pipelines, how deployment happens, how to spin up local environment, how to setup your laptop to begin developing, how to commit, how to test, CI checks criteria, how to document etc). A buddy should be assigned who can clear their doubts that they will have. A good engineering manager should establish these as base practices in the company. Trust me, it has great benefits over long term.

Thanks for the tips. But you are talking about DevOps process. I am from a product company, so I am taking about technology domain. Unless we are extremely lucky to hire someone from exact domain, there is a long ramp up time. Before someone can we look at our codebase, they have to be familiar with many other complex opensource projects, like Freeswitch, Boost C++, openssl, libcurl, etc.

However, if you are from a domain where engineers can be productive from day one, then it is a really fantastic, and I really envy such a situation.

[greyhound82]

Originally Posted by Samurai

Thanks for the tips
However, if you are from a domain where engineers can be productive from day one, then it is a really fantastic, and I really envy such a situation.

+1.Even in services companies working in niche domain: For example My present team is working in imaging domains like Ultrasound, CT, Visible and UV. We are a services company catering to defence, aerospace, manufacturing - Automotive, Steels, etc. Most of our deployments are on-premises and on specialised machines as these require real time inferences

For software development - we are using C++ for deployments and prototyping with Python. We use mostly open source stacks like OpenGL, VTK, Nvidia AI stack, OpenCV, ROS. As it is a bit niche domain, it is very difficult to get people who have domain experience and have hands on in all these stacks. The only option is to take good developers and train them in the domain and stacks for that too in projects for immediate delivery(4 week minimum)

In our case, it is very difficult for a person to be productive on day 1 unless otherwise he has experience in all these domains, stacks and have a good hands-on with new literature.

[lapis_lazuli]

Originally Posted by Samurai

However, if you are from a domain where engineers can be productive from day one, then it is a really fantastic, and I really envy such a situation.

I can speak from my experience in hiring for embedded on ARM cores: good, experienced hires (as low as 3 years) can and do start writing from day 1 for all practical purposes. They take some time to get accustomed to the IDE or the in-house proprietary source control systems but that's it. These are a mix of Tier 1 and 2 hires but we have seen that even lower tier colleges have hidden gems who are at par. Productivity is of course measured as a team outcome as a project deliverable but the reporting tech lead is able to figure out the daily progress. I have had only one bad hire in the last 2 decades but that interview was taken during Covid lockdown and on phone. Company policy means he has to be "seen" in many other roles before he is deemed worthless. Colossal waste of money.

[JediKnight]

The whole discussion on how much time it takes for a engineer to get productive seems to be based on low-end maintenance/service kind of work, which I agree is the majority of the work that happens in India.

However this is not serious engineering. We develop very complex systems from scratch. A distributed team across the globe. And there is no connotation of "on-site" "off-site" or "US" "Indian" etc. Everybody is a peer. It takes on an average two years for a fresher that too someone with B.E CS from a top IIT to get really productive. And for core algorithm design a minimum of 10 years in the same domain is required. We only do campus placements or lateral hires of experienced people.

[greyhound82]

Originally Posted by JediKnight

However this is not serious engineering. We develop very complex systems from scratch. A distributed team across the globe..

Can you give some insight to the domain. 2 years ! , that too with proper math and computer science foundation. I thought a person well versed with optimisation, algebra, real analysis, topology, combinatorics , probability and statistics along with data structures and algorithms can solve most of the real world computational problems.

[am1m]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

...the employees writing on this thread that most of them,...keep complaining bitterly!

Well sir, I for one have reason to be grateful for employees recording their complaints. Before I joined my present company, I was evaluating offers from 2 companies. I didn't know anyone at either place so I had to depend on Glassdoor reviews. The company that actually made the better offer had all negative reviews from employees on Glassdoor, so I made the choice to join the company with more favorable reviews but lesser money.

To the credit of the HR manager at the first company, when I mentioned my reasons for not accepting their offer, he did say they acknowledged and did have a work culture issue and were working to fix that. I'm obviously no HR expert, but isn't that want a company would want to do to improve? He could have easily thrown it back and blamed it on his bitterly complaining employees.

I've also worked at another place where HR's solution to negative glassdoor reviews was to withhold the experience certificates of interns till they wrote a good review of their experiences on glassdoor!

Now I'm obviously no great talent, not a loss to any company if I don't join them, and both companies will still continue to attract people because of the job situation and population of engineering graduates in our country. But it seems to me that a company that can handle constructive criticism is better placed to improve and become a good place to work.


Obviously there will be some over-the-top negativity and some rants among those reviews, but as professionals we can certainly separate those out from the points that make sense. I'm sure a big company with expert management can do that far better without taking it personally and trying to shut down legit criticism.

And frankly the 3 month notice period in IT is certainly a legit complaint. Several posts have highlighted the inconsistencies between notice periods here and in the US offices for the same kind of role and work. (Including posts from 2 highly experienced TeamBHP members who are seasoned IT employers themselves.)

[V.Narayan]

Thank you @am1m for always writing such sensible balanced posts even on a thread like this where the natural inclination of most is to write with a pungent note. I'm offering a different perspective because this thread has largely become an echo chamber of IT employees who want the benefits of the IT industry but are unhappy of the negatives that come along with it - negatives that I assume they knew of from websites such as Glassdoor etc. Of course if we wish to make this an echo chamber then I am happy to shut up hereafter.

All,

I'm using member @am1m's post only as a reference point and this post is not exactly a direct answer to his thoughtful post above.

My children, as would be expected, are all in the work force now. My advice to them, which may apply to most young folks on this thread, is that there is no percentage in complaining - as opposed to offering constructive criticism and shutting the door and moving on. These negative emotions or expressions when indulged in too much stifle our mind's ability to think out our creative solutions and recharge our positive energy and rebuild. At least as a self employed that has been my experience.

A small medium entrepreneur {I was one} also gets kicked in the stomach, has rank injustice perpetrated against him/his business, faces discrimination from Govt regulators and large customers and yet has no boss to dump his woes on, no employer to hiss against and no WITCH/MAANG company to blame his misfortunes on. He has no choice but to take ownership of the situation he is in no matter how unfair. This forces him through a process of learning in the school of hard knocks that he has only himself to blame and only himself to use to lift him back by his boot laces.

Similarly as an employee in a corporate career we all have a right to be upset by unfairness or contracts being violated but we owe a duty of care to our own selves not to sink slowly into the swamp of anger, self pity and cursing because it limits our mental agility to find solutions - and jumping jobs is only one possible solution. I hold no candle for WITCH and MAANG companies nor am I a shareholder in any of them nor do I support their malpractices against employees knowing fully well the employee is more vulnerable by far. The world is not designed to be fair. The agitation we as employees feel towards WITCH/MAANG companies maybe our domestic servants often feel against us!

Originally Posted by am1m

Obviously there will be some over-the-top negativity and some rants among those reviews, but as professionals we can certainly separate those out from the points that make sense. I'm sure a big company with expert management can do that far better without taking it personally and trying to shut down legit criticism.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And frankly the 3 month notice period in IT is certainly a legit complaint. Several posts have highlighted the inconsistencies between notice periods here and in the US offices for the same kind of role and work. (Including posts from 2 highly experienced TeamBHP members who are seasoned IT employers themselves.)

It should be different for different jobs. Some need 3 months and some can do with 1 month as notice. Maybe 3-months is used by these big companies as a deterrent - quite likely; wouldn't put it past them. But in the Indian IT world where more jobs chase lesser prospective employees and employees seeking a change often have a choice of more than one job why crib when we have signed the contract presumably after reading the contract and doing our homework on the likes of Glassdoor etc. Where is our own agency to decide for ourselves and read what we sign and accept our decision. That is what grown-ups do - they read what they sign, think twice if they can live with those terms and then move forward.

It is not a question of is a two way 3-months notice fair or unfair. We signed up for it while we had more than one offer on hand (in most cases) so we had a choice -right? No one forced us to sign up for employment terms we may not like. What I see missing in most posts here is an infantile lack of ownership for ourselves and what we sign up for. A notice period or any other term is unfair only if we are coerced to sign up for it.

That higher salary IT pays compared to other industries is in part to compensate for its work environment shortfalls. The civil, chemical, mechanical, textile, electrical engineers who rush to IT instead of the industries they trained for do it for the extra wages IT pays and that comes at a cost. We can't have one without the other at least as things are today.

Compared to say 25 years ago, not a long time back frankly, social media sites like this thread, Glassdoor, Facebook etc have created a culture where some people have got trapped in a whirlpool of bitching and cursing and forgetting their own agency and creating a misleading notion that the world must shift on its axis to suit our needs. As an observer watching from afar that is what I see. I might be wrong.

[am1m]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

My advice to them, which may apply to most young folks on this thread, is that there is no percentage in complaining as opposed to offering constructive criticism and shutting the door and moving on.

That's sterling advice, will hold true in any era and for any industry, absolutely agree with this 100%

But I also think that we tend to be more extreme and vocal online. Most employees, however much we complain, continue to do the work assigned as required and professionally. Some of this is just venting and these avenues provide an outlet. The 'balance of power' is not shifting anytime soon.

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

It is not a question of is a two way 3-months notice fair or unfair.

It has to be pointed out sir, like a few posts have already mentioned- it's not about just employees complaining, it's the companies that are now moaning about candidates using the long notice periods to shop around and get better offers. A policy of their creation has come back to bite them.

[Arun Varma]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

Compared to say 25 years ago, not a long time back frankly, social media sites like this thread, Glassdoor, Facebook etc have created a culture where some people have got trapped in a whirlpool of bitching and cursing and forgetting their own agency and creating a misleading notion that the world must shift on its axis to suit our needs. As an observer watching from afar that is what I see. I might be wrong.

+1

I, for one, agree wholeheartedly with you, Mr. Narayan. I sincerely believe that this negativity creates a vicious cycle psychologically and becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that furthers and manifests our own belief systems.
What I also see missing is introspection. Introspection of:

• How good was our performance, objectively? Are we investing in our professional capabilities?
• What did we do/contribute to making this worse for ourselves?
• Can we take away lessons for ourselves to implement?
• Are we investing in professional relationships with our superiors (very often, this is mistaken for brown-nosing) and peers?
• Are we capable of meaningfully articulating what we want from our bosses/organizations? If not, are we investing time and effort in it?

Even if the vagaries of life and fate (not to mention terrible companies and bosses) have dealt a terrible deal (which obviously, can happen), most of us can learn something from it and make a change for ourselves for the better.

Not everyone can grow and become senior leaders, and not all senior leaders are deserving of their position, but the vast majority have reached the top by performing above and beyond, by playing and winning the game. And if all else fails, we can always change the game. In fact, sometimes, that may be the key to winning!

[V.Narayan]

Dear @Arun Varma and @am1m, thank you for sharing your inputs. I fully agree with @Arun Varma on the need for in depth introspection. It is the first step to self improvement. No person, regardless of profession or position moves forward in either the material world or spiritually without introspection. Even a successful mafia don has to introspect to stay ahead! Today having finished my first career and busy with my second I can look back and mentally thank those who troubled me the most, those who tricked me, bullied me, stole from me for those are the souls who unknowingly helped me grow and build my character muscle.

Team BHP by and large has a culture of helping and sincerely coming forward with well meant advice. A rarity on social media I believe. What we need here on Team BHP given the vast number of young professional is a thread where employees can seek counsel from the vast collective wisdom on Team BHP to address specific career counselling questions a member might have. A thread where the tone is to be solution focused and not echo chamber focused. I tried looking for such a thread. The one's I found are:-

1. Infosys, TCS & Wipro suffered 25% attrition last quarter
2. The plight of IT professionals in their 40s
3. Moonlighting | Are you for it or against? | Wipro & Infosys frown, Swiggy is okay
4. And this thread -
5. Jobs, Attrition and IT companies

All of them with a negative slant! Careers and career building skills don't get built by negativity.

One was a positive thread -

- The Career Advice Thread

That thread I believe needs more support.

Originally Posted by am1m

That's sterling advice, will hold true in any era and for any industry, absolutely agree with this 100%. But I also think that we tend to be more extreme and vocal online. Most employees, however much we complain, continue to do the work assigned as required and professionally. Some of this is just venting and these avenues provide an outlet. The 'balance of power' is not shifting anytime soon.

The balance of power between employee-employer isn't shifting till India's available working population keeps growing. Maybe in the next century when India's population is expected to decline change may come. In the meantime automation skews the picture often in favour of the employer. Speaking very bluntly as an employer even when negotiating with the union in my Mumbai unit I knew I could at last them and the employees they purported to represent. The employer has the staying power.

What we witness on this thread is really the metamorphoses of our society. Aspirations, attitudes, where they draw the line, where they came from are changing for both employer and employee. It is a very different India today than the one I started my career in 40 years ago. Young people's expectations from a job are running ahead of where the employers are stuck. Just like women's aspirations in our society have men's attitudes lagging behind them. Not just aspirations even what we do with our money is changing. At age 30 I had bought my first house on a salaried income. My eldest by age 30 had been on more foreign holidays than I have in more than twice his lifetime!- but no savings whatsoever!.

It has to be pointed out sir, like a few posts have already mentioned- it's not about just employees complaining, it's the companies that are now moaning about candidates using the long notice periods to shop around and get better offers. A policy of their creation has come back to bite them.

Originally Posted by Arun Varma

I sincerely believe that this negativity creates a vicious cycle psychologically and becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that furthers and manifests our own belief systems.
What I also see missing is introspection. Introspection of:

• How good was our performance, objectively? Are we investing in our professional capabilities?
• What did we do/contribute to making this worse for ourselves?
• Can we take away lessons for ourselves to implement?
• Are we investing in professional relationships with our superiors (very often, this is mistaken for brown-nosing) and peers?
• Are we capable of meaningfully articulating what we want from our bosses/organizations? If not, are we investing time and effort in it?

A golden list.

[BombayDragon]

Regarding the 3 month notice period - I have often thought if its feasible to file a PIL in the supreme court against the 3 month notice period for employees who are not at CXO level. The notice period to me is exploitative and anti work force and there should rightfully be labour laws which ban such long notice periods (this applies both ways i.e. when the employee resigns and also when the employer lays off people)
Maybe we should all crowdsource funds for a supreme court PIL and get a good lawyer (who can not be corrupted by the big IT companies to fight this PIL).

Another topic which requires a PIL is the lifetime tax imposed on cars which requires buyers to pay road tax once again if they move to another state. If Road Tax is not applicable across the entire country and cars need to be re-registered everytime we move to another state, then the road tax for all cars regardless of whether they are new or old should only be payable annually and the concept of 15 year and 5 year road tax should be abolished so that people are free to buy or transfer used cars from wherever they want in India and register them in their home state.

Both the 3 month notice period and lifetime road tax are examples of how the average citizen is exploited at every level in the worlds largest democracy. High time we crowd source PILs to plead our case in the SC.