Job-seekers join great companies but leave because of bad bosses

It happens...Encountering someone who bad-mouthed you, offended you is terrible. What’s even more terrible is if he/she is your boss. Then don’t be surprised, you are not alone: D .It’s just not enough if you get a good job in a good company, one needs to be lucky to get a good boss too... This is one of my realizations after being 5 years in the industry.

If someone (who is intelligent also) is in starting years of industry, one shall immediately quit the current job and get a new job. But as the years go by, one learns to tolerate bad boss around. There is no point in fighting back because that creates a hole in the resume.

But what makes a bad boss?

1.     Lack of Trust

Most often I have seen that these people don’t trust that a task can be delivered. It can be due to many reasons.

1.  Person lack skills-> Then provide him      sufficient        training and time and give him a chance
2.  Previous Failed Experience -> Point out the reason for failure and ensure the mistakes don’t happen as part of process. This is called Quality check. Provide another opportunity to boost his confidence and morale and provide more such learning opportunity instead of putting him/her down.
3. Biased opinions-> this ends up in giving the task to same old experienced people and curbs the new talent.

2.     Lack of communication:

When a junior employee commits a mistake, then it can be communicated to him explaining him what was wrong on his/her part. Expecting other person to be a mind –reader unnecessarily creates both technical and non-technical issues.

           

3.     Know It All Attitude:

Curbing ideas when they are to be generated is like killing a person’s enthusiasm at work. Yelling at employees only makes them feel reprimanded. One needs to be open minded and learn from juniors to create an innovative work environment.

Being a manager, one should know the skills of bridging the gap between higher management and engineers and create a positive environment to achieve the organization goal. Managers should handle failures in a positive way to make it a learning experience rather than a fearing experience. Everyone in the organization has their own role to play. A Manager is a manager as he has the experience to handle things and see the big picture and guide the juniors, not make their job miserable. One needs to understand that everybody is an employee first and their designations follow next, not the other way around...

An Inspiring Story of Anu Aga

Some people are born with Silver spoon, yet life does not spare them from facing the harsh difficulty. One such story is the story of Anu Aga.

Anu Aga, the ex-Chairman of Thermax India has been awarded the Padma Shri.

Her name featured on the list of awardees announced by the Government on the occasion of Republic Day 2010.

Here is a short excerpt from a 2005 article on Arnavaz Aga

Aga is always in her trademark cotton or silk saris, whether it’s for a talk on women achievers at a convention organised by the Indian Institute of Management (Kolkata), for the pages of the November issue in Business Today as part of the top 25 most powerful women in business, or while accepting the lifetime achievement award at the Financial Express-Electrolux Women in Business Awards, as she did last year. Just like the sari, the no-nonsense expression on her face, reflecting steely determination, is an intrinsic part of her.

This calm determination has helped her family and company Thermax India tide over trying times. The death of her husband Rohinton in 1996 from a heart attack thrust her into the chairperson’s role of Thermax, an engineering company that was begun by her father A S Bathena three decades ago and later managed by Rohinton. Just as Aga, till then director of human resources, was finding her feet as the head of Thermax, she suffered another deep loss – the death of her 25-year-old son Kurush in a road accident.

At the time, Thermax’s growth curve dipped and share prices plummeted from Rs 400 to Rs 36. An anonymous letter from a shareholder accusing her of letting him down forced her to take stock of the situation. “I realised I wasn’t capable but was only pretending to run the business,” she says. Losing no time, she detached herself from day-to-day operations and brought in a foreign consultant to restructure the company – the move revived its fortunes.

Since its turnaround, Thermax, with its presence in 14 countries, has emerged as a leading manufacturer of engineering products and systems for industries. “Despite stiff challenges at work and crises at home, she succeeded in separating her ownership and professional responsibilities, so crucial in the leadership of a closely held family enterprise,” recalls P M Kumar, former head of human resources, under whom Aga had trained in the 1980s.

How NOT to BELL the (wild) CAT????

I have seen people slogging for CAT for months and years, solving all competitive booksand exams.Each year thousands of candidates appear for the CAT; only few make it totheir desired B-schools. I used to wonder, does solving CAT, getting to B-school makeone a good manager. But it’s my personal view point n don’t have anything about thosebanging the CAT.

Would like to present an interesting story of my friend and his tips on how not to prepare for the CAT !!!!

 Tip No 1: Join CAT classes

First step join a famous coaching institute which offers some 5-6 thousand pages of material and some 50 prep tests including mocks and other tests. Join weekend batch and pray for some good looking girls in your batch

Tip No 2: How to ensure the time spent in class is worthwhile.

On the first day of the class as soon as you enter scan for girls again and take a seat as near as possible to the hottest girl u find in the class and once done try to strike a conversation with the girl.. hardly people care for the class.. If the girl talks to u then u will be more than happy that the thousands u paid the for the coaching centers are not going to be wasted..

Tip No 3: Time Spent after class hours.

After the class, if u are lucky to have had the conversation wait for the girl to leave and follow her on the bike and offer her a ride... whole class goes on staring the girl and observing her tiniest moments hardly anything written on the book,

Tip No 4: First Mock Test

Weeks pass by mocks start; first mock would be a disaster at this rate of reading then get bit serious for 2 -3 days and then same time work increases at office and u end up staying late to meet releases deadlines, customer issues.

Somehow these things always come when cat is around.. When there is no exam there would be weeks at office when there was now work and suddenly whole lot of work comes.

Tip No 5: On Mock Test Disaster- Failures are stepping stones

You curse the coaching class for putting that hot girl in the same batch. You curse yourself for staring at her rather than not listening to the class and then you curse the coaching class again for not teaching well enough after charging so much fees and then u start to prepare and suddenly remember various online forums such as totalgadha.com or pagalguy.com which u never used for your prep. and then u realize just weeks before that it’s such a useful site where u would have got a lot of help and u again blame yourself for not seeing them earlier.

u see the mock scores of people scoring 120+ out of 180 and then feel bad that u wasted one year and still never crossed 60+ out of 180.

Tip No 6: Peaking at the right time as our Dhoni says!!

Rare mocks u feels happy when you clear the cutoffs for both the section. but in the same mocks there will be lot of people who would have scored almost out of out and even despite all this u convince yourself that anything can happen on the D-day. it all depends on that day doesn’t matter what u prepare n what u didn’t and then u also console yourself saying that AIMCATS are way tougher than actual CAT and thus your below par score in AIMCAT is equal to a par score in CAT finally Sept comes and then the forms are sold

Tip No 7: Some Time Pass to Relax already stressed mind...

Go to the axis bank on day one and think that by 9 if I go ill take the form n go to office from there but by 9 there will be a queue as long as one km in front of the bank waiting for the cat forms then call up your manager and tell him some reason that you will be late n will reach by noon. while standing in the line u count all the beautiful girls and wish that they worked with u and then scold your manager for not getting good girls in your team and once u get the form u book a last slot hoping that it will give u extra 2 3 weeks to prepare once the exam starts but essentially all those 3 weeks full end up reading the CAT experiences on pagalguy where people post their test experiences and invariably everyone who posts tells at the end 2 things

One that the CAT was lot easier than AIMCATS... Suddenly u feel happy that u had already came across that thought during your prep

Second that people who have not yet taken the test should not read the exam experiences

but invariably the only people who reads them are the ones who want to take the exam as the ones who finished with it will be either happy n partying that their exam was well or sad and still be partying that this would be their last party and that from next day they would start for the next season

Tip No 8: On days just before Exam

Two days before the exam the tension sets in and then u realize reading somewhere on the online forum that u should not read a lot just before exam so u stop it and then u start praying to all gods. Somehow people remember gods just before exams or when they are in trouble. u make all sort of offering pray to balaji that you will offer your hair if u get good score as if balaji would give u a better score for your hair..

Tip No 9: D-Day

And then on the exam day u go in eagerly and come back utterly disappointed. You come home after doing badly and eagerly see online if the exam was diff for others too.

Tip No 10:  Better Luck Next Time

Seeing others decent attempts one realizes that his exam was bad and that day u promise that the next year you will bell the cat. Prepare for the next week or so for the next year exam n then feel that u need break and stop it altogether.

Finally one last line is at the end of cat season neither one got the girl nor did he crack the exam except for losing the money 

So for guys all out there preparing for CAT, hope it was good lessons learnt J.. Good luck..

Work in Product Companies vs work in Service Companies

I started my career in a product company. After being worked for 3.5 years, I decided to switch job to a service company where I experienced shocking change wrt work culture, quality of work etc. Hence I would like to write down my experience of working in a product company to that of a service company. It would be helpful for those in dilemma while switching jobs.

First of all, there is a drastic change in work culture between two kinds of business.

In a product company, there is usually a team where there is already a defined process, tools, methodologies and experienced people to provide guidance. It would be lot helpful especially for freshers. When compared to a service company, there is no defined process as such (although many might claim to be a CMM level 5 company). Team members are not very cordial as there is immense pressure on each individual to a short deadline.

In terms of quality of work, there is deeper understanding of domain, technology in a product company where as domain knowledge, understanding of tools hardly matter in a service company. The Nature of work can be very stressful in a service company where one is expected to put in extended working hours during weekdays and weekends. Creativity and innovation in work generally tend to take a back seat in a service company due to work pressure and short deadlines.

But one can expect a quick vertical growth in a service company compared to Product Company.

Working in Service Company is like investing in short term stocks where you expect to get quicker smaller returns where as working in product company is like investing in long term stocks where one can expect huge benefits after long time of many years.

But one might tend to feel stagnated and at times frustrated due to slow nature of environment in a product company especially if one doesn’t like what he does. In those scenarios, one should take a right decision to switch job based on interest rather than points like money, level of experience and designation. It’s up to an individual where he is happy working and what his priorities are…..

Recycling for a Better Tomorrow- by Modhu

Eventually small particles of plastic become part of our soil and percolates into our water bodies. But what happens to the plastic that has not found a place in the land fill or in the recycling factory? They just drift around us. Get stuck in tree branches, swept into drainages to clog them, float on lakes making them ugly and find their way into oceans only to be confused by marine life to be food. To mitigate all these problems and the impact that plastic bags have on our environment, the local municipal bodies and Government has laid some regulations on the usage and kind of plastic that is to be used in the market. But is this enough? Do we need moral policing by our governing bodies to tell us about using plastic bags and its effect on the environment?

Here's my friend who is trying to do his bit to avoid plastic.

Me: Hi, Modhu.. What is ur prayaas all about? Could you  explain?

Modhu :

We at Prayaas believe that every plastic used suffocates our environment just that much more. Prayaas is an initiative of like-minded people. We aim to make the best use of available resources and be part of the growing pool of groups building a clean and green society. We believe that plastic can just not be removed from our daily life. We can make a conscious effort to regulate the use of plastic and hence generate less plastic waste. All we need to do is say NO to Plastic Bags and carry our own bags as much as possible when we go out shopping. In this effort we at Prayaas have bags called SyUta made from old clothes.

Me : How good are these bags?

Modhu: We have ensured that the bags are sanitized before being sold to citizens. Not only are the bags recyclable, but they last longer, are durable, can be easily washed and are compact. We encourage people to give away their old clothes in exchange for these trendy bags. The exchange achieves a dual purpose: Old clothes are given a fresh lease of life and people find another reason to say No to Plastic Bags.

We also create job opportunities for the unemployed by hiring them to tailor these bags.  So every time you buy a cloth bag from us you can feel proud of the chain you are an integral part of.

Me: What are your other activities?

Modhu : Well the buck doesn’t stop here with Prayaas, we have an artisan who can convert any household waste into attractive flowers, and we call as Pushp.

The flowers are made from plastic covers, recycled paper, cloth, invitation cards, sea shells, mango pips and other waste that generally lands in the trash. The flowers are crafted beautifully and arranged in Ikebana style. It is an apt answer to your general confusion of finding an appropriate gift or for home décor. One look at Push and you will be mesmerized by the craftsmanship and the materials that have been transformed.

Me: Your message?

Modhu: Join our movement in reducing the plastic bag consumption and in recycling old clothes and house hold waste. For a better tomorrow, let's recycle.

Being Spiritual

In today's fast pace world, we hardly find time to meet out daily chores. One word heard most often I hear from my maid to drivers to friends to relatives is that there is no time. Even waiting in traffic signals has become so intolerable that there is continous honking of horns the moment signal changes from red to green.This has resulted in change in lifestyle with the food we eat to the way we socialise and handle ourselves.

 

But have we realised the impact it has caused over a time. Most often, health problems occur due to stressful life. It also results in unsatisfied relationships, lack of social health, below performance and finally TOTAL BURN OUT.

My commuting time in bus from home to office gives me ample time to think about where I m heading to?I have to thank traffic jams because this is the time I get to watch people, observe them and have self realization.

The good old practice of getting up early, eating at home and on time,and having family dinners together and sleeping early used to be stress-free. But now, working different time zones, different cultures and different technologies, and companies, have disturbed the whole fabric of a routine life.

One simple remedy can be to go spiritual.
Spirituality is not about knowing few mantras , dressing in conventional style or reciting few slokas. Its about connecting with one's innerself.It makes life more meaningful and one can understand the bigger picture instead of struggling in narrow mindedness.

Meditation provides inner strength and it rejuventes the mind.

I used to do Yoga as part of my corporate tie up. It was very relaxing and enrgising at the end of the day.This idea of having corporate tie ups is a good idea and it helps in creating a positive workforce and healthy individuals of sound physical, emotional, social, intellectual beings.

Chocolates , Chocolates, Chocolates!!!!

Its hardly rare to find someone who doesnt like chocolates. For those in the software industry , foreign chocolates are almost common. I would like to mention about a place in Cologne Germany where is a museum dedicated exclusively to Chocolates.

From cocoa cultivation to the finished chocolate, from its climatic conditions to geographical origins, to making of chocolates from Cocoa one can experience all the aspects of Chocolate at  Chocolate Museum in Cologne.

Some of the pics shared below: