We always do that in here. Its a way of life. Right from milk, snack, groceries, tickets, electronics, apparels, dowry, corruption everything.. Some legal.. and some illegal. But yes, there’s bargaining everywhere. So, our software industry is not far away.
This draws a very thin line between ethics and business smartness.. though, there’s nothing smart about it.
This is a constant struggle most of us face in a software Job. So much so that, its now an expected behavior between employees and employers. So one asks a question.. If you’re one of those self-respecting and introvert-ish souls, how do you tackle this situation? Frankly, we do not have an answer.. yet.
But, hey.. this is not just an employee’s problem. Its as much an employer’s problem too. In our profession, many engineers tend to be introverts, who’d rather leave a company than get into an argument with lesser beings (managers). So both parties suffer in this situation..
Lets try to analyze the situation a little.. The primary items for discussion tend to be around:
1. Salary (of course, guess thats not india alone)
2. Designation (Yup, explains all the nonsense designations that exist)
3. You guessed it.. Going Abroad.
Lets try to look at them at greater detail.
1. Salary
This is a no-brainer. There’s been a time in everyone’s career, where he’s had to negotiate for the salary package. Its almost like a game of wits between the employee and the employer. This happens at primarily two occassions:
a. During joining a company.. typically determined by the past salary, with a raise.
b. Salary review.. once a year, in most cases.
If you’re in one of those companies where Pay is determined by number of years you’ve served this army, well.. you can’t help much. Just got to serve your time or get out of there.
For others, typically, companies do not have a transparent and well-defined review processes. Lack of transparency means many questions are unanswered and things are manipulated around. This typically serves purpose of the Negotiators.
As a company, you need to be avoiding such cases. Let the recruitment and the review process be as transparent as possible. Always over-communicate in these situations. Do not leave a window for bargainers and negotiators to influence the decision.
2. Designation
Well, they found a solution to it. Invent a new one yourself. I believe companies would be going the route of “Invent your Designation” as an HR perk now. Lets leave this discussion before the Chief assistance Designation Discussion moderator stops us.
3. Going Abroad
This is pretty popular. Some do it coz they like to travel. Some, coz they like the extra money. I’m sure this is not the situation in Western Countries, but yeah..they have the reverse problem. No one wants to leave their place. Lets get back to the point.. This is one of the worst kind of discussions. There’s hardly any merit or logic behind this.
In a product setup, it’d make more sense when the engineers would like to get closer to a customer and understand the situations better. But, in other setups, its basically not related to work at all. In that case, its typically an arm-twisting affair. Or in some cases, act as carrots for the managers too.
Ideally, as a company you’d like to have your most appropriate person for the job to be sitting closest to the customer. That isn’t always the case. In some companies, they also have a round-robin way of selecting who goes next. The situation is rather sad.
As companies, you could make it fair by again making it a very transparent and objective decision. Do not use them as carrots. Do not advertise these things during recruitments. But it seems too ideal.
I understand that there’s no solution being suggested here. This is just an analysis of the situation. I believe it top companies want to attract and retain high quality developers and employees, they need to be solve it in their own ways and not let this nonsense creep into their culture.
As employees, well.. good luck.
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