An open letter to prospective Indian employer
greatbong.netThe article that the OP is replying to: http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/23/an-open-letter-to-...
Thoughts: Both articles reek of the type of mood that was popular in middle school relationships. Double standards, talks of how to make the relationship work perfectly for everyone involved, rigid rules of conduct, accusatory claims about the other person. Reading this feels like I am back listening to people around a lunch table bitch about other people who don't happen to be around.
Neither of the parties involved sound very happy.
Quote from the NYT India Article (from a list of rules employees MUST follow or ELSE):
5. You are professional and ethical: Everyone loves to be considered a professional. But when you exhibit behavior like job hopping every year, demanding double-digit pay increases for no increase in ability, accepting job offers and not appearing on the first day, taking one company’s offer letter to shop around to another company for more money — well, don’t expect to be treated like a professional.
Similarly, stretching yourself to work longer hours when needed, feeling vested in the success of your employer, being ethical about expense claims and leaves and vacation time are all part of being a consummate professional. Such behavior is not ingrained in new graduates, we have found, and has to be developed.
You are right. Why is this bitching voted up on hn?
It gives no solutions.
I believe discussions like this will improve both the attitude and work ethics of professionals as well as of the employers who might be exploiting the workforce. Both sides need to concede some ground for a much more productive and stress-free work environment.
> I believe discussions like this will improve both the attitude and work ethics of professionals as well as of the employers
As a side note (speaking of work ethics), this reminds me how an American company hiring Indian programmers.
Indian programmers, I presume, due to not having strong cultural bias against openly discussing and comparing salaries among themselves, did exactly that. And found out that the American company was paying them widely varying amounts even thought they all had equivalent training, job duties and qualifications.
They promptly contacted their managers and everyone who felt they got screwed got a raise to match the highest one.
The higher ups were not happy and try to guilt the Indians into felling uncultured and uncouth, how dare they break such a sensitive American corporate taboo. I am sure they guilt the felt over this "terrible" breach of "ethics" was made up by what I hear was an almost 20% salary increase for some.
Pretty sure at some point the company explicitly added a clause in their employment contract prohibiting divulging or discussing compensation except with one's higher-ups.
But I thought that was an interesting "ethics" hack they did, and it was interesting how the company tried to guilt them into feeling uncultured and un-educated once they got caught with their pants down and found out there wasn't anything illegal or contract breaching in what they did.
A similar stunt is attempted with the "job hopping" accustation in the NYTimes post the OP was replying to.
My perspective on this letter and the issues around it - http://blog.nitinkhanna.com/who-innovates/
I believe that companies need to give people the freedom to innovate. Otherwise they're just code monkeys who care only for the paycheck at the end of the month.
Offtopic: I love the random header images.