Today, I attended the 7th session of Knowledge Community Chennai (#KCC7). For updates about that, please check Twitter

In this, I’m going to discuss about the participation for such sessions (and not about the session itself).

Today we had around 34 participants. The Wipro Office in Chennai was kind enough to provide us a 250 seater auditorium for conducting this event. Last time, HCL Technologies provided the venue and the strength was around 50.

Why is that the strength is so low for such KM sessions?  Aren’t people interested to gain knowledge from various sources?  Or is it that the people believe that they could gain knowledge from Internet and newspapers?

My understanding is that people are reluctant to ‘learn’.  They are interested in going home as soon as possible after completing their ‘regular’ work at office.  They don’t want to spend some extra time (even once in a month) to gain some knowledge and network with ‘real’ people.

When the atmosphere changes in the corporate world where people seek knowledge from various sources, the progress will be tremendous.   The root cause for the existing atmosphere in every institution/firm is, I believe, the ‘Education System’ of the country and nothing else.  If the education system had made the students to seek knowledge, it would have continued in corporate world also.  But it just helped the students to get a degree which was used by the corporate world as a ‘qualification’ for entry into their firm.  “As you sow, so shall you reap.”  Isn’t it?

Infosys’ Narayana Murthy(NRN) recently has told “IT industry needs to pay higher taxes and does not need Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) extension any more”.    This is the reason behind this article now.

Well, I had seen many companies following some illegal and unethical practices during their start-up stage.  To ‘grow’, it was absolutely necessary for such start-up companies to adhere to ‘normal practices’ due to the current political system in the country.    I’m not suggesting here to be illegal.  But practically it is very difficult to be 100% legal in the current scenario. For example, people from top IT companies travel on Business visa to work in US because of the complexities involved in getting work permit.  If they don’t send their team on business visa, they won’t get further revenue for their offshore center.

While I was working in a MNC 13 years back, we used to ‘photocopy’ books from the office library.  After few years, once it became ‘affordable’ for the company (this is the perception I got, may be wrong), they formulated a rule that no photocopying of books were allowed. 

With the ‘legal’ aspect removed in the above example, NRN’s statement looks similar to me now.  Infosys has grown to a great extent that they can afford to pay huge taxes.  But think about small and medium companies that wish to become ‘another Infosys’.   How can they afford such huge taxes?  Shouldn’t they also enjoy similar tax benefits which Infosys enjoyed for more than 25 years in India?

What I feel is that there should be some ‘tax slab’ for each company.  For the first slab, there must be lesser tax or nil tax.  Then it should increase gradually like the individual income tax.  If NRN meant that statement this way, it would be really great.  I wish he meant that way because I’ve great respect for him and his team.  I learned about ‘ethics’ only from his company while I was working there.  Also, no one should comment that, ‘You can be legal and ethical when it is affordable’.

When I used to read the results of “Best companies to work for” in many business magazines, I used to think that apart from the parameters mentioned in the survey result, there must be one more parameter “Number of Entrepreneurs from that company”.  Here I’ll explain why this parameter must be added.

While talking to few of my friends in my old company I asked them whether they had any plan to change their job or start their own business.  Most of them said that they were very comfortable with the company and never wanted to leave it till their retirement.  One friend told me very frankly, “Viru, I am not extremely happy here.  But what will I say in my next interview if I wish to leave this job.  I really don’t know.  Also I’ve taken so many loans for which I need to pay a major part of my salary.  If I wish to start my own business, who will pay my EMIs every month?”

His answer made me think that some ‘big & famous’ companies mould their employees in such a way that they become ‘unemployable’ in other companies.  Also they never offer ESOPs to their employees to become financially stable (if not rich) to start their own business.  Those companies can easily appear in “Best companies to work for” list as they keep their employees ‘happy’.

In my perception, if you want to call a company as “Best company to work for”, you must also judge it by the number of ‘Entrepreneurs’ it has generated. If this number is more, it means that the company had given enough confidence (both technically & managerially) for their employees and did help them to be financially stable to start their own company.  Which survey will add this parameter?

(Please Note:  I’ve started a website http://exinfoscions.com/entrepreneurs to list the entrepreneurs who worked at Infosys for more than 8 years.  It will be ‘UP’ soon.)

“… is not aggressive” – this is a comment that you hear often in the corporate world. While I can understand aggression being something required of a army man or a boxer, why should an employee in a company be expected to be aggressive?

To me, aggression carries a negative connotation. When a person is aggressive, that means he is concerned only about an end goal, irrespective about the means to get there.

Folks who consider themselves “aggressive” invariably assume that they are way ahead of everybody else. From there it is a short step to becoming arrogant (which is easily done once they get some power).

One of the best managers that I have worked under was a model of assertiveness – and one of his best quotes is “Never think that the other person is a fool.”

What do you feel? Is it better to be aggressive or assertive? And, who succeeds in the corporate world?

We all must have one similar feeling irrespective of our profession. It is: “I’m intelligent”. It is true that almost all humans are “Intelligent”.

Many of us fail to understand one thing which makes us sad many times. It is “everyone has some limitation”. This limitation could be because of personal reasons, family reasons, official reasons and so on.

Many “Intelligent” people who don’t understand their “limitation” feel sad when their counterpart/peers move up the ladder in a company or in life.

Suppose a kid has a passion to RUN. Assume that he wins all the medals in his school, college, etc. His natural passion will be to be in Olympics. But to be in Olympics, he has to get trained in a different way. The probability to even participate in that even will be almost zero. But he should not feel bad about it, but accept it. Because there are several factors that influence this kid to even get selected for a Olympic game.
The factors could be like his personal strength, training, opportunity, influence, publicity, other person’s ability, family, personal problem, family problem, political system and so on.

The above sentences should not discourage anyone in moving further in life. It is meant to just make them understand that there are several factors that influence your position in the “world” (which may be your limitation).

The only thing you can do is, set “yourself” as a benchmark instead of setting some unknown “great” person and try to increase your own benchmark every day.

One day, your own benchmark may increase to a level which will be above this unknown “great” person. If this is done, “sadness” won’t be there and only joy will remain in the mind.

Good luck (to understand this article)!!

Many Indians are proud of the IT Revolution because of various services companies in India that employ few lakh people which makes us look like we are the “Intellectual Hub of the World”. But the sad part is, many of those people working in such IT companies are having very limited knowledge about the current technology & trends in IT field.

The reason is here:

1) IT Services company doesn’t have to be creative and need to just do the work the customer provides. About 90% of the projects are regular work for most of the employees.
2) Employees spend more time in office doing their regular work and hence their urge to learn new things is almost nil. Because of this, learning stops after few years they begin their career in IT field.
3) Even if formal training is provided by the company to the employees at regular intervals, they are of not of much use as the ‘training is forced’ and not a natural process.
4) Major IT companies block many good websites as they think that they will reduce productivity of the employees & waste Internet bandwidth. Such rules will deter the “natural learning process” of employees.
5) Many IT companies encourages their employees to become managers rather than technical specialist as the career path in that organization is for the people who manage more people rather than technology.

There are exceptions in everything. But exceptions are still exceptions. Similarly, some of you may be exceptions in IT Services company doing a good job, learning a new thing every day, being creative, inventing new things, taking risk, etc. But still, you are all exceptions. Most of them are like “Frog in a well”.

One month back I gave some small gifts to my ex-colleagues through a friend. Since it was more than a month and only a few collected the gift from the anchor person, I wrote an email “Collect the gift before 24th March after that it won’t be available”. To this, one guy replied, “Viru, I’ve never heard of timeline for a gift”. Even though I replied with some inane excuse, his sentence worried me and made me think. Yesterday I went to my Alma matter (Madras Institute of Technology) to attend the Alumni Meet. There, I got an answer for the thing that worried me a lot.

Most of us are in touch with our school and college friends. But once we join the corporate world, the degree of closeness starts reducing when we move up the ladder. The reason is very simple. In a corporate company, the pyramid structure is followed. If a person joined the company after college, initially he/she along with his/her other batch mates will get promoted to the next level with a time factor (with less weightage on performance factor). After a few years, the ratio of People who get promoted to People who are eligible for promotion decreases due to “Pyramid Structure”. At that time, your own batch mates become your competitors (or ‘enemies’) and your manager may promote the person according to his/her perception. The persons who were denied promotion will start finding fault with his/her peers ( i.e. batch mates) and the “degree of closeness” will start decreasing. When they leave the company, the relationship vanishes in thin air.

But the school and college friends’ relationship continues because they were never considered as your competitors who would affect your image in the society. That’s why the social network websites continue to grow.

Coming back to “timeline for a gift”, I realized that, even though I left the company three years back, I still have some “degree of closeness” with my ex-colleagues which made me write to them in such a manner (which you can do only with your school & college friends). I was fortunate enough to quit the organization when I was in the critical place in the pyramid. I’m not sure whether I’ve good status or not, at least I’ve good friends who are my ex-colleagues.