Thursday, January 11, 2007

Aren't we all selling ourselves?

Its been nearly 5 months now that Ravi messages me daily around 1-3 in the night to say that he finally reached home from work(!!).And I guess it is quite common with most of the IT work bees.But I am sure this is not the case with those who work in other countries.If you take the same person and send him to the parent company,for instance in the US, he will be surprised to see people leave at 4:30 PM daily and he would surely get a minor shock on the first Friday when he sees everybody leaving as early as 2 pm !And I am sure soon he would himself be used to that work culture.Hence I see that the basic problem is with the attitude of the people along with whom you work...You see this is something pertaining to group psychology...You tend to behave the same way the group does.I would trace the root cause for the expectations of the Projects Managers,asking us to stay back, to our own induced working hour patterns.If you are clear from day one that you have to work not later than x PM daily and try adhering to the same, things would work much simpler and organised.We should come out of the state where the sincerity towards ones work is measured in terms of the # of hours spent by the person at work.I feel it is high time We ask ourselves if we are selling our personal lives to the salary that is paid to us every month!
Imagine a situation where everybody comes to work,leaves at a time to ensure that you have atleast 2/3rd of the day to yourselves!!!Don't you see so much scope for your personal improvement,better health and better relationships!DOn't you think we have missed a lot evening tea's with our loved ones on pleasant evenings,reading the morning newspaper in the morning,having good home made food not just on the weekends and oranising stuff on normal days instead of waiting for holidays??Of course there are people who manage all this on a normal working day extending for 12 hours!But alaS!Not everybody is excellent at this thing called time management!

5 comments:

Life is a box of chocolates said...

I think its high time the Indian Govt also enforces a strict law for the IT folks where the number of hours worked are also tracked and we get paid over time :)

Then managers will pull up their socks and think properly and manage things.

Anonymous said...

I think we have to change our attitude, we should grow up and understand that time spend in the office in not equal to work done! We can reduce our tea breaks and chatting with friends if work load is more. Going for 15 mins(approx.) tea break, coming back and getting the same pace again will eat up 45 mins(approx.) infact. And if there is nothing to do in the home, it doesnt mean that you can spend time in office. One should be in office only if there is work pending to do, otherwise NO.

The Devil said...

Glad to see your post after a longgggggg time.
Every one wants to appease their boss and come up. Only way they can show that is by working (or atleast pretend doing so) over time and trying to impress them. This mentality has to change and one should try to optimise their work in the working hours. PMs should set an example by encouraging this and treating everyone equally based on the work they do and not on the number of hours they work. Otherwise this problem will persist.

But the root cause is we are slogging because the top managements are not taking proper decisions regarding the timeline of completion because thats what win them a particular project. So its not that easy. feasible solution is the one abishek suggested

Anonymous said...

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Cheers.

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