(by G Waugh)
Born into a middle class family that subsisted on a single income, there was only one purpose for which I was thrust into education- ‘settling’ in life. ‘Settling’ meant only one thing- getting a well-paid job, marrying and having kids. After slogging for over four years in an area where I was not much interested in, I finished Engineering and joined a multinational software company in 2010. For over a decade from where I entered Secondary education till my initiation into the IT industry, my aims in life wereonly too modest- to get a job, share my father’s financial burden andget a good-looking wife as ‘the final feather in my cap’. The first two aims were done when I was 22 and the third one I hoped, shall easily follow later.
***
My first year at the company was simply too fabulous. I used to work for just close to eight hours a day, get paid in five digits, buy things in online platforms such as Flipkart and Amazon with my own money, swipe my Debit card at showrooms located inside malls that were just too new and alluringto me, visit air-conditioned cinema halls every fortnight for a movie, munch expensive pop-corn and dine at glittering restaurants whenever I felt like. We had official project parties too, every three months or so and our teams at my office had the habit of spending on an average, at least twenty thousand rupees on every such occasion. Sometimes in the middle of these parties, I used to sit in a corner of the plush restaurant on a table loaded with delicious starters tempting my palate, simplystaring at my team-mates and savouringthe excellent ambience I was in. All those years of slogging at my college, those sleepless nights that I had endured for my board exam preparations and all the hard work I had poured into my studies, the rigorouswork-ethic I had inherited from my father – everything made perfect sense. I worked hard and here I am, a System Engineer in one of India’s biggest multinational corporations.
***
This was also the time I was introduced to the habit of reading books. My team-mate had a copy of H.D Thoreau’s Walden which he told he was struggling to complete on account of the mind-numbing drabness of the content. I googled about the book and learnt that it was an account of an Englishman who decided to take a break from his social life and move to a forest, to live life like a hermit. Frankly, the subject did not interest me at all but I borrowed the book from my friend so that I could pass off as a well-read guy in front of the girls who used to accompany me during my one-hour long, train journeys to office.
This was also the time I was getting introduced to Hollywood films and one of my friends insisted me on seeing a film called Into The Wild (2007) directed by Sean Penn. I downloaded it one weekend and decided to reserve it for a Sunday afternoon. The story looked totally incomprehensible to me then. A boy of eighteen, a topper in college if I remember correctly, blessed with well-to-do parents and a great society, abandons all of that to assume the life of a tramp. He soon discovers a place of complete isolation in an unknown territory and keeps recording all his experiences faithfully. The reason behind his curious decisionis shown to be a complete disillusionment with whatever he was supposed to be proud about- his grades at college, a lucrative career that beckoned him and his high society. Though the ending packed a cruel twist to everything that was shown before, the basic premise of the story kept confounding me, though this time I was eager to get hold of thatbasic ‘idea’ that drove successful people like him towards a life of complete ‘ascetism’.
***
My first appraisal at office ended in 2012 and I was given a ‘default’ rating. I was told by my manager that I was spending only eight hours at office and that this was the age where people learnt a lot of things for future advancement in their careers. He advised me to stay at office for an additional hour or so, learn newand emerging technologies, accept extra work from my team mates to ensure that my next appraisal went smooth. I was fine with what he had suggested but it reminded me curiously, of what my father and other elders in my familyhad told at various points in my life in the past–‘work hard, stay disciplined for one more year and you will be rewarded handsomely in future’.I think that this is some maxim which almost every middle-class youngster must have heard in Class Ten, Class Twelve and even during his Engineering days. I had stayed ‘disciplined’ right from my Class Ten, worked doubly hard for Class Twelve and ended savingup a lot of money for my father by getting a ‘merit’ seat in Engineering. But my struggles hadn’t stopped there. I had by mistake, chosen ElectricalEngineering as my major, which required enormous reserves of concentration and perseverance on my part, to clear. When I had received my offer letter in 2010 at the end of my engineering course, I had assumed thatall my difficulties had come to an end. I was free, no longer under pressure to exercise restraint with respect to indulging in the many pleasures of life and had absolutely no reason to be afraid of failure anymore. But it has been more than a year since I had joined work and now I was being asked to work hard once again to avoid landing in trouble in the future. Why? For how long was one supposed to keep running?
The next ten months or so brought one of the most difficult periods in my career. In every meeting I used to raise my hand for additional work, take up responsibilities which my seniors had shunned and accept deadlines without asking too many questions. I started spending more than ten hours at office daily with virtually no time for recreation. Mornings and nights never looked too close to one another as they did then and the stultifying routine crippled my sensesas I lost even the ability to tell one day from the other in a working week. All that I had wanted to do in my life with my hard-earned money I had to reserve for the weekends and as days progressed, the equation of my life I began to realise,was fast getting reduced into – five days of work gives two days of life.
***
I started reading Thoreau’s Walden in what must have been October 2011. I used to read just two pages a day as I told earlier, just to show off among my friends and as days progressed, the language freak in me began to get slowly attracted to the neatly laid down descriptions of his solitary life near the now–famous Lake Walden. Thoreau’s romance with Nature was ardent and his love for its innumerable creations, absolute and sometimes mind-boggling. For a youngster smitten by the modern architectural glories dictated and designed by neo-liberal capitalism that his city was so full of, Thoreau’s obsession with simplicity and abhorrence for sophistication was confusing, yet novel.
In one paragraph, Thoreau gave a lot of reasons why he had cultivated the habit of rising early, one of which was his love for the beauty of dawns. That particular time of the day, a stirring juncture where the night that has ended already waits for the morning to take over from it, was a rare duration according to Thoreau, which man must never forget to savour with all his senses.
Thoreau’s long-winded descriptions of his daily routine that involved planting of seeds, tending to them at necessary intervals, walking along the woods and the lake, cooking and other daily chores, even if they sounded boring and quotidian in isolation, started making sense once the larger picture began to emerge. Thoreau for his two-year stay near the Lake, had built a simple house with his own hands, created a small farm where he could grow his own vegetables and proved to the world that a man could remain happy and self-sufficient without any dependence on external society.
In one chapter about civil disobedience, I remember reading his revolutionary discourses on man’s undeniable right to stay away from both society and politics. If memory serves me right, according to Thoreau, man was no different from an animal when it came to his instincts and impulses and he could without compunction, declare himself absolutely independent from the numerous parochial confines that modern society and civilization try to fit him into every now and then. Every soul that takes its earthly form on this planet, finds itself tagged to a race or a culture or a nationality only by accident and if that soul wished to free itself from all these artificial identities, it was the bounden duty of modern society to acknowledge and sanction that.
All of these ideas needless to say, had a profound impact on me and by the time I finished the book in the middle of 2012, even the idea behind the film, Into The Wild that I had watched close to a year back,became clear and made perfect sense to me.
***
In 2013, I had my second appraisal at office.
“Jeeva, I see you have worked very hard for the last one year”It was the same manager.
I smiled with pride.
“The amount of time you have spent at the office shows your commitment and that is one thing which I would really like to appreciate about you”.
All my hard work I thought, was once again going to bear fruit. I was sure to be given a good rating which meant better prospects for promotion and a good hike.
“But spending long hours at office is not the mark of a good programmer. As a youngster, you have to be smart. If you are given work, you should first find out ways on how to complete it quickly and then start on it. As I see from your record, you have only done well as a work-horse. I see that there is completely no innovation in your work. See your team-mate Rishi, he comes to office at 9 am, completes his work and leaves office at 5 pm. Learn from him. Learn new technologies.”
I was given a very ordinary rating that year. As long as I was in the room, I was only thinking about how correct my manager was and how mindlessly workman-like I was, in discharging my daily official duties. As long as my manager was talking, the only emotion I felt was an overwhelming feeling of inferiority and guilt.
It was only after I vacated the room and sat for a quiet cup of coffee in my favourite place at the pantry, a lot of things began to fall in place. Innovation, smart work.I remember very well that since I was the junior-most member, I used to be allotted the dreariest tasks in my team such as filling up of Excel forms for request creation, Weekly Status Reports for managers’ meeting, creating post-dated tickets for already completed tasks, etc. There was absolutely no scope for applying innovation there. And even if one or two tasks demanded proper technical ingenuity, they were always accompanied by strict timelines and I never had the time to analyse on them and come up with innovative solutions. I could have forgiven my manager easily for taking a jab at ‘my lack of innovation’, had he been completely ignorant of all my daily activities. But this man was the one I had been reporting to directly all these days and no one but him wassolely responsible for allotting me the dumbest tasks ever found on this planet.
***
“Career is a 21st century invention, I don’t want one” I remember these lines in Richard Linklater’s Boyhood that released in 2013.
In an interview to a cinema magazine to a question whether he had decided to take up ‘writing’ as a career as early as childhood, Jeyamohan replied that ‘career’ was something people who belonged to his next generation ‘coined’ and ‘invented’ and that people of his time had virtually no reason to think seriously about it.
I also chanced to see an interview by Director Ram who decried the way governments and societies hurried towards marginalizing crucial disciplines such as the Science and the Humanities, as soon as they sensed that the Information Technology Revolution was set to sweep the country in the late 1990s. Funding for subjects other than Engineering was steadily brought down, people who specialized in arts, economics and history were simply scorned at and only those who had set their eyes on engineering and technology were considered as‘doing something worthwhile’. ‘Career’ was something as unquestionable as the idea of God and one had to plan it well in advance if he did not want to be left behind to suffer a life full of ignominy and abuse.
***
That appraisal had drained all motivation in me to work. I decided once and for all that I would not spend time at office more than what was required anymore. I decided to dedicate my spare time for fitness and started running for half an hour daily to shed a few pounds from my bloating body. As weeks passed, I made running a regular habit which in turn made me shun all my cravings for junk food. I used to wake up early, run for five kilometres in the morning, dedicate one hour for reading, go to office, take only Chapatis for lunch, drink only green tea and reserve non-vegetarian food only for Sundays. Within months, with a view to increase my reading hours I stopped visiting social media sites and even started withdrawing from my friends. After almost half a year, this kind of routine infused a certain amount of discipline into my life which was also not so difficult at all to adhere to. I lost close to six kilograms of weight and successfully regained the shape which I had in college. When many of my friends were pursuing girls, falling into and out of relationships I was right there in their midst proudly pursuing totally something else. This was also the time my parents had started taking up match-making as their full-time job to get a good wife for me.
It needs mentioning that I too had opportunities to flirt with women on a lot of occasions, but it required absolutely no effort on my part to give them up. Courting women, I thought would eat some additional hours off my schedule and totally disrupt my all-too-holy routine. After all, it was only one year ever since I had adopted this lifestyle and the results were already, just too phenomenal to say the least. A proper focus on physical fitness and a cultivated reading habit had helped my spiritual well-being as well, as a result of which I barely had any need for emotional companionship. Without emotional dependencies, a romantic attachment I thought, would make no sense at all and end up affecting both the persons involved. This was also the time I had indulged myself in a meticulously planned pursuit of knowledge that spanned different, uncharted territories such as literature, space science, physics, economics and Marxist political economy. A lot of answers regarding man’s obsession with careers, commodities and other superfluous commitments were found in Marxist literature and all this knowledge only helped shape my attitudes at office for the better. By this time in 2014, I had already finished two or more visits to the houses of prospective brides being left with no other option to assuage the feelings of my parents. Needless to say, I had turned all of them down.
By the end of 2015, I was already celebrating two years of my ‘ascetism’ even if I wasn’t one in the conventional sense of the word. In the course of my celebration, I also discovered one, big practical reward, my ‘ascetism’ had the capability to give me. If I could remain unmarried for the rest of my life, there would be no future commitments for me and hence absolutely no need to obsess over the progress of my career. And that would liberate me completely from the dreadful compulsion to learn new and emerging technologies to sustain my career.
On one occasion when one of my close friends broke up with his girlfriend I even had the audacity to give him the following advice, “Dei, don’t worry too much da. The moment you decided to depend upon someone else for your emotional needs, the ground for your failure and downfall was already laid. Depend upon yourself and no one else. You are only your companion who would never let you down.”
***
In May 2016, I had to visit a girl’s house in Chengalpattu and took leave from office for a day. I saw her that noon, got engaged in July and married her that September. I celebrated my first wedding anniversary with that beautiful woman holding a two-month old kid in my hands in September 2017.
As I finish typing this, the big bound volume of Data Science For Business written by Tom Fawcett that lies beside continues to stare at me.
Baradwaj Rangan 
Mallikarjun
October 24, 2020
Superb Write-up. The Climax is COLD & Realistic. 😊Good Memoir. Relatable to every Engineer and wannabe ‘Into The Wild’ Christopher.
LikeLike
Eswar
October 24, 2020
Nice one Jeeva 🙂.
I can relate to your office politics experience, but I have reacted differently to it. Within the first few years of my career, I lost hope with the appraisal process. In the last few years of my permanent employment, I walked into most appraisal meetings expecting nothing. So they couldn’t disappoint me. At some point I also learnt to work for my own satisfaction, to fill the responsibilities I have defined myself irrespective of its effect on the appraisal. When the need arises I have always left the organisation rather than negotiating for a pay rise or resenting their lack of appreciation. But not all organisations are bad. In one of my employment, I was given half of my month’s salary as an ad-hoc reward because I volunteered to work for a day on a weekend to help in a release. They didn’t have any contractual obligation to do that.
Just like people, there are companies with good values and bad values. The more one moves around the more likely one can find an organisation, team that overlaps with one’s own values.
I also wanted to comment on money and relationships. But I will keep it for another day 🙂.
LikeLiked by 1 person
v.vijaysree
October 24, 2020
We call it Walden Pond here. Not too far from my place. Walked around it on beautiful summer/fall days but have not read Thoreau. You should visit if it made such an impression on you..
LikeLiked by 1 person
Madan
October 24, 2020
Well written as always, thalaiva, and a topic that many of us here would relate to.
I have had extremes in terms of boss-subordinate dynamic. I ran away from my third boss post qualification. A woman so you’d think that…but no, in my next org, I worked under a woman manager again and we had a great rapport. The person who was my manager before that too in the same org too was a great boss. The CFO who hired me in my current company has since left the org but he was a fantastic boss too. I feel blessed to some extent reading what you recounted because I haven’t always been the put-my-hand-out-to-ask-for-work guy though I don’t usually say no to work.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Jeeva Pitchaimani
October 25, 2020
Thanks Mallikarjun. Your comment is exactly what I wanted after writing this.
Thanks Eswar. Smaller things I can control to an extent like exiting an organization if you dont like them. The larger picture is appalling, at least to me. I am not made for writing software and keeping pace with the changes that happen are not too easy.
Enakum US la poi laam paakanum nu thaan aasai. Vida matrangale!
Thanks Madan. For the last line in your comment, it is my turn to call you thalaiva now. I am also not the person to put my hand to ask for work, generally. It did that in the initial days due to a zeal that youngsters generally have. Also as you said, I am also not the person who says no to work.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Naren
October 25, 2020
Nice one.
I had a major insurance client in my first job and the project was well underway when I joined the company. I was thrown smack in the middle of a warzone where I had to learn both the domain and the tech as I was working. The first month was spent in training and it was a honeymoon phase with new friends, food, funny sessions with industry experts etc., in which I wallowed for I didn’t have the foresight to c what was bearing down on me. Once I was dropped off at the battleground, I was in utter culture shock and petrified of taking even my very next step. The first instinct was to quit and flee the scene. But I soon had an epiphany and decided that the only way out of it is to c it thru. In the next 2 years I had exactly ONE Sunday off and my average work time was 18 hours. A job so thankless but nevertheless I aced my 6-month probation in 2 months and me and my teammates started becoming a major headache for the managers involved. We inundated them with a barrage of questions and queries about the project, the domain, the tech etc. as part of our learning because by that point we fully understood the length, breadth and width of the futility of the training programme which we underwent before. All of this in a hope that we wud make progress in the organisation, learn & earn more and get the hell out of the neverending nightmare. Then came a point when we did actually become the masters of the project and we started outperforming the managers that embarrased them in front of their bosses. We were on cloud 9 and we started talking about moving to other projects instead of just quitting the company. Now came the sledgehammer to our faces . . . product stabilised, implemented in few key client offices for trial . . . we were kicked off to support which essentially is the brig. We were tasked with educating the clients with the product and support them on their usage with their clients. This also meant that we were actually shunned from making anymore progress or even moving on to something else. The ultimatum was either do what we were told or b kicked out altogether. That was the loudest thud of my career . . . right at the beginning of it.
Eventually, I moved on to other companies and it was during these years that a rampant phenomenon started arising. A cartelised placement of thoroughly incompetant middle management was all over the industry. This gave rise to raging battles where the subordinates were almost always smarter, more knowledgeable and efficient than their managers. This gave rise to the prevalent culture of indiscriminate firings just so that the subordinates won’t crossover the middle mangement barrier and make actual progress in the organisation. From then on the growth prospects became horizontal rather than vertical. All of this culminated into that employee from a major company filing charge against the company for unlawful termination. She actually won the case and that gave rise to the micro-management culture. The show-cause notices these days consists of bathroom/coffee/lunch breaks, extra “efforts” beyond the HR-mandated office hours etc.
Where does this leave an individual?! . . . Lesser and lesser knowledge of what’s happening around the world, virtually non-existent family life or any other social life, lifelong debts in pursuit of fixed assets, children raised by grandparents and/or relatives etc. People tend to completely forget all of their school and college education, they don’t think beyond the current scope of their work. The support team of a project do not understand the tech involved in the very same project which they’re supposed to support.
It’s like the Springsteen song “Born in the U.S.A.” . . . all the hardwork, sacrifices and the suffering endured during the Vietnam war only to comeback and b abandoned by their compatriots, families . . . no job or any other prospects eventually ending up suffering from a severe ontological and existential crisis. There r many times I keep longing to b, as Gordon Gekko put it, a part of the NINJA generation . . . No Income, No Job or Assets. Christopher McCandless was that guy.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Jeeva Pitchaimani
October 25, 2020
@Naren. Superb comment. Every single area of industry, the middle management is the villain and they r never displaced. They not only wreck the life of subordinates but also sometimes that of the company. They always take the highest salaries in the organization while waxing eloquent on efficiency they are least productive among all of us.
LikeLike
Madan
October 25, 2020
Ha, as someone who has gradually wound his way into middle management level, I am going to say, you think middle management is incompetent because you don’t see anything about top management other than nice-sounding-soundbytes-that-mean-nothing for media (or org town halls). If only….Remember RNT’s golden words (either attributed or misattributed, fits either way, I reckon) “I don’t make right decisions, I take decisions and make them right.” Well, it becomes middle management’s job to do this making-right business for shitty decisions taken without due diligence and then they pass on this load to the executives. In short, until corporate India truly empowers managers at every level, we will only create billion dollar zombies over and over. Unless somebody is hired for a pure data entry or clerical work, every employee should be given at least decision making authority and some budget. Make it just 1000 a month if you like but at least trust them with goddamn 1000 bucks. Athukooda maattanga.
LikeLike
Naren
October 25, 2020
I slowly climbed my way into middle management too. Sometimes I feel sorry for them even though they bring this upon themselves. They’re pounded and pummelled from both sides and yet they maintain status quo. The top management insulate themselves with the stupendously unqualified middle management, so that they won’t b replaced. But as far as top management goes, their involvement is with project finances, client relationships and strategies to prolong their suffering so as to keep the inflow of cash. For the subordinates, the middle management is nothing more than messengers and report generators [sometimes generated by subordinates]. The quality index of the projects and the happiness index of the subordinates is completely dependent upon the middle management.
Let me take an example of one particularly big company in B’luru . . . it’s the middle managers who trade sexual favours for pay raises and promotions within the team, it’s the middle managers who, if they’re from the same native as the subordinate, make them their own personal long distance drivers during weekends. Middle management has been known to employ spies among the subordinates to keep their teams in line. Just like what Steve Jobs did between Lisa and Mac teams in Apple in the 70s and 80s, the middle managers pit subordinates against their peers as some sort of weird strategy to accomplish something . . . wreaks havoc among the team members. The stories go on and on. One company was dumb enuf to think that replacing the words “leader” and “manager” with “Associate” in their designations wud create a sense of uniformity. They compensated this strategy by creating performance “buckets” to categorise the subordinates accordingly.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Vikas
October 25, 2020
Very well written. The idea of a simplistic life with focus on exercise and reading is something that I have been wanting to do for so long but I haven’t had the discipline to do so. After reading this article, the next time I think of trying it (which is on every night for the next day), I hope to remember this and try once more 🙂
LikeLike
Eswar
October 25, 2020
@Jeeva: Smaller things I can control to an extent like exiting an organization if you dont like them. The larger picture is appalling, at least to me. I am not made for writing software and keeping pace with the changes that happen are not too easy.
Jeeva, I will address this at two levels.
First. When you do anything at a higher, competitive level there will be always challenges. I will give you an example from a completely unrelated field. When playing badminton for leisure it should be fun and enjoyable right? Without all sorts of competitiveness and pressure to prove oneself? But, in my experience, that happens only when you are playing with a certain group of people who play for the joy of playing. When playing with people who play seriously, even when they are not playing in any competition, every game is about winning. You make the slightest mistake, you will be screamed at. If you choose to play to relieve yourself from other stress, these are the wrong people to play with.
My point is doing something at a serious level is always going to be challenging with competitiveness and infight. Doesn’t matter whether one is natural at it or not. Even something like writing that you seem to enjoy, do you think it is going to be a walk in the park if you want to take it to the next level? One just has to work their way around. Because the workplace always operates at a higher level, and that is the only thing that an average person participates competitively during one’s lifetime, it is easy to feel the workplace being the only hostile environment.
In a way, if you find what you do challenging, it doesn’t necessarily mean you are natural at it. It only means you are operating at your full ability. Form a learning point of view, this is a very good thing because when you overcome that limitation you have a whole new world to explore, learn and challenge yourself. The colleagues whom you find operating efficiently without challenges are in the wrong position in the wrong company. If they are so good and natural in what they do, you should ask yourselves why they are not working somewhere bigger, better or haven’t built their own yet.
Second. Quitting an organisation is only an example. The underlying principle is that one can overcome these challenges in different ways. Sure there are things one doesn’t have control. But there is a lot of room for one to work on before reaching a point of no control. Even when he was a prisoner at the Nazi concentration camp, Viktor Frankl didn’t think that he had lost control over his life. Yes, he must have been lucky to have not shot dead on day one at the camp. But beyond that luck, it requires a mental shift to be able to convert a lived horror to works that would last for eternity. Even when one reaches a point of surrendering completely to life, say when one is diagnosed with incurable cancer, there is still something that can be done at times. Like Paul Kalanithi who decided to write his first book after being diagnosed with cancer and was never around to see it published. Compared to what these people have gone through, what most of us experience is not so daunting. Sure our ‘problems’ can be extremely challenging within our own small world. But isn’t one of the purposes of reading is to shatter our small world, place ourselves amidst others lived experience and view our challenges in a wider context?
Enakum US la poi laam paakanum nu thaan aasai. Vida matrangale!
Following that principle, I would turn your above statement on its head and ask why do you expect them to send you. An intracompany transfer is one way to travel to onsite and probably the easiest one if you can deal with the politics. But there are ways, harder but not impossible, for you to try. After many years the UK is opening its borders for non-European citizens starting next year. UK borders have been closed for many years because of the increasing immigration numbers. Now, with Brexit, the borders are being opened again. With this information, now you have a choice. Either keep waiting for your employer to send you abroad or you work towards it yourself. It will not be easy because you will still need an offer of employment from a UK employer and getting sponsorship from India may not be easy. But at least there is a way forward.
I neither had the curiosity nor the awareness to find my way around the world. I was lucky enough to be surrounded by friends to guide me through. A friend’s brother randomly messaged one day and suggested I should apply for a UK visa. I just followed his way and moved to the UK using a similar route. In my experience, this exposure is all that one needs to start with. From there one only should be ready to work through the options they discover.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/new-immigration-system-what-you-need-to-know
LikeLiked by 2 people
Anu Warrier
October 26, 2020
Another resident of the Walden Pond state. 🙂 It’s a beautiful area.
But I do have a bone to pick – Thoreau could afford to go ‘live the simple life’. Poor Lidian Emerson (RW Emerson’s wife) did a lot of cooking and laundry for the man so he could ‘learn to live in simplicity’. It’s very easy to live a simple life when someone else is responsible for the brunt of the chores, and you can play at housekeeping. In fact, the woods in which he built his hut (the foundation of which is still visible, while a facsimile has been built across the road) was owned by Emerson.
Didn’t Sarojini Naidu famously say that it took a lot more money to keep Gandhi fasting than it did to feed a family? (I’m paraphrasing here; if I can find the actual quote, I’ll post it later.)
In fact, when Bronson Alcott, Louisa May Alcott’s father, proposed to buy a communal property which would sustain itself, where writers and artists might find convivial solitude to live and work – Emerson and Mrs Alcott were against the idea.
Emerson, because he said, the idea of utopia might be great, but soon the residents would need money; Mrs Alcott, because she said, the men might have grand ideals, but the management of this communal property would soon be the women’s problem, because the men just wouldn’t bother.
Basically, what I’m saying is that unless you’re a trust fund baby or have friends like Emerson who can spot you, and wives of friends who are forced to cook and clean for you – living ‘simply’ is not as easy as Thoreau makes it sound. 🙂
LikeLiked by 6 people
Odiyan Hater
October 26, 2020
I feel middle managers in the comments section shouldn’t take the author’s opinion personally.
There are all sorts of people at all levels of corporate structure(s). For each woe an employee has towards his manager, the manager also might be able to point out five employees working under him who are making his/her life miserable. Here the author shouldn’t have generalised all middle managers to be incompetent which is what probably irked some of the commenters.
I do not work in the IT industry, but even where I work the managers are seen by the subordinates as not working hard as they cannot be seen actually typing away at their desks but in fact it’s them who do the most work as they have to achieve targets and a lot of the time are planning as to how to get the required numbers and the job involves a lot of analysis, courting clients, absorbing pressure from higher ups, dealing with politics between subordinates and also general admin compliances. There is a lot of mental labour involved in positions of decision making and we should account for that too. And this mental labour cannot be measured against any tangible work like preparation of Excel sheets. Managers are also looking at the larger picture and are in it for themselves ultimately so they are not gonna feel for the guy who does all the shit jobs as long as they are getting done. Here the manager too is a victim as he wants all this work done and his subordinates are not willing to do the same. The real villains in such scenario are the team mates who are not willing to share the burden when it comes to shit jobs.
Then again managers too are bound be partisan and have prejudices. .
So basically, no generalisations from either side would be the best policy.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Maddy
October 26, 2020
@Anu Warrier – As a male, it never seriously crossed my mind why most of the greatest thinks/philosophers/poets/leaders were male, (apart from the passing mention of the now cliched quote “behind every successful man, there is a woman”). Took it for granted, till I saw the statue of the German poetess Emerenz Meier and her quote below the statue, in one of the unlikeliest of places I would have imagined – Passau(a quaint town where Danube crosses Germany into Austria)
“If Goethe had had to prepare supper, salt the dumplings;
If Schiller had had to wash the dishes;
If Heine had had to mend what he had torn, to clean the rooms, kill the bugs –
Oh, the menfolk, none of them would have become great poets.”
Makes me wonder, if womenfolk also have the luxury(or time) of going through this “struggle for finding one’s inner self /self-actualization” . At least my wife doesn’t have, unlike me.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Madan
October 26, 2020
Odiyan Hater: I don’t see anybody taking it personally. Like I said in my comment, it looks like middle managers are the root of all evil because they have to, in turn, deal with senior management. And senior management deals with the CEO/board. I have heard of a board member in a revered group who would ask for changes to a presentation. After the changes, it would be a month before the next meeting (because you can’t get a date easily to present before the board). And THEN, the member would only give a perfunctory listening to the revised presentation he had asked for. Now while all this goes on, the project loses its value because the market doesn’t wait for one nincompoop board member. The incompetence/madness is at every level but it starts from the top. It’s like Childhood’s End. Overlords reporting to Overminds and Overminds to?
LikeLike
Madan
October 26, 2020
Easwar: To add to your comment, not just in software and not just technically but in many respects, the climb does get harder and harder as you go up the ladder. The version of me from ten years back would have baulked at what I have to manage today. This is normal. I have only just started regularly driving to work because of the local train shutdown in Mumbai and I find participating in long calls on the phone while driving daunting NOW. But my uncle used to do that all the time. And maybe I will get there too with time. You don’t want to combine phone calls (even with bluetooth and all) with driving but if commutes are two hours long, what do you do.
I would love to hit you up and discuss separately about moving to the UK. I have been exploring options for a while now. My perception is that in my field, there aren’t as many options for immigration as for IT professionals but I could be completely wrong. Any guidance would be most welcome.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Anu Warrier
October 26, 2020
@ Maddy – that sounds so like Meier! I hadn’t heard of this inscription before, so thank you for my morning chortle.
I was introduced to Meier by my literature professor in Kerala, of all places. 🙂
Makes me wonder, if womenfolk also have the luxury(or time) of going through this “struggle for finding one’s inner self /self-actualization” . At least my wife doesn’t have, unlike me.
Some women would, I guess. But on the whole, society will judge a woman more harshly than it would a man. I mean, if, say, Louisa May Alcott had decided to go off on her own and live in a hut to ‘find’ herself, like Thoreau did, you can bet that Emerson’s wife wouldn’t have been cooking and cleaning for her! She would have had to do all her chores and then some, and ‘find’ herself in the time remaining.
p.s. Lest my comments seem like I’m damning Thoreau – his essays are brilliantly argued, even if I disagree with some of his views. There’s beauty in the language.
LikeLiked by 2 people
v.vijaysree
October 26, 2020
Thanks @AnuWarrier and @Maddy for your input. I thought I had distracted folks from the main topic by talking about Walden Pond. Of course, Walden Pond is one of the many frozen ponds in the area from which they sent a cargo of ice to India.
Now, I see it is an interesting thread in itself. And I had to go look up Emerenz Meier because her poem is so interesting. She too migrated to the US but to Chicago, not New England :-(.
LikeLike
Madan
October 26, 2020
I think by compulsion or design (and probably more of the former), women are more practical. Thatcher was absolutely right in saying men talk while women do things. So…I do know that one of my favourite singers, Linda Eder, has had it made for a long time now. Reportedly received a good alimony payment from her divorce with Frank Wildhorn and used that money to settle for a relaxed life in North Salem, New York with more limited shows rather than frenetic touring and more time to look after Jake. But the key is looking after Jake. This is a burden that say had Arjun from ZNMD had indeed retired early and single wouldn’t have had. Broadway legend she might be but Linda still runs her household. She just gets time to tend to and ride her horses unlike other less privileged women.
LikeLike
Varsha Ganesh
October 26, 2020
Great one again, Jeeva. Though I did not see the twist at the end coming 🙂
I was going to say the same thing about Thoreau but Anu beat me to it! Apart from having other women (including his mother to do his laundry) do his chores for him, he even is supposed to have hosted parties of 25 people in his “solitary” cabin. Nevertheless, it is a sigh-inducing book.
All this talk of middle management reminded me of this excellent series that I`ve read called The Gervais Principle, based on The Office. It is hilarious and sometimes gut-wrenchingly accurate. Those who are fans of the show might enjoy it!
https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/
LikeLike
Enigma
October 27, 2020
@Madan, sorry for jumping into your conversation. I have guessed your age from your other post (relating to ‘Singaravelan’) and if you are serious about immigrating you might want to kick off the process now. It becomes increasing difficult, not impossible though, as you touch 40. There are opportunities for finance professional, especially if you have worked in the Big 4 audit firms earlier, to find suitable openings in Big 4 firms in UK/Australia/Canada. I know quite a few of my former colleagues, back in the noughties, who moved to Big 4 audit firms in the UK, Oz, Canada and even the US. In fact they were sponsored by their employers, as in they did not need to apply for immigration. I am guessing that things will be different now, after the economic downturn of the last few years.
In my case, I applied for my own immigration and then it was easy to move to the Sydney office of the same Big 4 firm for which I was working in the Middle East. Obviously, as it had different partners and management, I had to go through the interview process. It helped that I was in market risk management and model assurance which was in demand back then. I moved out of model assurance as it is increasingly getting automated. Anyway, all the best.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Madan
October 27, 2020
Enigma: Thanks a lot. I should be getting my Australian CPA soon if all goes well. The thing though is wait times for PRs were already going up even before covid so I will have to look at other options. Yup, I know the clock is ticking. I don’t work anymore for a Big Four Firm and it was a really long time ago but I will tap my networks to see if possibilities are still there via that route.
LikeLike
Jeeva Pitchaimani
October 27, 2020
Thanks Varsha.
Eswar, thanks for ur insight. But there are a plenty of areas where we differ from each other and my viewpoint will look too cynical to you, when it comes to management in corporate companies. Naan peria essay eludha vendi irkum about what I have seen on this topic.
Madan, what if I don’t want climb higher in the organization ? I am contented with what I have and I think I can deliver my best from where I am. Do you think the company will retain or even respect me? For a person who is willing to work for 50 hours a week for a reasonable pay whose focus is on a life that balances both his professional and artistic pursuits, I don’t think there is a place in today’s setup. This is one of the points I explore in this essay.
Vijayshree and Anu Warrier, thanks for your insights. I havent thought much about the hypocrisies of great writers. Your insights were eye opening. But as Anu says those who love the English language must not miss Thoreau. It is one of a kind. I wanted to start a discussion on him and to a very small extent, I have succeeded.
LikeLike
Jeeva Pitchaimani
October 27, 2020
Thank you Vikas. All the best.
LikeLike
Madan
October 27, 2020
“For a person who is willing to work for 50 hours a week for a reasonable pay whose focus is on a life that balances both his professional and artistic pursuits, I don’t think there is a place in today’s setup” – I think govt and education are the only set ups where this is tolerated, unfortunately. I agree in principle with you that there should be a place for the low maintenance employee who doesn’t ask for much and also doesn’t want to be asked for too much either. The problem is companies are constantly focusing on productivity gains and trying to achieve more with lower costs than before. So that means five years down the line, what you’re doing may be doable by someone with half your pay grade. Or even 30% lower, that would still be a significant saving for them. It is a little more ‘chilled out’ in manufacturing because labour is a lower proportion of costs on the profit and loss but in IT or any other service industry, the employees are the ‘plant and machinery’/’resources’ and are treated as such.
LikeLike
Eswar
October 27, 2020
Madan: Madan, yes sure. Anytime. I may not have insight specific to your field. But I am happy to catch up about the process in general if it would help. Just thinking what is the best way to share my contact details.
Jeeva: Haha. See you have now another topic to write. 🙂
Regarding your question to Madan:
what if I don’t want climb higher in the organization ? I am contented with what I have and I think I can deliver my best from where I am. Do you think the company will retain or even respect me?
This is not an uncommon scenario here. I had colleagues in retirement age working still as engineers and in the non-management roles without wanting to climb up the ladder. While this is unlikely in the IT service companies in India, I believe this is probable in product-based technology companies and startups. Even though I did not have much bad experience with the only IT services company that I worked in India. In general, I do not have a favourable view of working in service-oriented companies. If I were to start again, I would start with a product based company and preferably a startup.
Another option that will meet your expectation is freelancing and remote working. These may be still at a nascent stage in India, but if I were in India, this is something I would explore to free myself from the corporate labyrinth. I am aware that sites like https://angel.co/ and https://stackoverflow.com/jobs advertise remote-only opportunities. But I am guessing there might be more Indian specific portals doing this already.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Srinivas R
October 27, 2020
“I am contented with what I have and I think I can deliver my best from where I am. Do you think the company will retain or even respect me? For a person who is willing to work for 50 hours a week for a reasonable pay whose focus is on a life that balances both his professional and artistic pursuits, I don’t think there is a place in today’s setup. ” –
This sort of thing was possible in US if you were part of the IT division of a financial firm. I first travelled to US in 2008 and I could see some project manager type of roles on client side, who seemed to have a relatively simpler life or some technical guys who would simply remain developers throughout with no expectations of taking up more responsibility. When I travelled again in 2015, things seemed to have changed a little bit. No one seemed to care for a project manager anymore and if you were tech guy, you better be a very good one to say no to other responsibilities.
Inspite of all this the work culture in US is better in the sense that, unless there is a real emergency, after work hours are free. Quality of your work is still valued more than the time you spend at office. You a re genrally away from your appraising manager, so there is more freedom. The performance appraisal is still a lottery.
One advice based on personal experience though, travelling to US as an employee of an Indian IT firm is good…only if you are a bachelor. If you are married with a kid, the cost benefit analysis really doesn’t work out. You can struggle for 4-5 years may be to close your housing loan or some such financial liability, but quality of life as a family is better in India, IMO.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Varsha Ganesh
October 27, 2020
If I may offer my $0.02 here. I work for Big Pharma in the US. The work culture is absolutely chill. I’ve been here 7 years and never seen anyone ever stay after 5 pm. During the day, it’s considered acceptable to run errands during work hours. I am on the science side but I have friends in IT who worked for companies like Accenture as consultants when they came onsite and moved over when they found permanent positions. Most Pharma companies are still dinosaurs when it comes to new technologies so a little bit goes a long way here. Something to consider, if an opportunity arises!
LikeLiked by 3 people
Yajiv
October 28, 2020
@Varsha Ganesh:
I second this opinion. I worked in Big Pharma in the US for a few years. If you’re looking for work/life balance, it’s unbeatable. I saw people leaving well before 5pm on a daily basis (they would show up early though). People worked from home regularly without prior notice and not a question was asked. As long as you did what was needed, it was all good. They were super accommodating with parents with young children too (mothers would leave early to pick their kids up from daycare, fathers would take afternoons off to go to their kids’ soccer games). As long as you don’t mind working in a stuffy old-fashioned office environment (this is definitely not a tech company with people wearing jeans, hoodies and sneakers with ping-pong tables and a beer dispenser) for the hours that you have to be in the office you’ll do just fine.
LikeLiked by 2 people
krishikari
January 29, 2021
I just came across this while searching for some post about the Martin Scorsese’s documentary on Fran Lebowitz, and read the whole thing… @jeeva you are an amazing and prolific writer and I admire the clarity with which you put down your thoughts. That ending! … hope it was, cross that, is happy. For both of you. All the best!
As a woman, I think the perfect partner in life is one who will leave you the hell alone to do your own stuff.
I look at Thoreau’s Walden as an inspiring work of fiction. About Fran Lebowitz, she was a great proponent of not working (although she has worked hard) and living just as she pleases. Her Walden is NYC. Luckily for her, being a lesbian, she had no men to look after and being a wit, gets paid to write.
LikeLike
Cathy Cooper
January 30, 2021
I discovered this brilliant thread (the memoir and the comments) today thanks to Krishikari’s latest comment. I have been on both ends of the spectrum – working absolutely crazy hours, and taking it just a tad easy to tend to other aspects of life and surprisingly enough the results and rewards have not always been proportionate to the efforts that went in. After all isn’t it always about “impact”? At least that’s the standard speak in the corporate world that I am part of. And while I do agree with impact to some extent, I also think a lot of my work successes and non successes were about the timing – the right project, the right manager/management as you move up the ladder, the right location et al and sometimes even the right timing in my personal life with my parents or in-laws or hubby’s work situation.
Jeeva – you are a wonderful writer and I look forward to reading your book(s) whenever that happens. And somehow I sense a part 2 of this memoir in a few years…
On the subject of women philosophers or the lack thereof, I do think motherhood plays a role. Anecdotally speaking, once a mother, the well being of and providing a secure/comfortable life to your child is the priority of your life and philosophy/asceticism doesn’t quite work unless you are financially secure otherwise. My two cents….
LikeLike
Jeeva Pitchaimani
May 26, 2021
Krishikari and Cathy Cooper, you have no idea of how much your words mean to me! thank you so much!
LikeLike