The rightful package

Recently I was offered a big (big is a relative term) amount as pay package from a software company.  While I am still in the process of deciding whether to take up the offer or to wait and look for other better offers, I thought it was worthwhile devoting some time to pondering on this question which has been on my mind for some time – “How much an employee should be paid?” A question whose answer every company needs to decide before hiring. But a company’s answer to this question maybe driven by selfish reasons, and each company’s decision will differ from others’.  Hence to answer this question objectively we will need to put more thought to it. This essay is an attempt to finding an answer to this question, through an objective analysis of facts ... well as objective as possible. I am not an expert in economics, so my musings may not be economically correct, but I am an observer of my country and my times hence I will try to look for an answer from that point of view. Also since I have observed the Indian software industry more closely than any other, my observations and theories will hover around the same.

I think the question of The Rightful pay package can be broken down into 2 parts –

1.   How much does one deserve (to be paid)
2.   How much does one need (to maintain a reasonable lifestyle)

The second question is much more difficult to answer than the first, and I doubt if it is ever considered by organisations in the real world while deciding pay packages for employees. While the first question is more likely to elicit unbiased and reasonable responses, the second question is bound to succumb to subjective definitions of the word reasonable. Hence I will tackle the easier question first. But before trying to look for answers it would be appropriate to give a bit of a background.

The Indian software Industry - Since the 90s there has been a boom in software jobs in India. So much so that a software professional’s life has become kind of synonymous with the good life. Some people may disagree with my view, because often we s/w engineers have been called cyber coolies and there is a section of people who think exactly the opposite – that a software engineer’s life is a bad life. I would say although this view exists, it’s in minority. I believe the predominant view among the middle class is that software jobs are good and software professionals lead comfortable and affluent lives. The primary reason for this belief is the salary that software engineers draw and the percentage of them living abroad. In India the biggest attraction towards a software job has been its onsite opportunities or in layman terms the opportunity to work abroad especially in the US. This has over the years also resulted in an incorrect belief in the minds of people (who are not part of the s/w industry) that the s/w engineers living or working abroad are surely better than those that are working in India. This is not necessarily true, most software engineers know it, but I will not digress into this discussion. With more and more software jobs appearing in the market due to globalisation and the profitability of outsourcing, the software engineer’s salary has been constantly on a rise. This is also perpetuated by rising inflation and a growing trend of consumerism in the cities. But a software engineer’s handsome pay package has a little more to do with than just industry demand.

Hiring* - While people in the software industry like any other industry are recruited based on their skills and expertise, their salaries are not always proportionate to their abilities. More often a software engineer’s salary is determined by his previous salary and his ability to bargain (for more). Hence a secret mantra (now no longer a secret) of earning more in the s/w industry is to keep switching jobs. A person who has worked for more companies in a given period of time invariably earns more than a person who has stuck with one company for the same duration. This system I believe is grossly wrong and discriminating. A person’s salary should be only proportional to a combination of his abilities and years of experience, irrespective of how many companies he has worked for or how well he can bargain. This system has led to glaring inequality in salaries across the software industry and is being wrongly taken advantage of by companies and employees alike. Most companies often do not bother to raise the salaries of their employees more than a minimum percentage, unless they resign and bargain for a raise. While the same companies will pay a new lateral employee much more than what they pay to an existing employee with same skill sets and experience. Another not so palpable evil of the system is that, it has made people greedy.  As some wise man said – “A raise is a raise for just about 1 week, after that it’s just your salary.” This leads to an insatiable desire to earn more, it’s never enough. One is bound to ask the question then, why do some people keep working for the same company for years at a stretch at all? Although the number of people working for the same company for more than 5 years is quite less, but there is a good number of people who stick with a company for 3-5 years. There are a number of reasons for that –

1. People are not adventurous. They are happy with the status quo and don’t want to make the effort to go and look for other jobs.
2.  Some people value job security more than a high pay package. This is seen more among the experienced people with families. Joining a new company has its share of uncertainties; some people don’t want that uncertainty in their lives.
3. Some people, although a small percentage are actually happy with their jobs and salaries and see no reason to change.

Here I have not counted those people who are not good enough to qualify/clear job interviews, they are holding on to their existing jobs by virtue of having been worked there for some time.

How much does one deserve? - But I have not yet answered the question – “How much does one deserve?” There is no standard answer to this question even if we limit our jurisdiction to the software industry. I am not sure how a person’s contribution to a project/software can be quantified, but if there was some way to do that reasonably this question could be answered. I am sure companies have some justification and thought behind the salary structures they design for different levels of employees, but I feel that justification maybe less rational and more prejudiced. I will cite a personal example here. In my last project I worked with a very talented and knowledgeable fresher (he was an M.Tech though). My package was roughly 3 times his. If I take out the value-of-experience factor, there was not much difference between his contribution and mine to the project. If anything he was probably a better Java developer than me and some others in the team. But just because he was a fresher he had to be content with a modest package. I took this simplistic example because I could feel the disparity closely in this particular case, the criteria for deciding the salaries of higher management maybe more complex and to quantify their contribution to the company more difficult. To sum up, I feel if a person is being paid more than what his/her contribution to his/her company/project deserves, he is being overpaid.

How much does one need? - Now coming to the question of - “How much does one need?” or to put in other words “How much is enough?” It’s a question frequently asked by environmentalists and socialists and deliberately ignored by capitalists. The definition for “enough” is relative; it is different for different classes of people. Since we are talking about salaries here, I think any salary that lets a person and his/her family maintain a decent and comfortable standard of living and provides for all the necessities, should be enough. But here is the problem. It is probably wrong to expect a person to continue maintaining the same standard of living throughout his life and not strive to improve it if he can. Along with that an economy following this kind of model is bound to become stagnated and sooner or later plummet into recession. Hence answering this question is considerably more difficult than the first. I have personally experienced that the “enough” is often defined by the limits to my spending capabilities. When I earned 15k per month, it was enough for me; I adjusted my lifestyle to manage within my salary limits. I paid less rent and lived in a modest house, I had a relatively cheap mobile, I used to watch morning shows at PVR in the weekends and bought less clothes and accessories. But this was 5 years back. Goods and services have become dearer since then. To maintain the same sort of lifestyle I would probably need 25k now. But not withstanding the effects of inflation, I have managed to increase my expenditure constantly with my rising income, and in the process I have discovered – “It’s never enough.” Part of the blame for this realization goes to my ever increasing desires and part of it goes to the rampant consumerism that modern India is experiencing. It’s no longer just about providing for oneself and one’s family, it’s about showing off one’s power of spending.

In a country where the disparity between the poor and the rich is so huge, where 32 % of the population is below the poverty line but 11 Indians feature in the Forbes list of richest billionaires, and the richest among them decided to flaunt this disparity by building a 27 storied house maintained by a 600 member staff just for his family; I find this trend disturbing. But then what is the solution? The only solution I can think of is Govt. Regulation over salaries and spending. But that would make us socialists! I am not sure if living in a socialist economy would be worse than living in a capitalist economy. The entrepreneurs and industrialists who have lived through the age of the License Raj would have something to say about that for sure.

I would end this discussion here. I have reached the limits of my knowledge on the matter and my thinking abilities. I don’t think I provided any convincing answers to the questions I raised. Hopefully with time I will be able to refurbish my answers and present a more formidable case.

*hiring in other industries is probably done in the same manner but I am not aware of that hence I will confine my discussion to the software industry only.

Coriolanus - movie review

Coriolanus is one of the lesser known of Shakespeare's plays, which debutante director Ralph Fiennes (by no means a stranger to Hollywood  has adapted into a film, with some interesting changes. The movie is set in what looks like modern times - with TV news channels, mobile communication, modern arms and ammunition; but the language used by the protagonists is Shakespearean. Let me repeat this - Shakespearean. That's what makes the movie a difficult watch, it takes some time to get used to, but in general I could only comprehend about 40% of the dialogues. But never the less, the story is not difficult to understand. Coriolanus is the story of a military general Caius Martius(Fiennes) from a city that calls itself Rome, he is anointed with the title of Coriolanus for defending his city against the attack of the Volscian army led by Tullus Aufidius (Gerard Butler) in the battle of Corioles, but when Coriolanus runs for the post of Consul his pride and a general condescending attitude towards the people of the City of Rome lead to him being banished from the city. Coriolanus then vows revenge against the city whose loyal servant, he once was.

I will not give any more of that story out. Ralph Fiennes delivers a powerful performance, his expressions and his dialogue delivery gave me goose bumps. Ralph Fiennes has proved to the world again and again what a brilliantly versatile actor he is, his array of work probably is as diverse as it can get - the ruthless nazi in Schindler's List, the shy husband in The Constant Gardener, the hesitant and troubled man in The Reader, The menacing Voldemort in Harry Potter and now Coriolanus. Pity that he has been nominated for Oscar twice, but hasn't bagged one yet.

Vanessa Redgrave playing the role of Coriolanus' domineering mother also does justice to her character. One cannot but appreciate the work put in by the whole cast, to memorize the difficult dialogues and then deliver them with elegant poise.

There is an amount of willing suspension of disbelief expected of the audience to be able to appreciate the movie. After all  its an adaptation of a play written more than 400 years ago. But all in all I would still say, a Saturday night well spent.

The great Indian censorship dream

I don't understand this furore over censorship in social media. We have been pioneers of censorship ... always !! We ban controversial movie and book releases all the time. And we don't even need the Govt for that. Any Tom Dick Harry with a few strong muscular followers can do that any day and then assume some fancy name for their new formed group and formulate some ideology for themselves (coz ideology is required ... Ohh you've got 2 stand 4 something).

Worst case if Facebook and youtube is censored, the fun that we have by abusing and criticizing politicians ... well we would have to find some new pastime. There are plenty available in FB anyways !! 

I don't think Facebook will be banned though, there are a lot of companies whose main source of advertisement is Facebook, I am sure they won't let that happen. 

Censorship has always been a feature of our politics - as the Americans invade any country in the interest of national security, we censor anything in the interest of communal harmony. After all we have been neighbors to China for so long, we ought to learn something from them, good or bad. 

I don't feel angered at Mr Sibbal at coming up with such an outrageous idea of social media censorship, I don't think its outrageous at all ... at least not in India. What I am disappointed with is the cliched and hackneyed thinking on the part of the IT minister to take control over a dire situation. Any other minister in his position, no matter from which party he belonged, would have done quite the same thing ... or done nothing. If the Govt thinks that social media is fueling a lot of distrust and anger in the citizen's mind, what has the Govt done to build that trust back? Why can't they use the same social media to counter all those opinions ... Maybe they don't have anything to counter them with, maybe they don't have anything to show off now ... 

The Govt has already given up I feel, they themselves don't want to continue ... the kind of mismanagement they have shown in the past few months ... might encourage B Schools to create a new course in their curriculum called - How not to manage (The Congress Way). If the majority party can't have a hold over the parliament's proceedings, how could you expect them to do well in governing the country !! 

For all those who are reading this note (that's a big assumption on my part) and thinking whose side this guy is anyways? Well ... I am just a regular pessimist, I don't have to pick sides ... I just happen to know some English and like to show off my writing skills occasionally :) 

How different is our faith in science, from our faith in religion?

Picked the following exceprt from a book review of Geek Nation by Jaimon Joseph in ibnlive.in.com. I really liked the view point hence sharing it.

How different is our faith in science, from our faith in religion? We accept what scientists tell us, it's not like we're doing any experiments to cross check their claims. Ditto, for what pundits and priests dole out for us. For better or worse, our modern belief system is still based on TRUST, not on science, no?
That's why when scientists tell us nuclear power is safe, we believe them. Because after all, they are the brightest bulbs around. When scientists tell us the glaciers are melting, we believe them too. After all, who has the time to take a thermometer to the South Pole!?
It's only when a Fukushima happens, or when newspapers offer up the inside dope on what climate scientists are REALLY emailing each other about - that we do a double take. And look for someone else to believe in.

Babies' cries

Last night on the train I was kept awake by a crying baby on my adjacent seat. Although I felt mildly irritated I was not perturbed too much as I had had enough sleep already, but the child's parents seemed a little embarrassed While they made their attempts to put the baby to sleep, a hitherto not pondered over thought came to my mind.

What's more disconcerting - a baby's cry or a baby's silence. A baby cries normally over relatively trivial matters like - hunger, wet diapers, unable to sleep or maybe a simple cry for attention. Seldom does it get any more serious than this. But for a baby his/her cries are the only means of communication. I am not a father yet, but I guess to a baby's parents those wails act more as a signal to take some action than anything else. In that respect I feel a baby's cries are reassuring to a parent's ear, simply due to the repetitive nature of the process. The only time you know your baby is not crying is when he is sleeping or playing or eating/drinking. But imagine the situation where a baby is silent and not doing either of the aforementioned things. Wouldn't that silence be more excruciating than the cries.

I don't know if I made it sound melodramatic, but this thought surely helped me fall asleep. I guess deep down we all are programmed to get used to babies crying, but its not quite the same when an adult cries. I have never had to sleep through an adult's cries, I hope none of us have to ...

Brave new world - book review

When I started reading this book I wasn't very excited about it. I just wanted to read it since it was so famous, I expected it to be plain old dystopia. But as I kept on reading I got more and more interested. It's a classic. I would say one hasn't read enough dystopia if he hasn't read Brave New World and 1984. But where this book differs from most dystopic fictions is that the dystopic world described here by Huxley is not intended to be totally evil as it is in say 1984. The futuristic civilized society created by Huxley is presented as a solution for sustaining human civilization and the arguments are pretty convincing. Although as Huxley himself later accepted it may not be the only solution but it certainly is one of the solutions. In light of this important distinction, Brave New World turns out to be a really depressing read. One can't keep himself from thinking, if this is what it has to come to for human beings to survive, would I be well off dead !!

I don't want to give spoilers but will give a brief background of the story. The futuristic civilized society in Huxley's Brave New World is a highly materialistic world. Here human beings are in a way industrially mass produced. Hence there is no concept of mother or father. All are children of the state. The society has a strict class system in place, which is implemented right from the birth of a child. In fact the children are mentally conditioned in various ways to belong to their particular class through out their mortal lives and never dream of questioning the system, be jealous of other classes or be in any kind of conflict with them. The state takes various measure to keep its subjects happy like by free distribution of drugs, encouraging promiscuity etc.
There are though a group of people who do not live in this civilized society, they choose to carry on living the old way - where women are still viviparous. They are understandably called the savages.

Through this story the author tries to argue which alternative is better. But till the end the author remains undecided and ambiguous and I believe the reader too would feel the same way. A must read for all thinking minds and fans of dystopic fiction.

Jaya by Devdutt Pattanaik - book review

Reading mahabharata was a sudden and unexpected choice on my part. I have never been much interested in mythology but I remembered some of Mahabharata from B.R Chopra's epic TV adaptation and I thought to give it a try. I didn't realize reading this would be such an epiphany. Whether Mahabharata is a myth or history maybe a matter of perspective, but the one thing it is for sure is an epic, in all sense of the word. The numerous characters, their inner conflicts, their complex relations, their desires, their choices, their triumphs and travails and in the midst of all that eternal wisdom, spoken by God himself. The world of mahabharata is a deterministic world, where actions have consequences, if not in one lifetime then several births later.

I have often oscillated between being a believer and a non-believer, but this book has tilted my mind and brain towards the former. Mahabharata does in no way preach religion but it does speak about the authority of a supreme being over the world and its inhabitants. Unlike Ramayana, mahabharata is not a straight-forward triumph of good over evil story. The characters here are much more complicated, their choices and decisions more influenced by instincts than values, therefore the lessons to be learnt from this book aren't as easy to grasp either. What makes things even more complicated is the fact that Vishnu the so called supreme ruler of the world is born as a human being - Krishna, and plays a pivotal role in the whole story. This strange fact brings up a difficult question in the reader's mind - to judge or not to judge God.
This version written by Devdutt Pattanaik answers this question in a very consistent and satisfactory manner, and that to me was the biggest plus for this book. Whether or not you believe in or like the explanation is a subjective thing but I found his attempt to answer, commendable. Although abridged the author has managed to squeeze a lot of info and back stories on smaller/non-central characters in the epic, which keeps the interest of the reader alive. Another good thing about this book is that the author has included in almost every chapter little anecdotes about characters and events from various regional versions of the epic and folklores. The author has also given his interpretations of a lot of events in the book which build upon his central theme - the answer to the question - to judge or not to judge God.

I recommend this book to all who those who haven't read mahabharata. It is a good initiation.

Roadside Picnic - book review

This is one of the few sci-fi books with more philosophical undertones than sci-fi. It's a short and thought-provoking read, although it may seem kind of anti-climactic at the end, but the story's beauty lies in its simplicity. Although there are quite a few different concepts/theories hidden between the lines, but 1 that I found profound and central to the story is this -

Most of us think that man has an insatiable desire for knowledge. But this statement is too simplistic and naive. The man that we refer to in this statement, is the common man. The common man does have an insatiable desire for understanding but not necessarily knowledge. There is a subtle difference. Knowledge is more absolute and objective in nature when compared to understanding. Most of us seek to understand things that we don't understand, and most of us are content with a dumbed down or simplified answer to our questions, it's enough to sustain us through out our life. For example the question of God - most people are either happy with believing that there is a supreme being that holds all the reins to our lives or there is no such thing as God, we are the masters of our own fate. There maybe only a handful of people who are ready to do whatever it takes to find a real answer to this question. And those handful of people are faced with another insurmountable proposition - Can the question be answered within the limits of our existing knowledge and our capacity for understanding.To elaborate this further - any physics or engineering student will tell you that a perpetual motion machine is impossible, because it violates the 1st law of thermodynamics. Why is our science so sure about this? Because we haven't yet seen any phenomena that defies the 1st law and hence we never felt the need to question it. But what if we suddenly encounter a PMM? Does that mean our assumption was wrong? If it was wrong then what is the right explanation and can that be understood with our current physical understanding of the universe? But nevertheless, just because we can't understand something does not mean it can't exist.

To sum up, we search for answers to different questions throughout our lives, but more often we make/create answers for those questions ourselves.

A side note - The PMM was just an example from my end, I am not very sure, there actually maybe unquestionable scientific evidence defying its existence. But the author has used instances like this in his book, and I think he is urging us to not restrict our thinking to things that we already know. Remember when Einstein first came up with the theory of relativity, nobody believed him because nobody else could think the way he did. But with time he was proven right and we were able to expand our thinking to embrace a relativistic world.

The Beautiful and the Damned - book review

As the name suggests in this book the author has tried to capture several facets of life in modern India in its contrasting shades. How on the one hand Indian economy is booming with lots of outsourced jobs and foreign investment pouring in, and on the other hand millions of Indians are still living without the basic amenities, thousands of farmers are committing suicide every year and a lot of Indians are struggling to come to terms with the changing and confused environment. The idea is good, but I am not entirely happy with the execution. The author, Siddhartha Deb, himself an Indian, left India in the early 2000s to study in America, and he wrote this book on his return.

Let me give a brief overview of the chapters. The book consists of 5 chapters -

1. The opening chapter is about Arindam Chaudhari, the self proclaimed management guru and the chairman of IIPM and Planman media. In this chapter Deb tells us how Mr Chaudhari is making a living on the dreams and aspirations of the youth of India, who want to fit in and be a part of the corporate culture. He gives us a close look of Arindam Chaudhari the man, his background and business. And much of it is critical if not derisive. No wonder he got a court injunction on the publication of this chapter, hence in the latest copies of the book being sold in India this chapter has been omitted. But due to the negative publicity the chapter is easily available on the internet on various blogs.
2. This chapter is about the flag bearers of the booming economy, the Indian engineer. I found this chapter kind of confusing I couldn't really make out what point the author was trying to make, except for the fact that there is a great divide between the dreams and achievements of the engineers of today.
3. This chapter is about the plight of the farmers of India. Deb has focused on farmers from the telangana region of Andhra Pradesh who used to grow a crop called Red Sorghum. This chapter again, highlights some issues like - how industrial development has adversely affected Indian farmers, but lacks proper analysis.
4. The 4th chapter is about the huge mass of temporary workers in India. This chapter was much better than its predecessors, the author interviewed some workers from a steel factory in Andhra Pradesh, and gave us an account of their lives and their reasons for doing what they were doing.
5. The final chapter is about a girl from the North Eastern state of Manipur who works in New Delhi. This was the best chapter in the whole book. Although this chapter didn't deal with one single issue, but through the the protagonist's account of her life, the author pointed out the alienation that people from the North East feel from the mainland. The account was personal and very heartfelt, and in a way the protagonist Esther was as much the hero of this book as she was for her state and North East India.

Apart from the 5 chapters the book also carried an introduction where the author spoke of several things, most notable among them was about a man Named Abdul Jabbar who runs an NGO for the women widowed in the Bhopal Gas Tragedy. The book is a nice read, it brought forth a lot of things that I didn't know about my country, although the issues in general lacked in depth analysis, but then I don't think analysis of issues was the point of this book. What I disliked about the book and the author in particular was his mostly sardonic tone throughout the book, the kind of tone one finds (atleast I have experienced first hand) in Indians who have lived in the West for quite a few years and somehow feel themselves to be superior to the rest of us. Also the fact that I am prejudiced against these kind of people, may have led me to being too critical of the author.

All in all I would say The Beautiful And The Damned is a good fast paced read, with less of the beautiful and more of the damned. But the author can hardly be blamed for that, that's how our country is shaping up.