Anatomy of a Small Company!
Capitalism: is a situation where the ownership of the means of production is privately controlled either individually or by a group of individuals.
Capitalist: is the individual or the group of individuals, who owns and manages the alleged means of production.
Labor: is the common intelligent/unintelligent folk working for the capitalist.
Pseudo-capitalist: is someone who thinks capitalism is good as long as one is the capitalist but not otherwise.
Today, I think I am in a position to think about these heavy words and probably also write something about them. For that, I will try and dissect into the entrails of a small enterprise and write something about the anatomy of a successfully & shrewdly yet imprudently run and efficiently yet incompetently managed company, which is being artfully yet torpidly dragged into the future. I used the term ‘small enterprise’ as the company in question has the employee strength of only 70.
A company can be successful and growing at the same time, only if its employees are happy because only then will it be able to retain them, who in turn will contribute towards its growth. On the other hand, it’s not necessary that a successful company will also be growing. It has been successful only because at any point of time it has had the good fortune of having hired talented and hard-working employees, who chose to stay in the company for sometime, say, for a year or two. And so, it struggles to grow for exactly the same reason i.e. a high attrition rate. Another driver, which contributes towards the company’s profitability, is the wage. The lower the wages the more profitable a company is and vice-versa. The capitalists of the world will always argue that they have always been paying more than what their employees deserve. The workers will always complain that they have always been underpaid. I know this is an interminable debate but the divide can at least be tried to make as narrow as possible. On top of that, I think it is almost a sin to justify the lower wages. The owner of the company acts chicken when he does that. Either he should be bold enough to say that his company is simply unable to give proper wages or it is clearly against the company policy to pay someone his/her due. He even goes on to say that as the company recruits most of its employees directly from different colleges, they shouldn’t really be concerned about their wages. Instead, they should only care about the learning from their first job i.e. whatever they can get to learn and leave all the money matters entirely to the employers. Another reason cited by him is that the company provided them with their first big break in the mean and exciting corporate world, so instead of grumbling about the work or the pay package they should actually be thankful to it. When in fact, this might be the first big break for some of them but for most others they had at least two jobs when they chose to join the company. The company says that they needed it but it was the company also that needed them as badly otherwise it wouldn’t have hired them in the first place. In other words, they should burn the midnight oil for the company without expecting anything in return, of course except the miniscule paycheck.
If the company is really into some exciting stuff, I think it would almost never have to advertise itself to attract the talent pool; rather, its employees would be its best promoters and at no extra cost. But since that is not the case, before and during the entire recruitment process, this company never ever actually reveals what it really does and what little does it acknowledge is only what does it intend to do in the future and that too with all the garnishing. The reason for this disguising of the facts is that the work here tends to be so monotonous that you would get to know whatever there was to learn, say, in the first six months and this is the time when you really start looking for a change.
The company runs on a hire & fire model in the true sense of the words with the only difference being that ‘fire’ is replaced by ‘forced voluntary resignation’. The company model is such that it doesn’t want to hold any employee for more than a year and half or maybe two at maximum. The reason being very simple that a two year old employee has too many expectations from the company both professionally and monetarily and as already mentioned above, it is against the company policy to pay someone according to his/her mettle and experience. So, anyone in the organization who is nearing to be 18-24 months old employee is simply put out of the job i.e. he is stopped given any projects or projects worth doing. Instead he/she will be given the choicest aka the most boring thing to do. So, in such a scenario, the only thing left for the employee is to take the cue and start looking for a new job. And fortunately, almost all who have left the company in the past have gone to good companies and at much better pay packages.
When it comes to retaining employees, the employer of this company likes to be a Neanderthal. He still believes in the bonded labor. Being very much aware of the high attrition rate, anyone who joins the company is made to sign a one-year bond with the company. And as ludicrous and preposterous it might seem, the employee is made to sign another one-year bond with the company on his promotion, otherwise he is outrightly denied the promotion and the accompanying pay-hike. Another interesting fact about the employer is that he is overly sentimental i.e. he develops a kind of bonding with his employees, which almost borders on maniacal affinity. Irrespective of the fact whether one has completed his contract period with the company or not, most often than not he will definitely be denied the experience certificate aka the relieving letter, which most of the companies require when they hire a new person if he was previously employed somewhere. The guy’s very much laidback too. He and his cohorts, unfailingly, somehow happen to think about someone’s welfare only when he would go and present his resignation papers. They would do all the imaginable sweet talks like, ‘Oh, you know, we had so many plans for you. We were so much happy with your performance that we were planning to give you a double increment this time.’ or ‘Think again about the decision you have made because, you know, we were planning to make you the project leader and you would be handling not only one but 4 projects simultaneously.’ or ‘Think of the opportunities that you are going to lose because we were planning to put you into some real analytic projects.’. The only problem is that all these fancy talks come to their heads only when a person is about to leave the company. Moreover, one can be assigned any ‘real’ analytic project only if the company has one. All said and done, if the same employee is still smart enough to leave the company, the employer of this madhouse makes it his personal vendetta to see that the employee is not able to get a better job somewhere else. The owner of this company has so many tricks up his sleeve that he never fails to amaze me, for he is also adept at forecasting the would-be ex-employee, for most of the times that unfortunate labor is also denied his last month’s pay. So much for doing so much for the company!! Now, this is what I would say blasphemy.
Capitalist: is the individual or the group of individuals, who owns and manages the alleged means of production.
Labor: is the common intelligent/unintelligent folk working for the capitalist.
Pseudo-capitalist: is someone who thinks capitalism is good as long as one is the capitalist but not otherwise.
Today, I think I am in a position to think about these heavy words and probably also write something about them. For that, I will try and dissect into the entrails of a small enterprise and write something about the anatomy of a successfully & shrewdly yet imprudently run and efficiently yet incompetently managed company, which is being artfully yet torpidly dragged into the future. I used the term ‘small enterprise’ as the company in question has the employee strength of only 70.
A company can be successful and growing at the same time, only if its employees are happy because only then will it be able to retain them, who in turn will contribute towards its growth. On the other hand, it’s not necessary that a successful company will also be growing. It has been successful only because at any point of time it has had the good fortune of having hired talented and hard-working employees, who chose to stay in the company for sometime, say, for a year or two. And so, it struggles to grow for exactly the same reason i.e. a high attrition rate. Another driver, which contributes towards the company’s profitability, is the wage. The lower the wages the more profitable a company is and vice-versa. The capitalists of the world will always argue that they have always been paying more than what their employees deserve. The workers will always complain that they have always been underpaid. I know this is an interminable debate but the divide can at least be tried to make as narrow as possible. On top of that, I think it is almost a sin to justify the lower wages. The owner of the company acts chicken when he does that. Either he should be bold enough to say that his company is simply unable to give proper wages or it is clearly against the company policy to pay someone his/her due. He even goes on to say that as the company recruits most of its employees directly from different colleges, they shouldn’t really be concerned about their wages. Instead, they should only care about the learning from their first job i.e. whatever they can get to learn and leave all the money matters entirely to the employers. Another reason cited by him is that the company provided them with their first big break in the mean and exciting corporate world, so instead of grumbling about the work or the pay package they should actually be thankful to it. When in fact, this might be the first big break for some of them but for most others they had at least two jobs when they chose to join the company. The company says that they needed it but it was the company also that needed them as badly otherwise it wouldn’t have hired them in the first place. In other words, they should burn the midnight oil for the company without expecting anything in return, of course except the miniscule paycheck.
If the company is really into some exciting stuff, I think it would almost never have to advertise itself to attract the talent pool; rather, its employees would be its best promoters and at no extra cost. But since that is not the case, before and during the entire recruitment process, this company never ever actually reveals what it really does and what little does it acknowledge is only what does it intend to do in the future and that too with all the garnishing. The reason for this disguising of the facts is that the work here tends to be so monotonous that you would get to know whatever there was to learn, say, in the first six months and this is the time when you really start looking for a change.
The company runs on a hire & fire model in the true sense of the words with the only difference being that ‘fire’ is replaced by ‘forced voluntary resignation’. The company model is such that it doesn’t want to hold any employee for more than a year and half or maybe two at maximum. The reason being very simple that a two year old employee has too many expectations from the company both professionally and monetarily and as already mentioned above, it is against the company policy to pay someone according to his/her mettle and experience. So, anyone in the organization who is nearing to be 18-24 months old employee is simply put out of the job i.e. he is stopped given any projects or projects worth doing. Instead he/she will be given the choicest aka the most boring thing to do. So, in such a scenario, the only thing left for the employee is to take the cue and start looking for a new job. And fortunately, almost all who have left the company in the past have gone to good companies and at much better pay packages.
When it comes to retaining employees, the employer of this company likes to be a Neanderthal. He still believes in the bonded labor. Being very much aware of the high attrition rate, anyone who joins the company is made to sign a one-year bond with the company. And as ludicrous and preposterous it might seem, the employee is made to sign another one-year bond with the company on his promotion, otherwise he is outrightly denied the promotion and the accompanying pay-hike. Another interesting fact about the employer is that he is overly sentimental i.e. he develops a kind of bonding with his employees, which almost borders on maniacal affinity. Irrespective of the fact whether one has completed his contract period with the company or not, most often than not he will definitely be denied the experience certificate aka the relieving letter, which most of the companies require when they hire a new person if he was previously employed somewhere. The guy’s very much laidback too. He and his cohorts, unfailingly, somehow happen to think about someone’s welfare only when he would go and present his resignation papers. They would do all the imaginable sweet talks like, ‘Oh, you know, we had so many plans for you. We were so much happy with your performance that we were planning to give you a double increment this time.’ or ‘Think again about the decision you have made because, you know, we were planning to make you the project leader and you would be handling not only one but 4 projects simultaneously.’ or ‘Think of the opportunities that you are going to lose because we were planning to put you into some real analytic projects.’. The only problem is that all these fancy talks come to their heads only when a person is about to leave the company. Moreover, one can be assigned any ‘real’ analytic project only if the company has one. All said and done, if the same employee is still smart enough to leave the company, the employer of this madhouse makes it his personal vendetta to see that the employee is not able to get a better job somewhere else. The owner of this company has so many tricks up his sleeve that he never fails to amaze me, for he is also adept at forecasting the would-be ex-employee, for most of the times that unfortunate labor is also denied his last month’s pay. So much for doing so much for the company!! Now, this is what I would say blasphemy.
I am sure that any capitalist reading this post will definitely term it as a hate-post wrote by some disgruntled employee. On the other hand, I am also confident that many will extol it. But that is not what is relevant here. A far as amassing wealth and money is concerned, I would say, the employer talked about in this post has done incredibly well for himself and after all he is running a company! But the question is, for how long? He thinks that through his primitive thinking he will be able to contain the attrition rate but that is exactly which is not going to happen. The talented employees have been moving and will move at the first better opportunity despite having been bonded to the company (the bonded labor is illegal in India). Secondly, it might give the employer some satisfaction or the egotistical high after denying a month’s pay to his employee but in my view, he is only paving the way for his company’s untimely demise. I would say, giving low wages is not immoral but giving no wage is entirely unethical and unrighteous, which only a debased and a corrupt human being can do. For I am a pseudo-capitalist and wouldn’t mind making money for myself.
Au revoir
posted by Ankur Shanker @ 2:34 AM
2 Comments:
[Ganga] Very well commented! While writing this post, i was very much aware of the peril of giving a cliche when i wrote the definition for Capitalism. I very much wanted to mould it according to present-day industrial scenario, which is more services-driven rather than production-driven but somehow just couldn't. Anyways, thankyou for pointing out the flaw. Keep commenting!!
man "alleged means of production"..was the word alleged written for any specific reason. i did nt understand wot it means? ... alleged means of production,..
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