The Fleeting Glory

First and foremost, I am very grateful for my job; for everything it has offered me in the last one year, for bringing me to life after all I had been through and for making me believe in myself again at a time when I was alone, vulnerable and lost. I go back a year, and I still shudder at the memories: memories of being homeless, jobless, broke and broken.

Finally, after three months of waiting anxiously and living a life of squalor, this company pulled me back from the pits. And I started from scratch, in a new team, with new people and new challenges.

In the last year, I have seen myself grow, move on and make new friends. I have also seen the organization mature through management changes, restructuring and growing team sizes. That also brings me to the evident signs of a maturing organization:

a)Employees have degrees longer than their names: It’s almost a miracle when your four-letter surname is followed by a string of letters like B.E., MBA, CFA, FRM, CA, CPA. You look around you, and people are still writing some exam or the other, while all I am doing is wasting my time on my blog or reading books which have no academic value or taking vacations instead of study leaves. I am officially the least educated person on the floor.

b)More time is spent on meetings/operational formalities than on work: This was one of the main factors which literally drove me away from Company D, and as I spend more time in my current company, I shudder at the way it slowly but surely moves towards ‘processes’ and ‘best practices’ which are discussed in the different meetings where the same things are repeated but in different jargons.

c)Success becomes directly proportional to the number of big words used: Suddenly everybody wants ‘management responsibilities’ which involve ‘paradigm shifts’, ‘strategizing’, and ‘operationalizing’ and since I have no idea what they mean, I am left to do the dirty ‘grassroot level’ work which is beneath the dignity of other people, but thankfully, I am happy with that.

d)The focus shifts from working to networking: The early signs of a mature organization are alarmingly getting on my nerves, when my objectives are being modified towards ‘increasing professional contacts’, ‘collaboration’ and ‘exposure’ which when translated in plain English means ‘hang out with the people who matter’or 'make important friends'.

e)‘Value’ becomes directly proportional to your relationship with the manager: As it is, in a research set-up, it’s difficult to quantify ‘value’, and especially if you are in a mature organization, the big ideas have already been exhausted, and you are easily expendable in favour of someone who is less obdurate and opinionated or as HR will put it, ‘has better attitude’.

Well, so now that I am a part of an almost mature organization, I can see my foreseeable future, and as is always the case with most things in my life, it seems short-lived…