Why I am leaving my company!!!

This was a mail which was forwarded to me today. It depicts a guy's experiences in a top IT company both good and worse and how a true winner for life let down the offer to join the best B-School in the country to be in the company just because he felt he could emerge as a better manager in the company than if he was in the B-School. He has just let out his feelings and opinion known on the eve of his exit from the company.

I just posted it because it depicts a little bit from my own professional life though I have just started out in my quest to be a gr8 IT professional(Its been 15 months !!!) AND incidentally the organisation I have started out my career is the same one from which the guy has exited... SATYAM ... Read On.... its a wonderful read if u wanna reach the top and fight the bureaucracies that is plaguing many young IT professionals.... am still learning the curves of corporate-dom and this 'mail' has really enlightened me....

NEways happy reading !!!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Fellow Satyamites,
When I walk out the door today, I would have completed just over 62 months in Satyam, 48 months of that with SFI ( 6 months in SFI-IS Maintenance, 10 months with SFI-IDC offshore and 32 months at SFI Onsite). Why all this information? So that you may better appreciate what I want to say now. What follows in this mail are the feelings with which I am leaving Satyam after having given it five years from the prime of my youth. It is gonna be long, I warn you, so read it only if you are interested in hearing what I have to say. And kindly note that almost all of my references to Satyam are applicable mainly to the State Farm account.

"Why are you leaving?" - This is the question that I had fielded umpteen number of times in the past two months. I would love to say that my career in Satyam has motivated me so much that I now want to reach farther and achieve more. But nothing could be further from the truth.

So what is the truth? After graduating from IIT-Kharagpur in June 1995 and doing a couple of odd jobs around the country for an year, I finally settled with Satyam in April 1996 because of the promise of a fast track career in a growing company. My first two years in Satyam have been everything that I dreamed of - I saw my career progressing just the way I wanted. I was a team member, an ML and then a PL within two years. I was very happy with my job. So happy in fact, that I turned down my admission at the IIM, Bangalore to continue with Satyam. My then PM convinced me of a wonderful future in Satyam. Even though I didn't get promoted as I wanted, that didn't bother me much as I was doing something I really loved (and I hope my team liked me too - as there are so many of them here at SFI now). I figured that if the IIM can make me a management trainee in two years, I can become a real manager in Satyam in those two years. That was in March 98, fast forward three years to March 2001 and surprise, I am still sitting at my desk, coding programs and reporting to a totally incompetent, confused and clueless person. And that, my dear friends, is why I am leaving Satyam - no career growth, not even the promise of a growth. The moment an opportunity shows up, and my hopes of a promotion or growth start rising, they are squashed mercilessly by someone who has "Oh! so many years of experience". Correct me if I am wrong, but shouldn't ability, knowledge and skill be the criteria here?

The first person I met after joining Satyam was Mr. Ramalinga Raju (actually he was the third person - the first two being U.Balaji and Mala Vidyanathan, but it sounds more dramatic this way). In his welcome speech, which was very invigorating and motivating by the way, Mr. Raju promised that if we performed well we will be rewarded fittingly. His address was followed up by Mr A.S.Murthy who said that only performance can advance us in this company. I was young then and I believed those words. I wonder if they remember them. Because now, after working my butt off for the past five years, I realize that what advances you in this company is your age, how many years of exp you have under your belt (doesn't matter if that exp is shouting at labor in a cigarette plant or growing a paunch in a govt office or even, maybe, tossing burgers at a McDonalds). Capability and Initiative are two bad words when it comes to promotions and incentives. If you want to grow, it doesn't matter if you suck at your job, what matters is how well you suck-up to the powers that be.

Before I started writing this mail, I promised myself that I will not mention any names. If by chance, a name or two slips by, please ignore - OK!. This is not intended to be a personal vendetta, I just want to give some feedback about how I see things happening around me - just my viewpoint, only mine, in the hope that it will make people think about it and maybe even initiate some discussion for the betterment of everyone. Also, please do not confuse this with cribbing. I am not. I am leaving and I have nothing to gain or lose if this letter is taken seriously or thrown in the thrash can.

I don't know exactly when things started going wrong, but the work environment in Satyam-SFI has steadily gone from "Really Great" to "Down in the Dumps" - both at Onsite and Offshore. When I look around I see a cess-pool of internal-politics, power-grabbing and greed. This is definitely not the Satyam I joined. Satyam was about 500 strong when I joined and today it is a force to reckon, with thousands working around the world and the total employee figure racing to get into five digits. Growth has different ways of changing a company....

Go and visit Satyam.com and you will read about a lot of wonderful things like "See-through Company", "Open Door Policy", "Performance Oriented" etc, etc. However, I regret to inform you all that I do not see these anywhere around me. Instead, what I see is almost quite the opposite. There is no room for dissent. No policy is open for questioning or even discussion. Favoritism is rampant and factors other than professional skills and capabilities seem to have a higher importance while taking decisions. I can quote scores of examples to prove my point. From little things like vacation time and to big things like promotions, every where there seem to be bias and personal preferences. Someone has a genuine need to go to India but cannot get any additional vacation time other than what is accrued, while the boss's chamchas seem to get enough vacation with loss-of-pay to enjoy themselves. Someone gets a bad feedback from the client and is released from the account so fast that he must have felt his ass was in a time-wrap. Another person gets similar (if not worse) feedback, but being in the boss's good-graces that person has nothing to fear and is conveniently shifted to another area. Someone slogs like hell all year and hopes for a promotion but is denied because there is nothing "extra-ordinary" in what he did or he didn't complete the mandatory "two-years" (where the hell did that come from??). But another suck-up is promoted, without the two-years or without the extra-ordinary performance, because there was a "need" for it. And in case you are wondering what that "need" is, the Boss doesn't have to answer to you.

I can tell you many more stories, and some may make you shake your head in dis-belief. Like this PM who promotes and prefers married people because they have a family to feed and because married people are more dependable (how??, someone please explain me). So if you are skilled and top of your line but unmarried, then too bad for you. And then there is this person who won't promote you because he doesn't want to answer the others who may ask about it. He agrees that you deserve a promotion, mind you, and is very sympathetic about it, but won't do it because he is scared what others might say. How do you like that? Some consolation, huh? I can go on, but I am sure you all get the general drift.

So if things were so bad what was I doing here for so long. Well, things weren't always like this and it isn't as if I didn't have opportunities to get out. But "Hope", my friend, is what kept me going and tied me to this place. Never under-estimate the strength of hope. It made me suffer more than two years of negligence here. I stuck here thinking that every dog will have its day. But seems that either I am not a dog, for I haven't had my day yet, or I've already had my day and didn't even realize it - boy, I can be such a dumb dog sometimes. The inertia, complacence and the innate human need for security and comfort made a powerful combination when added to the hope and that power held me here. Bloomington is a very easy and comfortable place to live in, so easy that it dulls my senses and competitive edge. When I look back at what I was three years back and what I am now - a fat, overweight, unhappy, complaining slob - I feel ashamed for having let myself degenerate like this.

So, I am doing something about it. And getting out of this rut is my first step in the right direction. It is understandable if a married person, with a wife and kids and maybe parents to support, thinks about security and compromises with his work environment. But there is no excuse for a free bird like me to lie cooped up like this. And it has only frustrated me beyond all imagination, to the point that I even considered taking the next flight home and take to farming. The only thing that kept me here is my desire to beat this situation, just as I beat all the obstacles I faced in my life and to emerge stronger. And of course, the cars. If there weren't so many wonderful cars in this country, and if I weren't so crazy about them, my decision would have been much more easier. I am now in a very fortunate situation to have admission offers from three of the top ten Management Schools in the world from three corners of the globe, really. And whichever one I chose to attend, I am sure I will have many more opportunities available to me than Satyam can ever hope offer and, hopefully, they will also be better. My only regret is that Satyam has no use for me. And I wonder how many more frustrated individuals like me are here, waiting for their time to quit.

So what is the solution? The same thing that I have been saying for the past three years. Take feedback from subordinates and peers before promoting any one to the next level. When I put this suggestion to Mr. A.S.Murthy during one of his visits to SFI, he said that it is not possible to implement at the current stage of organizational restructuring, but that they are looking at something like that down the road. How far down the road? It is obviously too late for me. How many youngsters have to endure the stress and helplessness of working under an incompetent boss and see their careers going no where? I have had the opportunity to know and work with some excellent persons in Satyam and I've had an equal opportunity to suffer under imbeciles. Believe me, nothing beats the pleasure of working for a dynamic and competent boss and nothing sucks more that the realization that your boss is a total loser and you are stuck below him.

People find it easy to say "It is the same everywhere, why are you complaining only about Satyam". That is a very pathetic and lame excuse. Just because things are rotten at your neighbors place doesn't mean you have to put up with the stink here also. This is where you work, this is where you belong and it is your duty to clean things up. Do you let your house be in a mess just because the guy next door keeps it so? No. Why? Because you have a sense of pride and belonging about your house. This is what is severely lacking in Satyamites - especially in the middle level management where there is a lot of dead wood floating around. The top management appears committed to Satyam's growth, at least in appearances, with exciting visions, path-breaking concepts and such. The bottom seems to be strong with a vast number of engineers and programmers eager to make their career with Satyam. But the middle layer, mostly filled with drifters from other companies and career-changers and other such miscellaneous characters seem to give a hoot about Satyam. Everybody is grabbing for stock options and talking about jumping boat as soon as they encash their options. What will these people care about Satyam or its associates? A lone voice of dissent like me easily gets lost in the crowd. But when everybody takes it to heart to do something about it - something can be done.

Nobody wants to question or discuss policies in the so called "open" forums. What else are they open for then? If all that everyone has to say is "Hail Chief", then why all the talk about transparency, employee satisfaction, customer delight etc etc? We might as well throw all the policies out the window and have just one policy - "The Boss Rules". True, running a corporation isn't a democracy, but it shouldn't be a dictatorship either.

I think I just blew the basic rule of corporate employment. I burned the bridge behind me - there is no turning back now. So I might as well go all the way, right?

Just because a person has been around for ten years doesn't make him a better manager and just because someone is young doesn't make him a bad leader. All it needs to make it a better place for all of us is some compassion, a strong sense of justice and a very large supply of competent people in the middle management. As long as these are lacking in the work place, people won't trust each other and sustainable growth cannot be achieved. Why has Satyam become just another alliance for SF from being the largest alliance partner? How many can truthfully vouch that whatever growth we are seeing is solely because of the efforts of our managers and would be lost if the managers weren't there? I see Satyam only taking what comes their way and the alliance office working to keep the resources loaded. I see people wasting countless hours in meetings deliberating over totally irrelevant subjects. You know what it all sounds like - straight out of a "Dilbert" cartoon strip. Wake up guys!! we are living in a Dilbert world. If Scott Adams ever decides to make movie on his strip, Satyam at SFI would be a hands down winner for the location.

It would have been very easy - v.v.v.v.easy for me to walk away from all this without saying anything, like so many others before me. But every time somebody left I cried out loud why he or she would not express their concerns to those in higher places - higher than your boss and even your super-boss. I am not sure whether they are aware of the state of things or not, but they have nothing to lose in listening to my 2 cents.

So, I am finally leaving Satyam - about time too. Hopefully, to a place where I expect my career aspirations will be fulfilled to a much greater extent than in Satyam. Also, my time in Satyam has humbled my ego and lowered my expectations, so I do not expect much from this place that I am going to, but whatever little that I desire I am sure I can find it there.

How would I rate my experience with Satyam? The first 2.5 yrs have been great, it has been one exciting ride. The next 2.5 yrs sucked royally, thanks to you-know-whoall. But over all, the two periods break-off evenly and I am exiting with a fairly neutral opinion about the whole experience. I learned a lot, there is no question about that. And I will always be grateful to all the people who motivated me or inspired me in one way or the other - Sunil Talloo, Srinivas Moharir, Apurba, Ramana, Srini, Rama, Bharati, Bhowmik, Amit Kumar, Ratan Singh, Srihari A (and his brother whom I never met), A.S.Murthy, Ramalinga Raju, Shankar and a whole bunch of friends - too many to mention here. And I am also thankful to my detractors and my bosses for frustrating me beyond my limits of tolerance and driving me to desperation. I guess that too was a sort of negative motivation, I doubt if I would have tried so hard to get out if I had better opportunities here at SFI-Satyam.

I really would love to work for Satyam again sometime in my career - after all we (Satyam and I) shared our youth together. But not if these bunch of hypocrites are still hanging around.

Ok, I guess that is all I had to say. Seems rather vitriolic when I read it again - but that's how I feel. Do your job well, but don't forget to say your (Thursday??) prayers.

If you want to congratulate me on writing a good essay, want to curse me for the things I wrote or just want to kick my ass for having the guts to actually write and send such a mail, then you all can reach me at any of the following contact points:
e-mail - [Removed based on the author's request]
phone - [Removed based on the author's request]
address - [Removed based on the author's request]

"Its Nice to be Important, but it is more Important to be Nice." To those whom I have offended - No hard feelings. I let mine out. Hope you can too. Peace!!

Wish me luck.

Cheers.
Teja

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------