Spring Festival…

These days, most of the conversation topic revolves around appraisal, annual rating, attrition, salary hike and blah blah ...
From business Newspapers to TV channels to common discussion forums; every thing has flavour of these terms.

Everyone has some or the other logic to justify his/her effort and their managers has BIGger logic to negate it. Some wins; some loose; some laugh; some cries; some act; some just think.

To my understanding (based on few yrs of Corp. exp), it remains a funny and debatable area which is always manipulated for Org's own benefit. I won't explore the debatable part but would rather look at the other side.

Lets be dressed in the costume for this 3 month long Spring festival which begins somewhere in February and goes until April end every year.

Nothing remains same during this period. HR comes on time; you get several webinar invites and mails with dozens of new initiatives such as how to improve the productivity. Some takes it seriously which results in increase of sales of baby product during Children’s day to New Year.

Suddenly, HR realizes, March has women's day and eligible employees get the surprise in morning - a balloon on their desk; few even find a rose below the monitor or chocolate behind the CPU. Creativity goes beyond visibility.

They conduct session and pretend to make you aware of the process which hasn't changed for last ten years. Every session appears to be interactive and transparent which encourages the open idea concept; so all the valid question are accepted as "Good Question!"

HR slogan during this Spring Festival - "Every employee is special"

Now comes the project leads and managers. Most the time they have one excel sheet opened on their m\c. This excel is not the usual technical one, this has so many special columns such as:

• No. of unplanned leave taken (planned leave need not to be tracked as 
  being the last Qtr, leave is hardly approved – realization and year end closing)
• No of times TM was away from their desk and monitor was not locked - 
  (Security violation)
• I pinged on IM and got no response (TM left the desk without changing
  status properly - CSI problem). Managers are smart; they know some people
  just switch the monitor off rather than showing “I am Away” status.
• How many times their phone rang even if it was some marketing call of type - 
  "Sir, do you have any requirement for personal loan?"

This is endless and such columns are always special as you can never argue about these with your managers.

Now, how come team members be left behind?
Apparently, everyone is excited (IT jargons for frustrated).
Searching for certification test dump, reading all those funny documents which they never even touched in last 9 months (don't quantify this, it just means previous 3 qtr).

People prepare as many documents as they can to contribute to some crap internal asset library which they never access by themselves.

All of a sudden, lights are seen glowing in the cubicle where it hasn't been since the last increment. After hours comedy is at its peak. If applicable, request for late night drop facility increases. Near by Chai Dhaba is flooded with Adrak-wali Chai order.

Finally towards the end of the season, arrives the dooms day. People get to know that their full year effort increased the wages by peanuts or decreased by substantial amount. Few realize, they should not have avoided the vacation or even the Imran Hasmi movie could have been considered than attending weekly conference call.
Some old resolutions are modified; some new resolutions are made.
Still few are not convinced and talks to Managers/HR.

Here is the few common retort from managers/HR:

• You didn’t pick the call on 3rd Friday of the last month @ 9.59PM when we  
  had a serious production issue.
• We thought of giving you even lower rating, but I argued with top 
  management for this rating.
• You got better rating last time, so give chance to others; and we will send 
  you to onsite soon. We have already started the VISA process; be ready  
  with your documents. If you happen to be @ onsite, you are already getting  
  a currency which is XX times better than your base branch currency.

It goes on forever so enjoy the festival and remember the forwarded “Post Appraisal GEETA SAAAR” which you must have seen at some point of time…

Hey Parth,

Increment nahi mila, Bura hua
Salary cut rahi hai, Bura ho raha hai
Extra shift hogi, woh bhi buri hogi.

Tum pichhla incentive na milne ka paschatap na karo
Tum agle incentive ki chinta na karo
Bus apni salary main santusht raho

Tumhari pocket se kya gaya, jo rote ho?
Jo aaya tha sab yahee se aaya
Tum jab nahi the, tab bhi company chal rahi thee
Tum jab nahi hoge, tab bhi chalegee.

Tum koi experience leker nahi aaye the
Jo experience mila yahi mila
Degree leker aaye the, experience lekar jaaoge.

Jo system aaj tumhara hai
Woh kal kisi aur ka tha
Kal kisi aur ka or parso kisi aur ka hoga

Kyo vyarth chinta karte ho, kisse vyarth darte ho
Policy change company ka rule hai
Jise tum policy change kahte ho, wahi to trick hai.

Ek pal main tum Best performer
Dusre pal main tum worst performer
Appraisal, incentive etc. etc. mann se hata do
Vichaar se bhi mita do

Phir company tumhari hai or tum company ke.
Tum apne aap ko company ko arpit kar do
Yahi sabse bada satya hai
Jo ess satya ko jaanta hai
Woh review, incentive, gratuity aadi se sada
ke liye muqt ho jaata hai...

Yaad rakho all time IT Slogan - "Bottom line growth does matter"