The third side of the coin......

In a democracy majority wins, in any competition majority loses and only one person/team emerges winner, so in a democracy losers rule, they are the winners.

This blog in its own humorous way has highlighted the idiosyncrasies of IT industry where the fit or misfit of a Mechanical, Chemical or some XYZ engineer was discussed. Everyone knows that most of the jobs in IT industry require customization of an already existing code which requires a group of hard working SEs to slog their weekend off, to meet the targets of ambitious, ineffective marketing guy whose only concern is to meet the target and impress the client so that his stay abroad can get extended by an year or two.

As if the identity crisis of a non computer science back ground engineer is not enough, a demon called appraisal system keeps poking you every six months. Though, an ambiguous engineering degree is nothing but a gate pass for the entry into an IT industry, I guess most guys in IT would agree with me that all you need in this mystic field is a bit of common sense and more honing for the skills you developed through your secondary school education, yes I am talking about cajoling your teacher to get a better mark. If you are yet to hear the word called "Perception" in your appraisal, buddy just go and start licking your manager's boot. It might just work too well for you.

Yeah, I am supposed to talk about the third side of the coin called appraisal system, so let me start. If you have started wondering what has the first two lines of the article got to do with the appraisal, here is it- We do not elect our PLs, TLs or PMs or SPMs etc, they are there because, the system requires them to be. So this is no democracy, a reverse democracy, if I may call it so, where a leader decides his people, a system by the leaders, of the leaders and for the leaders.

Having said that, consider a scenario where a PM has to be ranked, for simplicity lets us consider there are only 2 ranks. The lower the rank, the better. Now there are 4 cases.

Case 1: Ranked 1 in both the cycles, most eligible for all the goodies. Nothing to be talked about.

Case 2: Ranked 2 in last and 1 in this, now the question, don't you think in plain percentage point terms, the case 2 guy deserves better than the case1 guy? A person, for whatsoever the reason, who was ranked 2 has done all the good work and has done well enough to be ranked along with the other 1s, should be a better eligible person for anything than a 1-1, for the simple reason that he is more productive.

Case 3: Ranked 1 in last cycle but 2 in this. Now, the question again, in this leader intensive world, where everything including the location you have to work is business driven, read top down flow, what on earth is this guy's leader doing? Is he laying eggs? if he could not set right or make a previously rank 1 employee to deliver up to the expectations, can he do any business? What I mean to say here is that, every time a rank 1 person fails to deliver, the HR must hold his leader responsible for not being able to put to use a good resource. But this hardly happens.

Case 4: Ranked 2 in both the cycles. Now again, the same question, why could not the leader of this person do something to improve his performance? In this case the onus lies on either the manager to improve the rating or productivity of the person in question or the HR for selecting an incapable guy, in either of the cases, the person who deserves the punishment more is definitely not the person in question.

So that is the third side of the coin, I know this will never be taken care of, because in the corporate world's pseudo caste system, the upper caste has to dominate the lower caste and the oppressed remains oppressed. But, one good thing about this caste system is that no caste is permanent. The time lines for which a person has to spend in a caste may vary from person to person, but no person remains in the same caste for too long.