Increasing salaries of older employees to match those given to newer employees

The issue lies not with HR, but with corporate managements who have, as their primary agenda (and correctly so) reduction in the overall payroll payout. Typically the new employee to currently employee ratio in any given year, will be anything between 5 to 20% depending on the growth and the current size of its workforce.

Let's say that we provide a 20% increase over current salaries to the incumbent 10% employees. That is a total increase in payout of 2% over the previous year. Now, to provide some measure of equity to the current employees, their salaries are also increased by 20%, so that nobody is unhappy, the total increase in payout is 90% x 20% = 18%. Considering that 60-80% of an IT organization's costs are payroll, we are talking of a nearly 60-80% x 20% = 12-16% increase in total costs over the previous year.

Try convincing the top management to release 15-20% more budget this year, of which only 2% is new employee acquisition expenses.

I think if we think from the HR point of view, they have no option but to let people go, than to increase everybody's salaries by 20%.

Why did Hitler really hate the Jews so much?

Written in answer to a question on Yahoo Answers : Why did Hitler really hate all the Jews so much?
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If you read his autobiography Mein Kampf, he's written a lot about why he hates them.

One of the reasons I understand is that his personal belief system said that pure-blooded Germans were racially superior to the immigrant Jews. To quote a fictional parallel, something like Voldemort and his gang felt about Muggle-born "Mudbloods", or closer to reality, what the Ku Klux Klan felt about the Negroes.

However, despite his feelings of superiority, Jews were the single most powerful community in Germany. Now if a community were to be "inferior", they couldn't be rich and influential. Besides, superior and inferior are relative terms. I would say the Hippopotamus is superior to the Human in terms of its ferocity, or the Hummingbird is superior to the Human in terms of its ability to fly unassisted, and the Hammerhead shark is superior to the Human because it has a more complex respiratory system that lets it swim underwater forever, by breathing in dissolved oxygen.

But the intellectually inferior Hitler did not know that.

Hitler wanted to strip the Jews of all their wealth, because he knew they had a lot of it, and would never give it up for use in his megalomaniacal ambitions. Then, having appropriated every last penny from their possession, he was faced with the challenge of displacing those whom he stole from. That was what he called the "Jewish Problem". The world sadly, knows its brutal solution.

What shocks me is that the extent of the Jewish genocide could not have been achieved by one man leading an army alone. It had to be supported by other everyday Germans who hated Jews because of their wealth and influence, and whom Hitler used to achieve his objectives.

This hostility felt by part of one society towards another has to come from deeper sources than one individual's invectives alone. There may have been some truth in what he was saying for them to believe him.

It is not for no reason that William Shakespeare represented Shylock as a Jew. Many, (but not all) adherents of the Jewish faith in Europe were often narrow minded and selfish businessmen or money lenders who cared for their own immediate profits and the betterment of their own community above everything else, no matter whom they lived among and many everyday Germans at the heart of the Great Depression would surely have resented that a lot and eventually tagged on to Nazi beliefs, whether they were right or wrong.

None of this can explain the horrible genocide of course. That was the handiwork of the handful of Germans who were close to Hitler and who implemented his heinous solution to the "Jewish Problem" to the letter.

Project achievement

This was the broad transcript of my reaction to a competitor (a PIO) who has been taking away credit from us, treating us like were immigrants of no value, from third world countries and discriminating us at every step, often misrepresenting himself as our manager and treating us as though we were temporary workers over whom he has complete authority, when all he is, is our business competitor.

This reaction, coming after half-a-day long client demo, got me fired from my current project, but I'm glad I gave this arrogant PIO a piece of my mind.


"You don't have the basic courtesy to introduce the people who have developed 95% of the system?"

"In future please note down issues yourself. I am not your secretary to order me to note down issues."

"All your requirements have been hopelessly inadequate. We've done half your work for you, and you don't have the basic courtesy to so much as introduce us, talking to clients as if you've built the whole system?"

"I know that you've filled in 80 hours of time under FE when you had no work on FE. We've been working all along and this is what we get? Nothing's business. It's all personal."

"I've known consultants like you in the past. You guys are insecure."

"Everybody has issues with you. Ask *** or ask ***."

"We're not here to be treated like s**t by you."

"You are not my boss. You are another consultant just like us. ** is my boss. ** is my boss. I have spoken to them."

"I'm disgusted working with you. You are sick. "

Business Case

1. Discrimination based on immigrant status - You guys have just come here and have seen nothing. We have been living and where for many years.

2. Discrimination based on false representation of status in the organization. "You guys (ritesourcing, etc) don't have to attend the town hall (with Jan). We need to..." During the records retention week, "Its not relevant to you guys. Its mainly for us".

These constant reference to "you" and "us" are designed to discriminate. Considering that he is also a consultant like us, this may be treated as fraudulent impressions designed to discriminate.

3. Discrimination based on our technically predominant work content. Disparaging comments based on technical nature of our work, despite personal technical incompetence. Disparagingly calling us "these workers", as in "All these workers need to be taught those processes.", "All these IT workers from Tata and Infosys ... ". Representation of "coding" or "programming" as a menial profession as in "I shouldn't be doing all this coding"... Considering that the government of the United States of America has permitted us a non-immigrant visa based on specialized knowledge of technology and/or leadership/managerial capabilities in managing people with strong knowledge of technology, this I believe is a severe act of disrespect.

4. Intentional Misrepresentation - Misled us to believing that he is our supervisor/manager - "You guys are reporting to me in a way". Creation of a non-existent superior-subordinate relationship with unsuspecting vendors.

5. Thanklessness and a deliberate, complete eclipse of our pivotal role in the requirements gathering, design and system development, during customer interaction. When demanded an explanation of why we weren't even introduced to the 15 users of our system, the response was - "You weren't invited to the demo in the first place". By totally eclipsing our role, customer visibility of vendors has been completely eliminated. Not critical, but extremely disappointing.

6. Misrepresentation of work deliverables. Claiming requirements are "100%" complete without any benchmarks or validation, when they have often been hastily done, not thought through, directly passed on from the customer, and often incomplete.

7. Unsatisfactory performance as far as we are concerned - As far as we are concerned, he is our business analyst, somebody who is paid to interpret the customer's business and pass it on to us with value addition, producing as technical work products, clear, explanatory and updated specifications and/or documentation, enabling downstream personnel to do their jobs effectively. As far as our role is concerned, gifts of chatting up with customers are simply not of any use to us. Therefore, as far as we are concerned, performance has ranged from average to poor, though chattability index with customers about traffic conditions on I-75 might be significantly high. This poor performance is not due to ability which undoubtedly exists. I attribute it to unwillingness to work.

8. Unwillingness to accept responsibility for issues - It is a proven fact in any software system that up to 40% of defects can be traceable to the requirements and initial analysis processes. However, in his case, all defects are the responsibility of either the customer or the software developer. This is pre-CMM talk.

9. Hypocrisy - Raising concerns about utilization of our teams given that the person has himself claimed complete utilization on a business area for months when a business analyst's role is not more than 15-20% of any software project. Also, frequent unflattering comments about clients and other staff with words such as lazy, dumb and good-for-nothing, have raised doubts about personal integrity.

10. Deliberately subordinate treatment, both verbal and non-verbal, during managerial or customer interaction. Physical actions such as insolent gestures to note down items during client discussions are uncalled for and designed to "show us our place in the pecking order".

Introspectively

Contrary to the stereotype, I have always worked hands-on in technology and am often disgusted by the attitudes of people towards this eminently skilled career. Twice have I entered the "hallowed" fields of management, and twice have I returned to the field of software development.

People are often shocked whenever I need to disclose my post graduate diploma, which to some appears strange for a software professional. And to me, remains a rather expensive way of having wasted and whiled away two valuable years of my life, instead of having joined the Institutes of Science and Technology, eminent Institutes whose offers I actually turned down.

It breaks my heart now to think that a wiser career choice at the age of 23 could have avoided this identity crisis etched into my psyche for life. If only I could turn back time. If only I could return to being that fool, poring over job adverts, and had chosen differently, I could have avoided being ashamed for life, ashamed of an education these last ten years. Inanely risking my life for the greed of a more glamorous career and then making a fool of myself, rather than dedicating it to a more faithful and appropriate one. What was I thinking? If only..

The sentimental cost of a frivolous decision is very expensive indeed. The practical cost is even more.

Indians beaten up in Germany

Posted on :

http://www.topix.net/world/germany/2007/08/german-mob-attacks-8-indians-at-a-fair

Please don't distort Japanese history to suit your arguments. One of the fundamental strengths throughout Japan's past and present has been its ethnic homogeneity. Japan is one of the most homogeneous countries of all, before the Meiji Restoration or after. Borrowing from Chinese or Indian cultures does not make it multicultural in the ethnogenic sense, as it increasingly the problem with Europe.

Europe's woes are not on account of India. It is, as ex-British PM Tony Blair said in one of his rare moments of brilliance, an ideological issue. Indians like you and me are only caught in the crossfire between Caucasia and Islam. In the great battleground of Europe, the latter obviously seems to be winning, much to the detriment of the security of Indians in Europe like those merchants, who become easy non-violent hate targets.

With regard to these Indians that were beaten up by East Germans, they may not exactly be deserving of all this sympathy. Having seen the way most Indians live for decades together in foreign countries clinging to our beloved "culture", and having no regard or adaptability whatsoever towards local languages, cultures or etiquettes, it is quite possible that these merchants got what they deserved. From what I read, there was a strong local sentiment against these guys.

If you love and respect a foreign culture, you will get love and respect in return. You travel around and do business with a really thick head, taking away from the local society and economy what is rightfully theirs, this is what you might expect, especially in the relatively poorer areas of Europe.

But what I am really surprised is at the kind of moderation in such forums. I can see some obviously vulgar language, disgusting posts and pointless arguments that don't go anywhere, that have been published above, while an earlier note which I had posted, and which was pretty insightful in my opinion, was rejected. Hope this one is accepted.

Renting in the US

As temporary migrant workers, we can only rent homes. Buying or leasing is out of the question.

Rented apartments are a big organized business here.

Its not like the fragmented side-business which rich people in India practice on their own and rent out their apartments. Whole buildings are let out on rent, and there are an official staff to handle all issues. Plus the service is absolutely prompt, because the longer an issue (like a pipe leakage for example) goes on, the more will be their repair costs when they sell the house to somebody else.

We have to pay big money for the rent. To the order of $800 a month, though people can get it for $600 with lesser facilities. We get cable, heating, trash free and there are 2 electronic washers/dryers for every apartment block (which too, are promptly maintained)

The Shahs, Mehtas and Dholakias of India can't come up with these business plans because they never want to do long term business. They want to make a fast buck, building a house and making crores of rupees within a year or two, and then forget all about it, moving on to kicking out some poor native families out of their century old home and earning more money selling it to urban yuppies.

Renting in the US is a service industry, one that requires dedication and the right attitude.
Plus, both renters and rentees are protected by a solid legal framework, a powerful and effective law enforcement department and a comprehensive insurance protection program.
On the whole, renting in the US is an excellent outcome of true, organized capitalisism. Not third class opportunism of desi builders.