One Day Adventure: Left the Job on Day 1

I was 100% sure I will be joining Clipshow (name changed) as an Engineering Manager, which was my eighth offer of the season. I even gave my confirmation to join the company, so that the CTO can inform the investors and roll out the offer letter. I changed my status to "not looking out". The scene with the other company suddenly got aggressive.

The offer from Lindakart (name changed) for Principal Engineer was the ninth offer I had. I had even had a quarrel with the CEO of Lindakart when I met him, but still, he kept his ego aside. The HRs from Lindakart were urging me to join them, even though they were offering me Rupees 2 LPA lesser than Clipshow. After hundreds of calls from those HRs, the founders, the VPs and other stakeholders, I started appreciating their perseverance and also started liking the importance I got. I hesitantly called the Clipshow CTO informing him that I couldn't join them. Surprisingly, he was cool about it.

I was supposed to join on Monday, which was the day before yesterday. On Sunday, I got a call from senior EM asking me if I could come to the office at 9 AM. They were having the new product discussion, and it will be better if I can attend it. He added me to a Whatsapp group, and the Project Manager shared a document on it. I read it and got prepared for making a mark on the first day.

The meeting started around 9 AM. One of the members of the product had not read the document. The PM scolded that person that he should have. This behaviour pissed me off very badly. Why in the world, he needed to work on Sunday and expect people to do the same? But, I did not say anything at that time because I did not know how things are in the company. The meeting went on till 1 PM. I had my lunch with the PM in the cafeteria. It was a Bharat Band that day, so almost all the shops were closed. The meeting continued postlunch.

In the evening, the PM and I went down for tea. Two of the people who were present at the meeting were already at the stall. One of them was saying that he is finding it difficult to pitch in the colleges, and he needs to make a new pitch.
I asked him, "What pitch are you talking about?"
He replied, "We work almost seven days a week."
I questioned him, "But the company has a five days working model from today. Right?"
He got defensive and changed the topic. I guessed that something was fishy.

I asked the PM about it. He got very defensively and asked me to confront HR. He said that it was wrong on the part of HR that they set a false expectation to me. I went to the HR, and he was sitting with the same guy who was talking about the pitch. I came back and waited for a few minutes and went back. He was still sitting with the same guy. I asked him whether I can talk to him for a minute. He knew what was I going to discuss.
I asked him straight, "Is it five days working or six days?"
He said, "We proposed that it should be five days working, but the management rejected it."
He was steadily asking me, "With you, we can strengthen the proposal, and go back to the management. Allow me to work on it."
I exploded, "Even if you succeed, what next? I came at 9 AM, and it's already 8 PM. No one seems to be making any move. There doesn't seem any work-life balance here. I have heard you guys work 24x7."

The HR went in a meeting with the CEO and other managers. After he came back, he called me. I was in a room with the HR and the VP.
The VP defended, "The engineering team is lagging behind the business team a lot. So they have to work a lot. We are going on a model where people work for weeks till the task is over. After that, they can take as many compensatory leaves."
I answered, "Both of us know that this won't work, and the tasks never finish. Even I have run a company, and I can understand your problem."
He defended that they don't work all seven days. But I was clear what I had to do.
I told the HR, "I am leaving for the day. If I don't show up tomorrow, tear off my onboarding form."

At night, the person, with who I had the introductory conversation, called me. I thought the HR would have asked him to talk to me. But he dropped a bomb. He said that he was very sorry about telling me earlier that they are five days working. He had said the same thing to many candidates, and he can't face them now. So he had quit too. Fuck! Not just him but 4-5 more people in the company had resigned the same day. Everyone was hoping that the tech team will adopt five days working model, but it did not.

The next day, I went to the company and went straight into a room with two of the HRs, who regularly interacted with me. I felt it would be rational to tell them face to face that I don't want to be a part of the company. I asked the other HR to give my three passport size photos too. It transformed into a joke that I came to the office to take them.

I met all the dissatisfied employees and few already resigned ones at the tea stall. We bitched about the company a lot. The two HRs were passing by for lunch, stopped to talk to us. I told the senior HR that we wished to get a hold of him outside the office, and we cracked many jokes on them and the company. Then they went for the lunch. After some time five of us left for food too. One of them told me that they officially have Diwali off, but still, everyone comes to the office on that day. Heights!

I realised that it was not only the work timings that was the problem, but also the management was inhuman. We made a Whatsapp group called "Linda Sucks", and they shared their resumes in it.

After a while, the other HR messaged me that she was sorry to mess up with my career. I wrote to her, "It's alright. Now, I need to get shameless and talk to the other companies where I had the offers from."

Two good things happened to me because of this company. One is that I got to learn their complete supply chain process and second, I met many fellow engineers who I can pull in other companies or start up another company.

I am officially an author now

Finally, I published my first story on Amazon. The title is "Is Lal Bahadur Shastri Fine?" You can search and read it on Kindle. It is a science fiction short story. I hope you like the story.

My Author Page: Dr Mystique
Kindle Edition: Is Lal Bahadur Shastri Fine?
Paperback: Is Lal Bahadur Shastri Fine?

It felt great after publishing. It felt even better when one book was sold at Smashwords.

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Updates: I have published another book through a publisher. This is science fiction as well. If you read it let me know how did you like it.
Kindle Edition: The Travellers.

Women empowerment gone wrong

Policy 1: Sex ratio

Many companies have a policy of maintaining the sex ratio in the engineering teams. Most of them have separate bars while interviewing male and female candidates. The lower bar for female candidates has been pissing off male candidates for very long. The men in the office don't respect the management decision of having women with lower calibre. To decrease the displeasure among the men employees and to justify pay as per productivity, the management offers lower pay scales to women candidates. It creates discontent among the women.

If the bars are equal, the ratio decreases. Suppose, there are 80 boys and 20 girls in an engineering college and the percentage of smart ones is the same for both, say 20%. The set of selected candidates will have 16 boys and 4 girls. If the bars are different, the policies for maintaining the ratio will create unemployment among the male engineers or a shortage of women engineers in the long run.


What is the solution to this? How to create a 50-50 ratio among the engineers?

For having a 50-50 ratio in the companies, the colleges will have to select students in the same proportion. If an equal number of girls are trained to be eligible for the corporate world, then the ratio will be maintained. But it has been seen that fewer girls crack the entrance exam. So, the objective isn't achievable, unless the bar is lowered. Lowering the bar will create the same dissatisfaction in the colleges, instead of the companies. It will be a bigger problem because at least the employees in the companies are peaceful, but college students are not.

It is an old scientific myth that women are better in arts and creativity, while men are better at problem-solving. There are many great examples of female achievers in the engineering field like Gwynne Shotwell, COO of SpaceX and Priya Balasubramaniam, a VP in Apple. The training goes all the way up to the upbringing of the girls in the families. If an engineering mindset is instilled from the childhood, girls can be as competent as boys in engineering fields or even more.


Policy 2: Maternity leaves

Women have been dropping their careers after pregnancy for years to support their family and kids. It's an expectation from the women in the family as well as it's the choice a mother takes herself. This phenomenon had prevented the most of them to excel in their careers and also the companies to maintain the diversity among the employees. The Karnataka Government have passed a bill to increase the maternity leaves from 135 days to 180 days for supporting the female employees to maintain a work-life balance. This policy was adopted by the established private companies as well.

The median tenure for employees age 25 to 34 is 3.2 years. For companies, giving almost 180 days leave is an enormous loss of resources. So, the companies avoid having dependencies on the women employees and due to which the women are even more dissatisfied. This policy seems to be failing because of management enforcement.


Startups

Overall both the policies, sex ratio and maternal leaves, are creating chaos in the technology world. The startups, whose average life is three years, will surely avoid hiring a woman due to these factors unless the candidate is exceptionally skilled.

Is there no perfect solution to this problem? Please let me know if there are any.

All the measures are implemented to empower women globally. Is it mandatory to have an equal number of women in the realm of technology? Why? There are many fields where women excel a lot where men don't. I can't think of any practical reason, other than the vote bank for the Pappu.