Exploit...

On a sunday afternoon I got a mail from one of my team members updating the status of his work. He is a smart one in the team so obviously victimized with loads of work, which made him to work during the weekend. Is this an exploitation?

This may sound like exploitation. But actually it is not. It is opportunity in disguise.

India and China are becoming (should I say already became?) outsourcing hub for the developed nations like US & UK. As a matter of fact US & UK are exploiting the low cost labour in India and China. But for the countries like India and China with over population and poor employment opportunities this 'exploitation' is certainly an 'opportunity'. In fact a great opportunity that has changed many lives.

Total number of employees in India's top 3 IT companies alone has reached around 200,000. Recruitment projections each of these companies show are mind-boggling. Our work environments are becoming more and more competitive with highly intellectual people around. To stand out in the crowd there is a lot need to be done by each individual. It has become not an unusual thing for the people who are 'meeting the expectations' to end up with lower performance ratings. Everyone is crazy about 'making a difference' and going that 'extra mile'.

There is a saying: You can achieve little with little sacrifice; you can achieve more with more sacrifice; you can achieve great with great sacrifice. Achievement is always directly proportional to the sacrifice. If we look at the history of great achievers there would be lot of sacrifices in their lives.

In my experience I have realized that when it comes to getting opportunities & growth one should let others exploit (positively). That’s the hard reality now.

Upset

I always wonder how much the readership of my blog is. Not a bad thing to have for a burgeoning writer (yeah, that's me...). Recently I re-enabled the web counter which I had disabled sometime ago due to some technical reasons. Whenever I make a new post I send out a mail to my friends requesting them to read and comment it. Most of them read it; some of them comment it and few of them send mails to me with their comments.

There is this good old friend of mine who never commented nor sent any mail commenting it but I constantly make my request & nag him to read my blog. I was wondering whether he really reads it or not as he never commented about it. I wanted to know his comments very badly because we go a long way, he knows me very well and he had been a great moral support during my ups & downs. We spend hours talking about books. He is a voracious reader. He introduced me the authors like P.G.Wodehouse. One day, he casually commented that he would read my blog only if his name was mentioned in my posts. After a few days I sent him a note saying that he could find his name in my blog. I lied. I lied because of a stupid avidity wanting to make him read my blog and to know his opinion. He did read it and found that I had lied. He is now pretty mad at me and neither answering nor returning my calls. That has made me pretty upset.

This post is to make my open apology to my dear friend Venki.

Venki, sorry for what I did.