The Laptop Story

Sai a sincere software engineer joined my team in Bengaluru. Sai came from a remote village in Andhra Pradesh. He had spent 4 years in Bengaluru and joined our organization in the hope to further up his skills in the ETL domain.

This story is much before COVID happened. The organization mandated to be in office for 5 days a week and 9 hours a day. Our operations in Bengaluru had just begun and services such as car drop, canteen facilities were not yet available. I was fortunate to be in the old office in Mumbai having all facilities. Our customer calls used to run till late, at times till 11 PM. We had to work till late hours.

The organization provided Desktops to all engineers who had less than 5 years of experience. The challenge Sai faced is "dinner". He could not leave office early as he had a desktop. Poor guy had to go home and have dinner post 11 PM, which had been ordered by his room-mate few hours earlier. 

There was a simple solution to this problem. "Allocate a laptop to Sai, have him leave for home around 7 PM and he could connect from home". I placed a request for a laptop. It was promptly rejected by the obnoxious IT admin stating that it is against organization policy. Well he said, Sai's experience is not more than 5 years. In spite of multiple email exchanges, and escalations to higher management, the guy did not budge. I felt quite dejected that I am unable to help. 

Suddenly there was an opportunity that came up. Another member in my Bengaluru team had resigned. I immediately asked him to hand over his laptop to Sai. Sai was elated. He monitored the formatting and installation of relevant software. He closely worked with IT support. Before handing over the laptop to Sai, the IT support guy asked Sai to get an approval from the same obnoxious IT admin. Once again the unpleasant person said, Well Sai's experience is not more than 5 years. 

I requested him for a personal meeting, went to his office, explained him the entire situation. I reasoned with him about this arbitrary policy, reasoned with him about how the laptop belonged to my team, reasoned with him on how we can ensure employee well-being with such steps, asked him to deduct the laptop cost from my account, pleaded with him but all in vain. The stubborn dim-witted a** said "Well Sai's experience is not more than 5 years". He ensured that the laptop was not assigned to Sai. This time Sai and me both felt let down, humiliated and depressed. Sai never got the laptop. Eventually after a few months Sai left the organization, I hope he got a better organization which thought about his well being. I wished him all the best for his future.

Learning - Few people operate to save a few dollars (desktop over laptop) so that their KPIs look good. They make arbitrary policies so that they are in control. This is a result of bad organization culture. They really do not understand productivity. Giving a bit of flexibility goes a long way in motivating employees. So what is the solution to this? It is better to find an organization with a better culture. 

This was the sad story of a sincere developer and a laptop which he never received.


A supportive and well-managed work environment is good for one’s health. Those who feel they have more control, who feel empowered to make decisions instead of waiting for approval, suffer less stress. Those only doing as they are told, always forced to follow the rules, are the ones who suffer the most. Our feelings of control, stress, and our ability to perform at our best are all directly tied to how safe we feel in our organizations. - Simon Sinek

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Interviewer Interviewee and ?

Image
Post covid, almost all hiring is done over video calls. I have had some good and bad experiences. Let me narrate an incident which was not so pleasant. A candidate had cleared a few technical rounds. I was supposed to conduct the management round. Well, I started the interview with some basic questions such as where were you born, which city did you complete your schooling, graduation? The usual icebreakers. Then I moved onto a few technical questions just to understand the team structure, the project SDLC, overall technologies used. For most of the technical questions, the candidate asked me to repeat the questions. While answering technical questions she looked down, perhaps at some screen. There was a pause before she started answering, she might be mentally scanning the answer. Then the answers didn't just follow, they flowed. The answers were theoretical as if being read from some technical source. I suspect the setup must have been like this.  Candidate was facing a laptop, o...
Read more

Questions about mind, memory and information

I am reading an excellent book "Late Bloomers" by Rich Karlgard. I came across a point mentioned by Rich which triggered a lot of thoughts in my mind. He mentioned : "Old people take time to recall things because the more information we store, the longer it takes to retrieve information". This is an interesting insight which triggered many more questions in my mind. 1. Should we avoid dumping unnecessary information into our head ? Yes, of course. I believe this will limit the overall information in our mind and help us with faster retrieval of information. So avoiding the nonsensical videos on Insta, FB, YouTube is indeed a good thing. A plan has to be put in place regarding consumption of posts on FB, web series on OTT platforms, televisions shows, movies, messaging platforms, news on Twitter or any news platform for that matter. The plan should help us decide on what can be avoided completely and what can be consumed in moderation. These are the times of informat...
Read more

Relocation and its compulsory

The Indian IT service industry has always been about margins. Long long ago, in one of my past organization the senior leaders were pondering over the question "How to further increase the margins?". Probably the discussion might have gone this way: Senior a** no. 1 - Lets move all employees from Mumbai office to Pune or Bangalore where the rentals are less compared to Mumbai. We will save a few pennies. Senior a** no. 2 - Hey if all employees move out, we will have to leave too. Senior a** no. 1 - Ok in that case 50 % of mid-level and junior employees need to move.  All senior a*** - Wow, that's brilliant !!! HR promptly mailed the senior managers to identify as many people as possible and force them to relocate. The word spread like wildfire throughout my organization. People wondered, the maximum cost in IT is the employee cost, saving on a few pennies on rental by forcing people to relocate, how's that going to help? The mood was sombre. Ali baba worried about his...
Read more