Member Speak : There are no ‘Good Employees’, Only Exploited Ones
By AIITEU Delhi NCR Member
I am a software tester working for a large multinational tech company and work mostly on offshore projects for clients based in the US. I studied in a dead end engineering college and soon after I transitioned into a dead end corporate job where I have been for the past 5.5 years.
I am what one would call a ‘C’ Band employee in my organization. It is a position I have held consistently in annual reviews since I joined work. At my workplace, to be in the game, you have to avoid being graded below a ‘C’ band, and show initiative and ‘pro-activeness’ (which is just a formal term for ingratiating oneself to the higher ups). This grading, quite simply put, decides your existence in the company. An A-band means you are pro-active, a B means you are eager to learn, C means you need to work a lot on yourself and a D means you’re a failure (and can face salary cuts as a result). But I’ve always considered myself a ‘good employee’ because, at the end of the day, I do the work I am supposed to.
Within any project there are limited allocations for A, B or C-bands, so even though you might be working as a team, there is always a competition with your co-workers. Some might hang out with managers and some might put in more hours at work or learn new skills at the cost of personal time to be considered a ‘good employee’. Personally, I feel all this work to be placed in a higher band is not worth the returns (an extra 3 or 6% in your annual salary appraisal). If you don’t give in to them, you have to be prepared for constant pep talks for self-improvement from your managers. This is why I believe there are no ‘good employees’. Companies create a culture of artificial performance based tiers and whether you give into this system or refrain from it, you are equally exploited!
“Companies create a culture of artificial performance based tiers and whether you give into this system or refrain from it, you are equally exploited!”
Coming to culture — I have always been interested in the arts, and when I started working I decided to pursue stand up comedy as a way out of this corporate slavery. I would do the bare minimum to keep my job and was usually shuttling around the lengths of the city for any chance to perform. I put in a lot of effort and really believed this could become an alternate path for me. Through my stand up gigs I also met a lot of people, who were brilliant and patient in introducing new ideas to me. This ad-hoc cultural education also shaped my political thinking, be it understanding feminism, or progressive politics. I realised my workplace alienation was not just fueled by divisive corporate policies at an organisational level, but also the personal beliefs of my coworkers, many of whom supported the anti-human right-wing politics of the current regime.
As Covid-19 hit, I also got some time for introspection. Contrary to popular opinion, I feel that the lockdown and the resultant Work From Home setup has been beneficial for me and given me time to socialize and be healthy. I realised that in my tenure in the organisation I haven’t grown much by way of earnings (or skills) — my monthly salary has not even doubled in the last 5.5 years! Even the benefits we get is ultimately a joke, the medical insurance premium is partly cut from our salary and we got a whopping Rs. 400 as a monthly WFH allowance! To add insult to injury, I usually work on US based projects, and I am sure that the rate the company bills me to a client is pretty astronomical. I also realised that pursuing stand up comedy full-time requires a lot of privilege and connections, many of my peers in the creative field come from established upper class families while I have no safety net at all. Stand up is something I feel passionate about, but the industry is rife with issues of its own. In the end it didn’t turn out to be the salve I had hoped it to be — juggling work and ‘passion’ took a toll on my mental health and I decided to pause and recuperate.
So here I am, questioning the last 5.5 years of my ups and downs as a tech worker and a creative. In the last year I made friends online and joined virtual communities with a leftist bent. I didn’t know IT unions existed in India and I joined AIITEU because I felt it could provide some answers to my ‘existential’ questions. I recognise now, that this conundrum between work vs. passion is not an individual problem but a systemic one. I see the union as a social space where one can ask naive questions, build awareness and contribute (in whatever little way one can) to systematically change things with a community of progressive peers.
In a world where our education and the metrics of evaluating a ‘good employee’ is defined by those who want to exploit us; it is important that we as workers and value creators educate and organise ourselves to create checks and balances!
