Stop bellyaching and enjoy good times

Often, we all moan the fact that old times have always been better. We view the past with nostalgia and with coloured lense. A friend had wisely quipped "we never knew we were in such good times".

We live the event, and once it gets over, it gets better and better with time. We masticate the old memories like a well-satiated bovine and slowly saviour the old times.

Yes, old times have been excellent. We had unlimited freedom, more free time, no supervision, total innocence and complete focus on doing only one thing at a time. The modern world has drastically changed!

The world is a whole new place. Internet and especially mobile phones have changed the way we live. Everything that we want is available at the press of a button or the swipe of a finger. Information is available at the fingertips.

With a mobile phone and the omnipresent WhatsApp, everyone is a guru and a fountain of knowledge! The world has become a strange place where there are gurus, but no disciples. There is so much to share and hardly anyone to receive and acknowledge. Towers of babble screaming at each other!

Young people, especially management graduates are having a good time. Exceptional faculty teach them, and they have a dedicated placement department at their beck and call to get them plum corporate jobs. In the earlier days, the management graduates fended for themselves.

Now the organisations are bending backwards to accommodate every whim and fancy of their prospective employees. Bosses are more open, and options for growth and career enhancement are more attractive than ever before.

Youngsters of the present generation can even dream of retiring at forty-five, an idea that would shock the earlier generation! Employees get pick and drop facilities, liberal breakfast, lunch, dinner and entertainment facilities, and even get joining bonus.

Management graduates are spoilt for choice. And most of them also have flexible working hours, the facility of work from home and attractive Employee Stock Options (ESOP). A series of the back of envelope calculations have revealed some fascinating insights.

I started working in Indian Communication Network Limited, a sister company of Hindustan Computers Limited as a Sales Executive in 1987 with a then handsome salary of 1800 rupees per month. My placement was at par with management trainees recruited at that time, but lower than what IIM (Indian Institute of Management) graduates would get, which was around Rs 3000/- per month.

Inflation corrected, Rs 1800/- would translate to a salary of Rs 18,000/- per month in today's terms. B-school's least packages now are around 3,60,000 rupees a year or 30,000/- rupees per month which are 160% higher than what I got as so-called good salary in 1987!

A decent salary that most normal B-school graduates now expect is Rs 50,000/- per month which would translate to Rs 5,000/- in 1987. Rs 5000/- would be the salary an RSM (Regional Sales Manager) with 10-15 years of work experience would draw in the eighties.

A regular 29-inch colour TV was Rs 10,000/-, and the cost of Maruti 800 car Rs 70,000/- in 1987. I would have to shell down six months' salary to buy a colour TV and 3.5 years' salary to buy a Maruti. And there were no easy EMI options from friendly banks and ever eager financing companies.

Compare that with a management graduate earning Rs 50,000/- per month today. With that salary, he can easily buy the best 55-inch colour TV with his first-month salary itself. He is also looking at an entry-level car of Rs 4,00,000/- with eight months' salary. And mouth-watering options from banks and financing companies.

Young friends never compare one generation with another. Every generation has its shining parts and ugly warts. What is needed is to live in the present. It has become very fashionable to leave first jobs within six months or a year and be quite blasé and brazen about the same.

But loyalty to an organisation is the bedrock on which careers get built. It is always better to plant oneself at a place and grow roots. Nowadays, it has become quite fashionable to let our emotions interfere with our workplace and professional behaviour.

Recruits have been thrown out of induction programme and out of their jobs for indulging in easily avoidable indiscretions. One such blunder that comes to mind was committed by a new employee who was continuously browsing and texting as the CEO was addressing the group.

And that too sitting in the front row. Akin to waving a red flag in front of a raging bull. He was shown the door. So quit bellyaching and enjoy your times. These times are perfect, enjoy them as long as they last.

(The author is a marketing professor at Siva Sivani Institute of Management a premier management institute at Secunderabad)