Note from a GenZ start-up worker to her founder:
Dear Founder
As your employee, I am told the only way to get your attention is by writing to you directly. I admit I am amazed by your vision and commitment to build this company into a billion-dollar venture. I hear you are passionate about cricket, and your guitar play during offsites is part of office hallway folklore. I see your car every day before entering the office, and while I leave in the evening, I can hear the hustle of the leadership team in your cabin. The midnight and weekend emails we get suggest you must be working almost round the clock.
Understanding the generational shift: Efforts vs. outcomes in the modern workplace
My manager recently mentioned that we are expected to be in office every day as that’s the only way to collaborate better. But as an engineer who joined you two years ago, this does not work for me. My boss cannot stop but rave about your work ethic, how you respond to every email and Slack message immediately and expect the same from all of us. But here is the catch: as much as I love the office buzz and the cafeteria, I am not sure I want to commute three hours daily to get there. When HR visited our campus, they said it would be a hybrid role, which was one of the attractions of this job besides the pay. I, too, enjoy sports, and on alternate days, soccer with friends and music classes in the evening have been part of my routine for the last three years.
I understand the global economy is wobbly, with headwinds ahead of our organisation. The war cry to chip in more has increased by the day, and the managers are pressurising more on the daily KPIs now. Being at the bottom of the pyramid, we are unable to relate to this changing context, and the gulf between founders and us has increased as the company scales. The hope that if the organisation does well, everyone will benefit had gotten punctured after the last fundraiser when the founders and leadership team got luxury cars, and our salaries almost remained flat.
I am amongst the five people who have resigned after this return to office mandate. This email from the anonymous name is to ensure my full and final settlement doesn’t get affected and for a stressless notice period. But, then, 90 days to relieve me, seriously? I am taking a break from this sweatshop and, after that, will choose an employer who can nurture my talent and also offer me the balance I need for a productive life. My family is relieved that I am quitting this stressful job and has been supportive during this phase. My objective of writing to you is to impress you on the need to take care of the mental health of my overcooked colleagues who may be suffering silently.
Your Gen Z employee
Reply from the founder:
My young colleague
Thank you for the passionate email. It’s sad that we couldn’t retain you despite investing in your training for more than a year. I know that times have changed, and the organisation’s vision and employees’ priorities are at crossroads. My answers may not convince you, but nevertheless, I shall share my point of view. I am sure you are reading a lot about founders like Bhavish Aggarwal, Kunal Shah, and Sajjan Jindal defending the 70-hour work week philosophy invoked by our industry pioneer NR Narayana Murthy. After training millions of freshers for their first IT job and facilitating employment via Infosys to maybe more than 2 million software engineers, can we just dismiss his plea out of hand? I wonder what kind of work routines pop icons like Taylor Swift, or the rising cricketing star of Indian cricket, Shubman Gill, must have had before they became famous. If they had urged the younger generation to strive more, would we have dismissed them as rich people’s poor advice to the middle class?
When I was your age, I, too, compared my life with the CEOs of the companies I worked for. I used to look at their cars with envy, but I didn’t have the luxury of quitting because my family wasn’t supportive like yours. Instead, they wanted me to learn the trade faster and always told me to work harder. On second thoughts, I also tell myself that we were lucky in our early careers not to be judged by the influencers of Twitter and LinkedIn who take cheap shots at respectable entrepreneurs and marquee enterprises on social media. As an entrepreneur, I struggled to build a scalable organisation for years and was worried looking at the 95 per cent of the startups that failed around me. I wish I could have learnt earlier from the pundits on LinkedIn how to start and run an enterprise by paying above-market salaries, remote working and 40 hours a week and still survive! Advice is cheap and easy when it comes to others.
You wanted to know why I am online most of the time? I feel responsible for setting the tone for a responsive organisation. If we can’t set that culture internally, how else will we be a customer-centric organisation? Imagine if I had a track record of responding late or only to 50 per cent of my inbox; you possibly wouldn’t have even sent me this email!
We know India already has 111 Unicorns, and I believe we can be there, too. I have a good reason to believe we need to get it right faster, so some hustle is inevitable. Imagine if we aren’t successful, more people like you will have to leave for a different reason.
And finally, on the notice period, I wish we could transfer all the knowledge/experience you gained in two years to be absorbed in less than a month. I know the shoulders drop once you resign, but I wish we could hire talented people like you immediately and also train them to learn everything you are delivering today.
I sincerely hope that you go on to become a successful entrepreneur and that one day, our paths cross again. Maybe there is some other hack to start and scale a large global organisation that I will learn from you that day even though it would be late for me by then.
Don’t worry about your full and final Settlement, but please be considerate when you rate us on Glassdoor!
Yours Truly,
Founder CEO.
PS: Still working 70 hours
(Kamal Karanth is co-founder of Xpheno, a specialist staffing firm)