Do you remember the time you were in school? The time when your school was the bestest there was , when all the people in your school were smarter than any other school , where the grounds were better to play in than in anyone else's school, where the teachers were the best and kindest, where the principals were stern but what the heck you liked them anyway.
I do.
One of the things you learnt in school was loyalty and that loyalty begets loyalty. And there was a thing called Honour.Do you remember the time the teacher asked who did whatever and everyone knew but no one said a word.? Atleast my school(and with that i include the campus , the teachers and my fellow students) did try to teach me that. But then i did tell you it was the best school.
One of the first things that struck me in the induction speech when i joined by company (5.5 years back) was the thing someone from senior management said. He said You should not be loyal to the company. He said the company does not even want your loyalty. It will do what is best for itself and you should do what is best for yourself. He went on to refer to the practice in my company of giving long service awards at the end of 3 years and joked about it.
The Achieving excellence session went on to teach you new keywords WIIFM WIIFU (whats in it for me , whats in it for us)
At that time i would rather listen to If(Rudyard Kipling)
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
I resolved that this was a case of keeping my virtue while walking with the crowd and thefact that the company doesnt care for my loyalty does not in any way prevent me from being loyal.
I suspect that i should have bowed to experience instead of indulging in youthful idealism.
So much so that the fact that i have stuck with my company for 5 and a half years is now a liability. Supposedly IT HR people feel that if a software engineer sticks in the same company for more than two years there is something wrong with him - lack of ambition, initiative whatever.
So why am i still in my company
