[windex]

The method used in all the big4s in India is this: You join and do well as usual. Your credit is shared by those above you. You continue to do well, your manager gets promoted or you get a manager who needs a promotion and needs the credit you generate. He gets promoted, aggregates your good work and shows it as his. You then get sidelined, PIPed, or leave in disgust.

It's political and I have begun to strongly believe that the best leave or are schemed against by the mediocre cabal. You cannot continue in a large firm in India if you are anywhere near good.

[vosper]

Why would a manager who’s able to claim the credit of their reports in order to advance their own career then PIP the best ones? Wouldn’t they keep them around to keep claiming credit from?

I’m not doubting your story (I’ve never worked in India) I just don’t understand the incentive to fire a good worker in this scenario.

[dullcrisp]

They already got promoted and might not be managing the same team, plus it sells the lie better, and most people wouldn’t go along with this forever and might start claiming things so they have to discredit you first.

[SanjayMehta]

Most CEOs and VPs in these companies are nepotistic and political. They are happy to take credit but will never allow their direct reports to become a threat to them. In general the structure looks like this

CEO

VP (usually a family member or a "chamcha" literally spoon, but means sycophant.)

Directors (all yes-men chamchas)

Worker bees

Not very different from most companies, in my experience.

[SilverElfin]

Is sycophancy different there? I think in many places employees often praise their managers and agree with everything because it’s a survival strategy. Or maybe a misplaced hope to get recognized that way. I assume that’s all this is too?

[kamaal]

In India loyalties run deep. It can come along the lines of religion, region, caste, family, color, class etc.

Many times novices to this game, work mad hours, only to realise a year or two down the lane, some guy who practically did no work but comes from the same state your manager does, is now promoted above you.

[SanjayMehta]

> some guy who practically did no work but comes from the same state your manager does,

I took over a unit where 80% of the engineers were from one state, and mostly from the same college as the previous hiring manager.

There was one particular misfit - competent engineer but didn't have any skills for my BU.

I tried to transfer him to the hiring manager's new unit, and he refused. So I told him I would have to fire the misfit. Guess what, the next day he found a req and took the misfit.

This was a pattern everywhere I worked. So when I was able to dictate hiring policies, one rule was that we would never visit the same college twice in row. This of course made me very unpopular with HR. Now they had to work harder to maintain connections with placement departments.

[throw310822]

They don't care that much. Probably from their point of view the merit is theirs anyway and consider anyone below them easily replaceable. Also, good employees understand their value and will start asking to be rewarded adequately for their contribution- this is a problem, so getting rid of them or waiting until they give up and leave solves it.

[nitinreddy88]

This is outright stupid to believe. I have been working for past 15yrs and worked across startups to Top 5(FAANG), and never seen or gone through this.

[windex]

Happens in consulting more often than you think. Product firms run different or at least that's what I assume. I haven't worked in FAANG but have worked in the Big4s, and a couple of Fortune 50 manufacturing firms. The experience I talk of has to do with the Big4.

[rustystump]

Ur clearly not the top performer…

In all seriousness they mentioned India not mango fango. That said, my xp has been the same as you. Only time top performers get nixed is if a whole arm gets nixed and they get caught in the crossfire.

[tomnipotent]

OP said "do well", not top performer. Thinking you're a top performer isn't the same as the company thinking you're a top performer. I've never seen someone put on a PIP that didn't deserve, even if they thought differently.

Most people struggle just to keep their head above water nonetheless come up with elaborate conspiracies of sabotaging other peoples careers. No one is thinking about you that much.

[II2II]

I suspect the root of the problem is an unwillingness to take ownership for their action (or inaction). I've never been on a PIP. Even when I've given my employers reason to give me a verbal warning, their response has been: "that's not like you, don't let it happen again," and it hasn't happened again. I suspect that is true for most of those who have never been on a PIP.

Now I'm on the flip side, in a place where I may have to put someone on a PIP. What can be done has been done. There is only so much support and positive guidance that can be offered before you have to provide them with a plan backed with consequences for not following through. It is an employee that I don't want to lose because of their contributions, but it is also an employee that I can't afford to keep because (without changes) they are a liability. Unfortunately, previous interactions suggest that I will have to cut my losses. Yet the ball lies entirely in their court at this point because they are the one who has to take ownership for the issues they create.

[nsoonhui]

Doesn't make sense to me, if the manager is promoted, wouldn't he want to bring good talents along, so that they can help him to promote further?

[windex]

Let me explain.

Case 1: You're a high performer, one year into the role. A colleague, who's been around longer but struggled, gets promoted not necessarily on merit, but on their ability to manage up. Your early contributions are quietly absorbed into their promotion case. Once they step into a managerial role, the dynamics shift. Unless you stay quiet and compliant, you’re suddenly less welcome in the team.

Case 2: High Performers: Some managers (even partners) feel threatened when team members build credibility with clients. I’ve seen situations where a client repeatedly requesting a specific consultant backfired on that consultant. At year-end reviews, client recognition turned into a liability, not an asset.

Credit Allocation:In some Big 4 setups, CRM credit allocation is less about contribution and more about visibility and tagging. Accounts are assigned to partners who may not actively engage, yet receive full credit. Technical sales teams, who drive actual deals but don't "own" accounts, often find their impact diluted. In some cases, partners even tag themselves as "owners" of said accounts mid-pursuit to claim credit post-close. At the year end, the actual deal closers are usually running around begging partners for credit. You might end up getting 30% of what you actually closed. This works well for partners as incentives outflow is reduced leaving money on the table.

Event Marketing Shell Game: Large-format partner-led events in places like Goa or Dubai are positioned as knowledge exchange and brainstorming events. Behind the scene Sales teams are pushed hard to invite prospects where the engagement has been going on for months. When those deals close weeks/months later, the event organizers often claim the outcome; regardless of who did the heavy lifting.

[kamaal]

>>You're a high performer, one year into the role. A colleague, who's been around longer but struggled, gets promoted not necessarily on merit, but on their ability to manage up.

Its honestly mostly like a queue, you can't see why people who came before should get a early exit. But those people had people before them too, and thought the same. Now that you arrived, you think your specific case be prioritised above them for merits you think count above theirs and not necessarily their place in the queue.

As much as we all think we are special, we mostly aren't, time and queue position plays a huge role in most things in the society.

Its pointless to fight the queue system, most events in life happen in an order, and its pointless to fight cause-effect sequences. Some exceptions to this absolutely exist, but this is the general rule.

>>At year-end reviews, client recognition turned into a liability, not an asset.

    Do not outshine the master - 48 laws of power

Remember the system is a part of the game, if you threaten someone you will take their job, its in their interest now to see through the end of you.

[franktankbank]

Dave wins the race not because he got to the finish line first but because he has been coming to the race for decades. LOL dumb society.

[kamaal]

More like Dave has been pushing up sacks of really valuable things up a hill, for years.

Jack who just arrived and pushed ONE sack up slightly faster than Dave, in the first week, thinks he must be promoted above Dave right then and there. Or its oppression.

To start with accept this thing first. Its human fallacy to confuse making rapid changes to a process as making fast progress. In reality sticking to one thing for long is what brings the big progress.

You might want to talk to martial arts people, stock investors/traders, musicians, surgeons, or anyone for that matter.

Someone who shows up on the 10001th morning, is not the same as some one who showed up on the 100th morning, even if the latter is some performing better creating a his own personal local maxima.

[franktankbank]

Very good retort. I will insist both things happen and our views on it probably come down to life experience and current position.

I've too often seen Dave praised for carrying sacks day in day out instead of placing them on the goddamn conveyor belt. Some have come to doubt the conveyor belts utility when we could all just be carrying the sacks. In fact if we got rid of the conveyor belt we could hire our cousin and brother-in-law to be cool like Dave.

[anovikov]

But this is how it should be. Very best of the best start their own startups. Second best, start their own consultancies. Next on, work independently. Next on, are principals in small firms - they are the irreplaceable singular employees that the owner of a small firm wholly depends on. And then the mediocre and the bad ones, that work in largest firms. This is how it's always been.

[oceanplexian]

It's not that way in practice, and I've worked at a lot of startups. IMO successful founders are street smart, cunning, and good at relationships and understanding the business. Most of the really wealthy founders I've met are incredibly ordinary or above average, not "best".

[nrhrjrjrjtntbt]

Not sure what we are even measuring anymore in this discussion!

[sameklund]

It seems that your claim is that “this is how it should be” and also “this is how it is/has been” - not sure if you are referring to a specific region, considering the parent comment, but assuming you mean the tech industry in general, this seems patently false.

This is not a description of how talented, or smart, or “good at something” someone is. You are describing how risk-averse someone is, as well as how able to survive failure. The latter is slightly different from the former, although related. Someone not able to survive failure at all (due to having no savings, for example, or perhaps someone who has high monthly fixed costs) ought to have a low tolerance for risk, but they might still have a lower threshold for what they consider risky relative to someone else.

I’ve met plenty of talented/smart/etc people in each of these groups, and also plenty of the opposite. To be fair, my experience is anecdotal and biased, although I would reasonably expect such a pattern to continue.

[tormeh]

No. If you want to build big products, you need big organizations (i.e. companies). Big products have moats, often network effects or natural monopolies or whatever, but if nothing else then just the sheer investment required to build a competitor. Products with moats can extract wealth. So big companies are often extremely profitable. That's where the money is. Consulting is something talented people do in countries with no big tech companies.

[anovikov]

Yes you are right, but it doesn't contradict my statement. Of course big companies are necessary and big companies are where the moats and thus wealth creation is. But it doesn't mean they need to hire the best people (market control/moats make them competitive even if almost all employees are disposable drones), or that they can do it (because of agency problem). Small companies both need the best people (they don't have those moats and also don't have division of labor deep enough to make do with more stupid people doing better granulated/formalised work, everyone has to wear many hats and be flexible), and can do it because agency problem there is less pronounced due to fewer layers of management. Yes as a result, they make less profit (can take less of market for having no/smaller moat, and have to pay more to people because they have to hire better ones), but this is the company's problem, not employees'.

[cbdhdjdjd]

This definitely explains why India is so dysfunctional.

[SanjayMehta]

Yes and no.

The real cause of our dysfunctional system is the debris of nehruvian socialism (he was a covert communist masking himself as a Fabian socialist).

He didn't reform the British divide and control mechanisms but continued them and in fact made them worse. If you think your bureaucracy is bad, wait till you see ours.

These are "one exam wonders." They clear one exam, and with zero life experience at the age of 25 can sabotage almost any enterprise with their clerical behaviour.

Our own deep state.

It's much better in the private sector but this mindset is pervasive.

[renewiltord]

The one great commonality I've noticed about California Democrats and Online Indians is that each region's problems seem exclusively the fault of some long dead fellow.

Apparently this Nehru chap has been dead for 60 years. In fact, India has only been a country for 80 years so he's been dead for most of the time India has been around.

Likewise with Ronald Reagan. Supposedly he's responsible for all the woes of California since.

I've got to be honest. It's not that convincing.

It reminds me of those engineers who you hire and one month in they don't have anything to show because of "tech debt" and shit like that. It's always the fault of some guy who has long left. Then you hire other engineers and they just nail it. Such is life. There's blamers and doers and the two are not usually the same.

[SanjayMehta]

Believe whatever you wish. We live with this reality. At least you can move from CA to TX. We can't, it's the same clown show everywhere.

The fact is that for every policy the government introduces, the entrenched clerks find ways to sabotage it.

If you think you can handle it I invite you to come and apply for any government scheme of your choice.

True story: we once sent an NDA to a government ministry for review and it came back with one objection after 11 months. The objection was that the year was wrong in the document.

After that we no longer bid for any government work.

[renewiltord]

Oh I have no doubt it's miserable, and your story is pretty funny haha. I just don't think that a guy who has been dead for 75% of a country's existence is why something is a certain way. It's been 60 years without the fellow. It's not like he's an immortal god commanding you still.

[SanjayMehta]

It's the entrenched system built by that long dead British stooge.

They just have to outlast each elected government of five years and they have a similar judiciary which protects them.

There was a (feeble) attempt by the current government in their previous term to reform the judiciary (NJAC Act) and the entrenched judges ruled it unconstitutional. Unlike the US, judges aren't political appointees, they appoint each other.

[imtringued]

I don't know if this source is biased [0], but Nehru sounds refreshingly pragmatic and does not come across as a burden to India and his "socialism" is different from the standard US boogieman socialism or Soviet socialism that you could hardly argue that India was ever on the path towards communism. At some point it's just a kneejerk reaction to the word "socialism".

[0] https://www.thehindu.com/society/nehrus-socialism-was-evolut...

[SanjayMehta]

The Hindu is a biased source.

They were once caught red handed cropping images of documents to push their narrative.

https://www.opindia.com/2019/02/the-hindu-not-only-cropped-t...

[kamaal]

>>The real cause of our dysfunctional system is the debris of nehruvian socialism (he was a covert communist masking himself as a Fabian socialist).

It has been 50 years since his time. And most of what he did now has largely faded out to nothingness. OTOH, his time wasn't all that bad either. Even till 2000s cities in South India were very liveable, with decent quality of life.

Most of Indias problem come from a brutal zero sum game society, where population is too large, and there isn't enough affluence going around.

Everyone, every community and sub group, down the individual has to do anything in takes to snatch, hoard and then deny as many resources they can. Even if it means wrecking everything that exists to get there.

Nothing good comes out of these things.

To begin with fixing India, you must work towards having affluence of a few decades atleast. A generation or two need to live through this to wash away behaviours of a scarcity game.

[kamaal]

The deal about India is this.

Its a brutal zero/negative sum game, at a country level, but plays out in every individual's life, and at a punishing pace, intensity and frequency.

Anybody who doesn't prioritise their self interests at any and all costs, suffers.

Just stubbornly refuse to do a thing that isn't beneficial to you. You will come out fine.

[throwaway2037]

Why do you think this is special to India? Anywhere there are humans, you will see the same behaviour.

[anshumankmr]

This is true. Minus the PIP part.. I have not heard of anyone being PIPed.

Source: current concluding my stint at Deloitte.

[vee-kay]

The only one selling a lie here is you.

You have clearly not worked in any major company in India, Or even other nations (since PIP is a common process worldwide in most companies).

Any employee can escalate to the company Ombudsman if they feel they are being subjected to unfair treatment or inappropriate processes. It is the job of the Ombudsman to be neutral and do an thorough impartial investigation.

PIP (Performance Improvement Plan) is a formal process, it even HR and senior management (skip level 1 manager at the very least) are involved in it. There is specific time duration and set of expectations given formally (under review process with HR, so there is full transparency) to the employee to improve the performance.

A top performer cannot be nixed via PIP, because the onus of performance proofs is on the employee and those evidences are visible to HR and upper management.

PIP is used to nix bad performers, not top performers.

Typically, even if an employee clears PIP, they need to get an "Exceed Expectations" (or equivalent) appraisal rating in the next appraisal cycle in order to continue in the organisation, but if they get lower rating instead, they are in hit list to be nixed during next round of job cuts whenever it happens.

Top performers may quit due to office politics and lack of growth, but PIP is not their way out.

PIP is a permanent black mark on an employee's record (which is maintained historically), so it disallows the company from hiring that person again if that person exited due to PIP.

Top companies in India and elsewhere have very formal processes, including Ombudsman and PIP, which get audited.

[b33j0r]

I got a PIP because my manager mistakenly thought I was stealing equipment, and he just kept adding agile story points until I failed.

I was too pissed off to go to an ombudsman. It honestly didn’t occur to me. It just felt like “this guy hates me and wants me out.”

He called me two years after I was fired to inquire about missing equipment that I never had.

[vee-kay]

You made the mistake of allowing PIP to be invoked on you for a fake reason given by your manager, and you made the even more serious mistake of getting fired because you "stole equipment".

If you were innocent of that dangerous charge, you should have fought hard against it, and ensured the top management, HR head and Ombudsman became involved in the investigation.

Being fired for theft or such serious crimes, can and will leave a permanent black mark on your employment record with the HR, and it may get pulled up during BGV (Background Verification) invoked by a prospective employer evaluating your candidacy for hire, thus seriously affecting your career and life.

I think you should now reach out to that company HR and clear the conspiracy and black mark against you. Perhaps, you can hire a lawyer who deals with employment matters, so he or she can legally get the matter resolved in your favour.