A Union of-by-for White Collar Employees

I go through multiple posts every day. Every one is cursing their company. The bosses are bad. Managers suck. Company is fraud. Is it always the company, managers , bosses at fault. How can we create better work environment in Indian Startup’s.?

Link: https://inc42.com/buzz/unacademy-fires-another-250-employees-to-turn-profitable/

IIT grad here building a venture backed startup. I think 99% of folks here believe that venture backed founders are super entitled and in a much "cosier" position than employees Just sharing a few facts about our journey so far if it helps anyone improve their perspectives- 1) Paying ourselves 33% of our campus salary & 60% of what we are paying to our employees (Talking about Pure Base Salary here, not including ESOPs) 2) Insane stress - You basically have to raise money to build (esp if its deeptech because of the high fixed costs) and there are predefined metrics you have to always chase, sometimes just beyond yourselves. Your product will be copied if it's good because well, they always have more money than you. You work 7 days a week for insane hours, chasing metrics required to be "afloat" 3) 99% of venture backed startups result in 0 liquidity gain for founders. So basically in all likeliness, everything is for a net negative return compared to if we took the campus job So, when you wholeheartedly bash founders as if they are sitting On a goldmine while you are toiling for THEIR gold Treasure, just understand that more likely than not, there is not really any gold but rather an irrational hope they are clinging to Also, Yes-we pay above market to our employees (100% hike for the last one) but the truth is some startups just Can't afford it. And ironically, there is a much higher looking down on these startups with meagurely paid founders rather than giants like Tech Mahindra paying peanuts to their employees while having a 1000% salary hike for the executives. Yeah, most startups need to do better but please appreciate if someone is atleast trying to do better because trust me, it's INSANELY HARD.. The number of posts I see about Flipkart making hundreds millionaires is way too less than the ones I see about pinpointing at every single mistake early stage startups do & I just wanted to express my opinion on it Peace!

Came to know of a case where HR tried to quash a serious POSH complaint. Tried to blame the victim instead of handling the case properly. Victim was forced to file police complaint, even then HR was just looking for reasons to fire so they just quit. Perpetrator wasn't even someone very senior or important to the company, yet company tried to protect them for no good reason and downplay the complaint even though there was a witness. Sad state of affairs, really might want to look into creating unions or something.

They have no life They have nowhere to go They have no one to be with They have no passions outside work either And they make your life hell as they become the baseline for comparison for all sorts of management from appraisal to work distribution. Feel free to disagree with me, but I’m genuinely pissed today. How do you deal with them? I have a decent life outside work but lose most of it while trying to catchup to such people so that I don’t get fired. Sorry for the title.

It's infuriating how everyone's advice to deal with layoffs is side hustles, wasting your life away to constantly upskill and reducing spending. Basically everyone here is saying "live life like shit to appease your corporate overlords" as if layoffs are OUR fault? Instead, why aren't we seeing any advice on the lines of: Build expertise in something while you're an employee and later start your own company/business/consultation on the basis of it. This will increase competition within businesses and will force them to treat their employees like humans. This was kind of the reason why things were generally good for employees from 2021-22 because all the startups popping up increased competition for labour. Or if your employer lays a bunch of people off and starts giving the rest of you their workload, simply refuse! Don't work extra long or extra hard. Get the employees together collectively and make everyone, or at least the majority refuse to entertain these outlandish demands from your employers. What are they gonna do? Fire you all and lose their business? And if that's not going to work, just do everything very poorly and if you're asked about it, just cite that there is a lack of manpower needed to get quality results. Basically, why have we collectively decided to take the short end of the stick and make our lives miserable when we should instead force employers to face consequences of THEIR OWN poor strategic planning? Why aren't we even discussing ideas for, let alone working on protecting our own best interests rather than interests of those who are screwing us over?

I have for the past couple of months gone through really pathetic and exploitative behaviour of the Indian companies (especially startups). > They ask to do extensive assignments, wasting a lot of time, just because they have an upper hand > Then they completely ghost candidates with no response (most times) / delayed response This is really pathetic. Lack of empathy just shows how immature and under-developed you are. If you ask someone to invest their time, you have the responsibility of timely and proper communication. ALMOST ALL STARTUP HIRING MANAGERS AND HR TEAMS NEED TO UNDERSTAND THIS.

Tech spending has gone UP by a lot. These companies are playing on the USDINR arbitrage and still will choose to pay you peanuts so that they can enjoy insane profit margins in this business. You are literally being treated like a daily wage labourer here, the only difference is you are dressed up in formals. Let this be your call to start something new or switch jobs.

Nobody even bothers to know thier rights as employess due to the state of poor law enforment, slow courts, and sometimes influential upper management in companies/ startups. I was the second engineer at a crypto wallet startup that shut down early this year. The founder had promised to issue shares that’d be 1%-2% of company. I trusted the guys and never asked for a share certificate. BIG MISTAKE. When we got a pre-seed check they refused to give me anything above 0.2% and tried to settle with a little more money. I resigned the same day.

One of the old employees dropped a bomb of an e-mail against the entire leadership of PhonePe Mass Offline leadership addressing about mental harassment, hostile comments, threatening to sack, and pushing employees to have no work life balance. This mail was sent to the Founder Sameer Nigam and the HR Head.