Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Of Packages mine, yours and everyone else..

Thanks to all those who visited my blog and special thanks to the ones who were generous enough to leave a comment behind..
A friend of mine has given a suggestion for a technical blog, I have started working upon it and hope to post it sometime in near future.
For now, lemme come to the point..
Yet another budget is around the corner and everyone seems to be in a hurry to plan the savings/investments, some friends are even planning to switch the jobs in new financial year for better..
The moment a person lands up in a new job, a common question is thrown upon him:
“Hey dude, whatz your package?”
A few people are careful enough to ask about the work environment in the company along with the main question :-)
Friends inquire:
“How much hike did u get, mate?”
The relatives, about whom you haven’t heard from years, suddenly visit you and again the words take up the form:
“How much are you able to make up per month? I guess it should be close to 15-20K, right?”
When I got my first job, unfortunately, it paid me close to 5K only, so I used to give a frosty nose to such questions at that time..
But people can be harsh enough when they want to poke their nose into something…
“Ohh common, Mr. So n So’s son works in your domain and he is earning this much”
“Aaj kal MNC wale itna toh dey he dete hain..”
Since, a normal sane guy would never like to discuss his earnings, I normally respond to such questions with a smile :-) and try to change the topic..
I sometimes wonder why people are so curious to know about what everyone else is earning.
Do they plan their budget with this information?
To me, only four classes of people need to know about my package:
1.) My parents: They should know what I am/am not capable of.
2.) My spouse and her parents: They should know weather I can take care of my finances.
3.) The Finance executives in my company: They have to obviously deduct taxes from my salary.
4.) Close friends who work in my domain: They might need to negotiate with HR people while switching the job.
Morale of the story: If you happen to fall in any of the above classes, you already have the required information about me..
For everyone else there should be an access violation API kind of thing like we do have in systems engineering :-)