2025-05-27
Whether it's a government job or a private one, as long as it is a good job it takes a lot of effort from the side of the applicant to get it. But the similarities between both sector jobs end once the offer letter is received. I don't need to tell how a public sector employee's work differs from that of private as government job life is considered more often than not to be of comparatively less stressful than its counterpart. As a result of that such high proportion of youth especially in India put their efforts into government job exam preparation. No wonder why demand of such jobs far exceeds that of its supply. Irony of mixed economy is that everyone wants to consume the luxury and the comfort of Amazon service but no one desires to work in their factory. Neither do I, call me an arrogant employee but I would prefer to pee in a toilet instead of my water bottle. Anyways, speaking of Amazon employees, so much has changed in just last few decades in the the job market, I mean India was essentially a socialist state prior to 1991 and till this day there still exists many Goliath size PSUs employing millions in the country. Back in the socialist economy almost everyone worked either in agriculture, the army or in PSUs, but things have changed now. Compared to public sector the private one has generated far more jobs and these changed times require different set of efforts from the side of employees because merely doing your 9-5 can end you up on streets. I will tell why, layoffs have become a norm and there is no guarantee that your company will continue to keep you in payroll the next month. Corporation can choose any excuse among many which it has on the table fire an employee. For instance, one of my friend lost his job because apparently he was getting paid more than what the company thought they would have to pay a fresher for the same job but performance wise he was doing good, the company instead decided to forced him to write the resignation email. Talking to people from different jobs have made me realize that such incidents are not so uncommon. That proposes some questions, that what all the other things one must do in addition of 'clocking the job' to sustain in such uncertain times where unlike PSU's there is no safety net? For now I have been able to find four such areas where many are already working:
For once HR or the line manager might consider an employee to be human with feelings but for the business, which only sees problems and employees to be the solution provider to those problems, for that business an employee is a tool. And we know the quality of a tool is determined by its ability to solve problems effectively. Nevertheless we know that the problems a business faces are seldom static in nature. Hence, it requires the tool, I mean the employee to learn new skills to solve those new problems. And that learning is called skill maxing.
The Spinning Jennie initiated industrial revolution by increasing productivity in textile by replacing the traditional spinners and creating new roles in factories. AI is doing the same, see for instance, IBM recently replaced hundreds of HR staff with AI but subsequently invested that amount in hiring even more engineers and sales staff to solve creative problems which is currently beyond relam of AI. Many jobs destined to get extinct but to compensate even more new jobs with different required skill set will come to existence, that's why it is one more reason why skill maxing is the new-normal for employees.
What can be measured can be managed. Job KPIs do exactly that and it is the inherent characteristic of all the jobs however in some jobs the work can be measured more than the others, for instance sales job have clear cut targets to be achieved and in order to keep having the job they must be achieved. For once an employee may forget their loved one's contact number but their line manager will not let them forget the sales target. This is not only related to the sales job of course, as almost every single job has performance reviews which are directly tied up with the job continuity and promotion. This was/is however not the case with government jobs where there is almost an unspoken guarantee of permanent employment no matter what. But in a free market job one has to put some real effort to sustain the job. Nothing wrong with that, one agrees to the conditions of work and pay before joining, one must adhere to those. The only reason why I put this in new-normal is because there was no such condition in the socialist past of this country (which existed just few decades ago) but then again those were poor times plagued with inefficiency.
I have never met a single employee who doesn't dream of his 'own business' irrespective of the fact that whether they are currently working on that dream business or not. If not all but many certainly work, any person with hobby almost all the time has some side project going on. And this is significant too, a passive income is never a bad idea, more than that it is a safety net. Now I am not saying that every single side project must be for business, some may be just to showcase that you can build something significant. Like that yt-dlp opensource project the person with the name 'dstftw' has undertaken on Github. It seems like because of division of labor to such a big extent it has left people alienated with their own produce that they think of outside work to build something just for the sake of building something. Still, many are working on side projects to generate a source of passive income to make them bit more independent of the main job. But then again, some side projects can require more attention than what can be given to them as there is significantly less time left after doing day job and family work.
To be honest I don't know much about this term, I used to think it is something related to internet until Linkedin told me otherwise. Anyhow as cringe as it may sound it is one of the core activity of the new-normal environment for the employees. Imagine a situation where there is a relevant work opportunity in a company you like, the job matches your skill and experience but the moment you see the application stats it says "Job posted one hour ago, total applications are 369". In that situation you might be the right candidate but the chances that the HR is going to see your resume in that pile of resumes is quite less. What you can do? Well if some employee of that company is already aware about your skill set he can recommend you to HR. Good for you and good for the company, win-win situation. But it can easily turn into lose-lose situation if you don't have that contact. Having others know about your skill set is, I think, what networking is.
But there is some critique of networking as well on the fact that how it to commercialize the human interactions. Not much wrong with that by the way, but the fact that the only incentive to communicate with others is to derive some benefit out seems bit dystopian. But that again that's the nature of the beast, that's why personal life is set aside than business.
Yes, this is the new normal for employees, a consistent effort to be better and independent as an answer to uncertain, dynamic, competitive and dystopian future. There might be other tasks in addition to these but as far as I can understand deriving relevant outcome on each task seems a necessity to form a safety net because the 9-5 is no more the standard of stability. And merely clocking in and out to secure a job is the thing of the lost decades.