WW EP03 - Divas x Sandeep

The main ideas from this information are: - In the early career, you should stay in a job for at least 1-2 years, and in late career, it should be 3 years or more. - Many workers are thinking about leaving their jobs due to various reasons. - It's important to recognize signs that indicate it's the right time to quit and start job searching. - Dealing with difficult bosses and toxic work environments can be challenging, but there are strategies to handle them. - When considering a new role, senior leaders should search for something meaningful, purposeful, and challenging. - It's important to prioritize learning and not just focus on earning in order to grow in your career. - Before quitting a job, it's important to take time to think and avoid hasty decisions. - Work cultures can be toxic, but rising above the politics and finding a bigger cause can help minimize the impact. - It's important to make decisions based on your own judgment and not solely In the early career, you should look at a minimum of one to two years per job. And by late career, it should be three years upward. I mean, if you see somebody who's worked in 10 jobs in 10 years, I mean, no big company is going to hire that person. So I think when you're doing really well in something, that's the time we should start thinking about what next, because you're already on top of your game. And then you should also think about what risks can I take in life. A survey by Microsoft in March 2022 found that 41% of workers were thinking about leaving their jobs. And another survey in July 2022 by McKinsey put the number at 40%. And the reasons vary from person to person. So the real question is, what signs should you look for to know if it's the right time to quit? Are there any red flags that we can see from a distance indicating us, nudging us, signaling us to start our job search before it's too late or inevitable? From transitioning dilemmas like quitting or switching your job to the dreaded career breaks, from make or break situations like negotiating CTCs or handling feedback between peers, to people related complexities like having a difficult manager or a toxic work environment. Workwise, we cover it all. Hi, welcome to Workwise with Naukri, a show to help you work better and accelerate your career. I'm Devath Gupta. I'm Neha Sindhu Batra. I'm Deepak Parikh. We'll be your podcast host, helping you better tackle those work woes. Quitting at the right time can be a game changer for your career with respect to advancing upwards or maybe it's just something you need to do to survive because you have a toxic boss or work environment. Yes. And to help us understand the signs that we should not ignore, we have invited Mr. Sandeep Kulchar. He started his career as a software engineer with HCL, then went on to work with companies like IBM, Honeywell, British Council, HTMedia, and went on to start Pathminds and Viewminds, where he coaches, consults, and helps in leadership development. Sandeep, welcome on board. Thank you so much, Devath. Why would someone schedule a meeting when it's time to leave for the day? In fact, one of my earlier bosses in one of my first few companies that I was working with, it was a lady boss. And what she would do is that she would come to my desk at around six o'clock or so. And then she would say, Hey, this is the work for the day. And why don't you just complete this before you leave? And I would have to sit the whole night to kind of complete that work. I would say one of the things that I've realized is that I think people are generally not bad. It's just that maybe they get used to that whole culture, and once they get used to those habits, they just stay on with those habits. Initially, I think I also got a little carried away that I need to push the other person. But then I realized that, you know, it's a very silly thing. And then I realized the difference between me, myself and my ego is two different things, right? So I just have to let go. And letting go is very tough. But yeah. You went on with new practices, and you were more accommodating. How about those who still follow the old school method? And if someone has a boss who still practice the same methodology, what should that person do? One of my bosses I worked with, he was the CEO of the organization. And he would do this very interesting thing of when I would go to him and say, Look, there's this problem and there are these two solutions A and B. He would always choose A. He would not go with whatever I said. And I started to get really frustrated with this whole thing. And then I started to reflect on my behavior and realized that, look, I was wanting control. Now whether he was wanting control, it's out of my own hands, right? So now if I wanted control, I wanted to drive my agenda, and he wanted to drive his. So there are two people totally, and I think in some ways, I was also very insecure. And so was he. And insecure not from a point of view of anything going wrong, but insecure from a point of view that if I don't have control over that thing, then I may just miss out or lose out, right? So then I thought over it and I found a very easy way to deal with it. From next time round, whenever I met him, I experimented with it. What I did was I just would go to him and say, Hey, there's two options A and B. And A has these positives and negatives. B has these positive negatives. You now figure out and guess what? He would just choose every time what I wanted him to choose. That's the way you should kind of deal with such bosses. And I feel that such bosses are really good because they just transform you in the way you look at things. And yeah, sometimes it becomes very toxic and really bad. When you are aware of your strengths, your skillsets, your contribution that you make to the organization, that is where you are fearless. And that is where you can dare to challenge your boss. And so always find a subtle way to just survive in the organization than to thrive. So see, I think there are two ways of this. There are two approaches. One approach could be that you, you know, the approach that I have told you is more aggressive in nature that you know, you just go and you question. So I would question things. I would question people. I wouldn't care in a meeting if the 10 people, if my boss is there, I would definitely question him because I was playing my role. But at the same time, I've seen people do this very, very well where they don't confront anybody and they, you know, quietly go about the process. They do extremely well. I have seen somebody rising to a CEO rank and then a global CEO within a period of 15 years just by doing that. I think maybe you need to choose which approach to use when. So that's the way I would look at it. In the last three years, a lot has changed the way we look at work. Pandemic has opened up way for two more piece that is the possibilities and purpose. I mean, flexible working hours, working remotely, and employees are also figuring out new sources of income in this online space. So the possibility is to earn more have increased. As a result, growth, better salaries, flexible work hours have become the most common, if not one of the reasons for employees to think about quitting their current jobs. Can someone continue with stagnancy and not much growth opportunities? If yes, then how? Yeah, I think one part is that when you are looking at changing jobs, right, you had asked that question earlier also, when do you look at moving jobs? I would say the most important is when the learning is stopping. That is the only criteria that you should use. For me, when I'm ranking these all, I would put learning as the number one. So if I'm not learning something new every day, then it's time for me to move. Now coming to the earning part, a lot of people prioritize that especially early in their careers, because, you know, earning becomes extremely important. But if you keep moving very fast, you won't learn much, you need a certain amount of time to be able to pick up some skills. So like what I used to do when I was working, when my work became very boring and mundane, I would just take initiatives across other teams. And then I would also look at outside the organization, I would volunteer. I remember I volunteered with one company and they were having a lot of problems. And I, you know, did a consulting assignment, completely free of cost, but just to learn. And guess what, after many years, I just was doing that for a living. And now the only thing in this would be that how will the boss react if you go and spoke to another senior manager outside in the organization? That would be the only bit you need to be careful about. So is there a moment in the lives of senior leaders where they feel that they are at the top of the game, everything is running smooth and perfect, and they need to find maybe the next race, the next track, the next game where they can challenge themselves, else they will get comfortable and might end up at the same level. So how should senior leaders think before they start finding a new role? So I think when you're doing really well in something, that's the time we should start thinking about what next, because you're already on top of your game. And then you should also think about what risks can I take in life? I think the key will always be that, can you find something which is meaningful and purposeful, but also which is challenging you to get into a territory which is out of your comfort zone. So if you're doing very well, and obviously you're in a comfort zone, at the same time, if you're at the top of your game, and you feel, hey, you've done enough, now is the time for you to move and try something different, you should definitely try that. How do you find what is the next step? I think you should take a risk, a risk that you've never ever taken before. I mean, sometimes the risks will obviously backfire, they won't go right. But then the learning is just immense. So again, I would come back to that whole thing. Can you focus it all on learning, rather than, what can I learn something new out of and move forward? And you should not just say, okay, I quit, I quit, my boss is bad, this is bad, this is bad. I should give a thought that, hey, what is it that I want? And when I will be clear in my head, I think then I can take a better decision. You see, there are moments in everyone's life where we have a bad day at work, and maybe you had a fight with your boss. And we decide that, okay, this is high time, and enough is enough. I'm no more going to the same office, same colleagues, same boss, I will quit. Can we actually react and quit? Or can we look from a different perspective, a short perspective from your side? So I think sometimes you have to be very realistic also, and practical. And now if you've had a bad day, I would say just take a break or sleep over it. Don't react that day. I mean, if you're in the heat of the moment, I see a lot of people putting in resignations in the heat of the moment, not taking time out to decide what is right for me, what is good for me. So you should give it also a little bit of time to see how it's going to pan out. Also before you move into some other, because I've also seen people taking these hasty moves, quitting their job and then falling into even a worse job. You know, that's the worst thing you could do. You know, you're already in a bad position, and then you go on to a worse position because of a hasty decision taking. So I would think that give it time. What I've seen is a lot of people who have this patience, you know, they stay in these organizations, these are those patient people who keep working through, and then everybody will quit and go away. Then they'll get promoted, you know, because the companies don't have options, right? Eventually, they have to promote somebody. Companies are beginning to see, okay, how many years did you work in an organization? In the early career, you should look at a minimum of one to two years per job. I would say one and a half would be an ideal time, at least in the early career. By mid-career, which means that you moved beyond the five, six years, you should move to around two years of an average per job. And by late career, it should be three years upward. Now, I mean, if you see somebody who's played, who's worked in 10 jobs in 10 years, I mean, no big companies want to hire that person. So I think these are some things that you should keep in mind before taking a hasty decision. For me to take effective decisions, whenever I was stuck, I used to speak to my friends, my spouse, even my parents, who did not have much idea, but still you just have a word within that, okay, what should I do? And I like that discussion went on and on and on and on without coming to a certain connection, because sometimes when you talk to the people around you, you want to hear what you want to hear from them. Okay, you will say this, leave this job, and I will leave this. You want to, but you want the other person to say that's for you. Happens. I think other important thing is sometimes people are not our real friends. They may be living out their dream of quitting. They can't quit. So they they think, hey, you quit. You go, you go. Yeah. Or it could be the fact that they are not able to understand what is right for us, which is why I think you should never take decisions by speaking to other people. So I think it's important that we follow a little bit of our own self. And if we don't know how to take decisions, then we should push ourselves into taking wrong decisions also. Because only when we take wrong decisions, we realize the repercussion of taking the wrong decision. And that's when a character gets built. I would say that you should always, always, always go ahead and take decisions and take them rationally and then face the consequences bravely and boldly. Sandeep, with respect to the culture, the person is having a lot more of aspirations that, okay, he will go there, perform, but then he witnesses a culture where there's a lot of politics. No matter you are good, but then there are some people who don't deserve to be there, but they are there because they have got some connections. The person is bound to leave, no matter how hard he tries. He may not adopt those unethical ways to just be after the boss and just stick serving him for no good reason. The person should leave. What do you say? See, I think that work cultures are all, I think they're all driven by leaders. So if the work culture is toxic, basically it means that it has got the blessing of someone and it's all flowing from the top. I think there are two things you could do. One is you ignore all of this and you keep moving forward. They say, when there are problems in life, there are three, four ways you can deal with the problem. One is that you fight with the problem. The second is you resolve the problem. The third is that you maybe compromise, you do some compromise. And the last could be that you rise above the problem. So basically it means the problems becomes much smaller than it actually is, because most of the time we make the problem much larger. So I think rising above the problem is the key here. So can I rise above the politics? And that may be that you take up a cause which is far bigger. You take up an assignment or something which is far bigger and you minimize the problem, not really, but optically. This I think so is the best way because then irrespective of where you go, you just learn how to deal with it. The other way could be that, look, you say, look, I don't want to stay in this culture which is disabling me. I want to go to a more enabling culture. But I think we just need to figure out that, okay, if this problem is going to come again, how do I deal with it? So the best way is to battle it where you're facing it. I would say that whether it's a bad boss or a bad work culture, I think all of that you should learn how to deal with it and finish it off. One more only question, Sandeep. What are the false signs that we think are the signs for us to quit the job? I think when somebody in your friend circle says, look, I have found a better job. I think that is sometimes a trigger for a lot of people. I remember it was my first job. And in that job, what happened is there were three of us, we had all joined together. And all of us were fresh graduates, engineers. Our role was we were quality guys. So they call it software tester. And each coffee break, both of my friends used to kind of crib and say, look, what a crap job you landed. We should have been software engineers. We should be doing programming, not finding errors of other people. And slowly with time, I also became like them. And the moment one of them found another job, I also quit. I think that is the trap, right? When you are quitting because somebody else is quitting. Strangely enough, when I moved, I moved into a programming job and I realized I was not a good programmer. So sometimes when we take these decisions based on what other people are saying, I think more often than not, it's wrong. The other false sign could be that you are feeling frustrated in your job. And the reason could be any. And how do you figure out a way out of that rather than running away from the problem? The other bit could be a lot of times we pick up these jobs that come our way. And I realized this after making a couple of job moves where, you know, I just picked up a job because something came to me and I got a job. So you shouldn't be taking up every job that comes your way. It may not be right for you. It's always better that you go and do your homework, understand the role, the organization, the people before you move. So, Nave, I love the insights. It was a brilliant, brilliant session. I mean, I don't know about the listeners, but I had a lot to take home this evening. Thank you so much for sparing your time and sharing those insights. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Workwise with Naukri. I hope you enjoyed listening to this episode. If you did, don't forget to subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you are listening to this. Also do share this with your friends who would benefit from this episode. I'm curious to know what you think about the right time to quit your job. You can share your perspectives on Twitter and LinkedIn and use the hashtag Workwise with Naukri. Three of the best perspectives will get a special surprise from us. So go ahead and share your perspective on your social media. And thanks again for listening to this episode. In the next episode, our host, Deepak Parikh, will bring an interesting episode on managing your difficult boss. If you've always wondered how you can better manage your manager, you wouldn't want to miss that episode, right? I'm Devad Gupta, and you're listening to Workwise with Naukri, a career podcast from Naukri.com, produced by Wine Studio.