Agar IIT Se Hote Toh Sochte

Multiple small companies come into existence every year — conveniently registered as MSME (Micro, Small, Medium Enterprise). These companies mostly operate within their registered state, often limited to a single office looking after regional projects. Expansion is rarely on the cards unless the Kabeer Mudeer (owner) decides to move to a different location or open a new one — and even then, it's seldom based on clear opportunity, goals, or business targets.

Some of these smaller companies — not all, but many — carry a limited mindset, and aren't always professional in how they deal with customers or employees. There are no SOPs, no protocols to run the business. Every decision, big or small, ultimately lands with the Kabeer Mudeer — even when the company employs genuinely experienced staff who could handle it themselves.

This demoralizes middle-level managers over time. Slowly, they start doing things to please the owner rather than what's actually in the company's best interest. In this kind of setup, above-average talent tends to leave once they've gained real experience — usually within a 2-3 year span. The ones who stay long-term are mostly either complacent, or simply live nearby. Their reason for staying is personal, not professional — passing time, sailing through a phase of life without much worry.

That's not the case with newly graduated young talent.

When a sharp, intelligent young candidate joins a company like this, friction is almost guaranteed. He's expected to follow the existing system, not create "ruckus" by introducing new things. Even when his idea has genuine merit — maybe naive, maybe needs polishing, but effective nonetheless — the reporting manager and older employees, comfortable in the existing way of doing things, don't straightforwardly reject it. Instead, they bury it: unnecessary work, new reporting sheets that were never there before, endless questioning — all pushed toward the recruit, with the sole intent of keeping him engaged in the old system. This kills the bright idea before it ever gets a real shot.

There's an unspoken expectation that a new resource should add to the existing system — never simply be absorbed into it without contributing anything. Everything now depends on the recruit's own grit: surrender and learn the existing way (and there genuinely is a lot to learn), or leave.

This is the real dilemma a new recruit faces in a small company — heavy resistance from peers and superiors alike, with little power to change the dynamics of the organization on his own.

अब रहीम मुश्किल पड़ी, गाढ़े दोऊ काम।
साँचे से तो जग नहीं, झूठे मिलैं न राम॥

Now Rahim, I'm caught in a hard spot — both paths are difficult. Stay truthful, and the world turns away; turn false, and God won't be found.

Choose honesty, and you lose favor with the world. Choose deceit, and you lose your own connection to what matters. There's no clean way out.

It's also common for issues to never get escalated to the key people in the company — which, sometimes, quietly turns into a blunder later. There are no weekly project reviews. Sales and project profitability aren't even discussed quarterly. The one conversation that reliably gets everyone's attention is the yearly increment, starting every January.

Despite all this, some recruits — with firm determination and good mentoring — keep working with the same enthusiasm, putting in full effort despite the lack of recognition and the constant picking from others. During this period, they do the job two ways: one as per the existing system, and another on the side — testing out better alternatives. The intention isn't rebellion. It's to sharpen their own skills, gain real experience, and quietly do the R&D the company itself never will.

What isn't valued here may go on to matter elsewhere — in a business that actually runs professionally. Recruits who master their craft often leave within 3 years, sometimes sooner, in search of exactly that kind of place. I've seen colleagues using far more organized planning tools — MS Project, VBA-based systems — for their own check and reviews, while their company still runs everything on basic Excel sheets. One employee tracks sales on a CRM entirely on their own initiative; the company itself remains content with plain email records.

Why do meticulous, capable people end up in a place like this to begin with? Often, it comes down to the tier of college they graduated from, or the percentage they scored in school. Reporting managers tell their own bright subordinates things like "Agar IIT se Engineering kiya hota toh hum sochte on your point of view," or "Abhi Delhi dur hai" — dismissing them outright, just to keep them in their place.

One shouldn't get disheartened by that kind of pedigree-shaming and constant discouragement — it's better to develop a thick skin to it. The start may look like a struggle, but the right effort, made consistently, tends to hold up over time. The ones who keep pushing, rather than walking away midway, are usually the ones who eventually reach the other shore.

Over the years, what should matter most is the actual work — its profile, its quality. Given enough time and experience, that's the part that changes everything.