This is a pet theory of mine and I happily acknowledge it could be wrong. A difference I noticed in how I was raised and how I think kids in USA are raised was that for me it was always ” If you do not do xyz then pqr will happen” Xyz was like drinking milk. PQR was like Gabbar will come or XYZ was studying hard and PQR was like being on the streets.
The result was that I had a strong fear of failure and a strong work ethic. In America there is a sense of optimism and self esteem with the result being a very low fear of failure and a relatively poorer work ethic.
Of course these are broad generalizations but I think I am seeing a difference in the way kids are being raised today in India which is a little more balanced.
Do people agree that fear of failure should be less ?I tend to think in an entrepreneurial society failure has to be an option. ? Is this fear decreasing in India ?
Any comments on work ethic ? My observation is that Silicon Valley startup productivity is atleast 2X what I have observed in India. True ?
This post was inspired by a visit to a school exhibition which I will cover in the next post.
- Community Platform For Ward 103 - November 22, 2012
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- The next Facebook ? - September 17, 2011
We Indians always try to bridge and thats the mistake .Let us accept the fact and march ahead with positive mindset
I think the threads make more interesting reading then my original post. I will let you all draw your own conclusions rather than commenting on the comments. Thanks to all those who took the time to read and post comments.
Hi Sanjay,
Adding to what you said – after finishing my 12th in India – I spent
my university life in Singapore – and I could see a whole lot of difference
between the way I & my friends in Singapore look at ‘work’ & ‘job’ and
the way my peers in India (more so in IT) looked( still look) at it.
– Almost all of them see ‘salary/package’ as the single most impt criteria
for job selection, as opposed to the role, work culture etc. when discussing
jobs – thats the only thing discussed amongst peers and no one is really
interested to ask or tell as to ‘what work’ they are doing. –
– Almost 90% end up working in a tech job ( mostly Infy, Wipro or TCS)
– not because they are really passionate about technology but simply
you can get them easily, or are high paying or most of them ‘ended up’
in a tech job – because max openings are in that sector.
This I found very strange as the environment to which I was exposed to gave me a lot of self-confidence as to ‘I’ can pick n choose what I want rather than
the other way around. Some of my peers were jobless or were doing adhoc
part-time work and relentlessly kept applying till they got the ‘exact role’ they
were looking for. ‘ Kind of work’ supercedes everything.
— This is true in the US too as I found when I worked with some
ppl in US — who were 40 yr old and still doing programming and are
super excellent at what they do and very proud of their work. Ppl like
these are a rarity in India — and even if there are these geniuses they
are not very highly respected by their peers.
– As a result, they are completely indifferent and ‘unattached’ to the company
they are working for – many of them have switched 4 jobs in the last 2.5-3
years. No wonder attrition rate is so high!
– Almost all of them, could not digest the idea that I ‘dared’ to start a company right after graduation and thght that it was extraordinary
or something – where as the truth of the matter is that – it was nothing out
of the ordinary from my perspective – especially because I was in the university incubation centre where we had 18 other ‘student startups’.
– It was very heartening to learn that IITs have atleast now started incubation
centres and there are companies being started by college grads.
On a much broader level I fail to understand
-why even today 50% of the ‘engineers’ who graduate, immediately do an MBA and then join a bank/PE Firm etc. Why did they do an engg in the first
place if they had to dump all their engg knowledge in first place?
– why IIMs ( & other mngmt insts in India) still admit students without
any work experience while all the good bschools of the world require
3-5 yrs of work experience.
I remember reading a commentary in Business Today (or Businessworld? don’t remember clearly) wherein that article about 7 rules of not failing; the no.1 was “Learning to Fail”.
The idea theorized by the author was to get the fear out of our minds. The author suggested taking risks at an early stage in life to achieve bigger objectives. On a lighter side note, the author suggested a cheap trick to get this done (applicable for single entrepreneurs only!) by sending a proposal to a girl with 99% probability to fail (imagine, you are the nerd applying for a relationship with the best looking girl in the college/school/class/whatever :P))
The idea is to keep taking risks and get in the habit of managing and learning from failures.
The over analysis of a techie mind and a good grasp on the validity of a solution makes it look small at times. Couple it with the “what if” scenario, and overall this makes us take a back seat.
What are the “real” ideas to over come the fear of failure?
In india (I am talking about top metros), the environmental factors are not conducive for startups added by poor infrastructure, salary/productivity ratio (esp. IT, there are no H1Bs in India) and mentality. you need to be a great warrior to win all the battles you face alone or with partners.