'If you pay peanuts, you will get monkeys,' goes an adage. These days with a shortage of good talent in the job market, the saying doesn't really hold true. Companies are willing to offer good salaries to the right candidates.
But even after this there are things that individuals should keep in mind while negotiating their salaries. What may look like an increase in salary may not lead to a real increase.
This is primarily because these days most companies quote annual salary packages they offer to their employees in terms of what is known as 'cost to company,' or CTC.
Cost to company is a term which essentially implies the amount of expenses the company will spend on an employee in a particular year. What may be an expense for the company need not be salary for the employee.
Hence very rarely does it happen
that the CTC divided by the number of months in a year, i.e. twelve, comes down to the actual monthly salary that an individual receives.
Let's look at the various ways in which companies boost the CTC packages they offer to their employees.
a) Useless allowances: These days individuals get various kinds of allowances. The reason offered is that this brings down the taxable component of the salary. Fair enough. But at times some allowances are subject to producing bills.
Let's take the case of mobile allowance that companies offer. An individual has a mobile allowance of Rs 3,000 per month. He will get that money only if he runs up a bill of Rs 3,000 during the month. Now if the individual does not really use this to the hilt, and usually gets a bill of around Rs 1,200 a month, then he faces a clear loss of Rs 1,800 in a month. This amounts to a loss of Rs 21,600 during a year.
So while negotiating the CTC packages
individuals should beware that companies are not stuffing up the CTC with such allowances, which he or she may never be able to claim.
b) Food coupons: Food coupons are the rage these days with companies. The primary reason is that this helps bring down the taxable component of the salary. Food coupons, up to a maximum of Rs 60,000 in a year, are non-taxable.
But having this as a part of the salary may or may not suit everybody. If you are single and don't cook at home, then there is hardly any way that you are going to use them.
Some companies offer subsidised food to their employees. This subsidy is also at times added to the CTC salary. By doing this the subsidy does not remain a subsidy, the employee is actually paying for it.
c) Interest subsidy: This trick is a favourite with private sector banks recruiting fresh candidates. Let's see how this works.
The bank may promise a candidate a maximum
loan of Rs 10 lakh (Rs 1 million) to a candidate during a year at a favourable rate of 3% per annum. The interest subsidy the candidate receives is directly added onto the CTC package.
What this means is that if an individual after joining the bank were to take a loan from the bank of Rs 10 lakh, he would pay an interest of Rs 30,000 (3% of Rs 10 lakh) in the first year. If he had taken the same loan at a market rate of, let us say, 12%, then he would have paid an interest of Rs 120,000 during the first year.
The difference between the two interests amounts to Rs 90,000 (Rs 120,000 - Rs 30,000). This is known as the interest subsidy and added to the CTC package. The issue that arises here is that an individual may not want to take the loan of Rs 10 lakh. Or he might take a part loan. And even if he does take the entire loan, with the interest subsidy being added to the CTC, he is paying a market rate of interest.
d) Variable
salary: These days companies also offer a variable component in the salary subject to the candidate reaching certain set goals during the course of the year. Usually the maximum possible variable salary that an employee can get in a year is added onto the CTC.
Achieving this may or may not be possible. Currently this may not matter much because the Indian economy is doing well and individuals may be able to achieve their high targets.
e) Gratuity: At times even gratuity gets added onto the salary. Now this is a payment that an employee gets only if he quits after having spent at least five years in an organisation. Going by the rate at which individuals change jobs these days, it's been a long time since one heard anyone getting a gratuity.
f) High leave travel allowance (LTA): This is another standard trick that organisations use. The leave travel allowance usually is paid to an employee with the salary of the last
month of a financial year. So this financial year's leave travel allowance will be paid along with the salary of the month of March 2008, nearly 10 months from now.
Even though an individual gets the amount in the end, he will lose interest on that amount had he chosen to invest it, if he got the amount month on month.
For a company this makes utmost sense, because they don't have make a payment month on month and can earn an income from investing that amount.
WYSIWYG (pronounced Wizwig) is an acronym commonly associated with computers and stands for 'What you see is what you get.' Now that is certainly not true of CTC salaries.
The simplest way for individuals while negotiating salaries is to clearly ask what the take home salary at the end of the month is going to be.
Saturday, July 7, 2007
When dreams come true
When dreams come true
Dreams come true.
That is an attribute of dreams.
It is a fact that if there is a fire burning brightly inside,
it will draw all the support required to make that dream come true.
If you then plan right and work as per plan,
dreams come true even faster.
In the last few days I have received a number
of letters from young people who have done
well in their twelfth standard exams and hope
to join a professional course;
some who are fresh graduates who have landed dream jobs,
whether with IT companies or as fine art teacher
in a public school.
Whatever the content,
the mood is always one of exhilaration.
It made me smile, reading the letters.
And then I wondered:
Are the young prepared
for the work of stoking and nurturing
of the fire that burns brightly today?
Are they aware of the temptations that can take them
so far from their dreams that they do not remember
what set them on that course in the first place?
Do our classes in history prepare them?
Do our sessions in 'value education' prepare them?
Do our discussions in literature prepare them?
History is the only subject taught that is relevant to life.
Yet, it is taught so badly and made so removed from
their lives that students wonder why it is taught at all.
I am reminded of a song in Hindi, translated reads,
"Porus fought Alexander, so pray,
what has that to do with me?"
We can use history to understand how life works.
Dreams are really values.
To dream of joining the medical or the teaching profession,
at any rank,
is to state that you want to serve.
To dream of being an engineer is to state that
you want to make living easy; to dream of using
computers is to find ways to take away the drudge
so that more time is spent in creative processes.
For each profession, for each walk of life,
we can make a similar statement.
Making the statement is simple;
living by it is more difficult.
The challenge is not in securing a medical seat;
the challenge is in being a caring doctor.
Contrast this with Balgangadhar Tilak.
He founded a school because he believed that
education was [and is] the answer to India's ills.
Many years later the teachers in his school wanted
a raise in pay.
Tilak offered fifty rupees a month,
a princely sum in those days.
The teachers wanted seventy; their argument was that it
would lend them a status. After many rounds of discussions
Tilak agreed to pay the sum and he made the arrangements for it.
Then he resigned from his own school.
And for that we can thank God,
or his attention shifted to India as a country.
He equated education and freedom
— for him one did not exist without the other.
So in solitary confinement in a jail in the then Burma,
he wrote the Gitarahasya. It was a book that inspired
the Marathas to work towards an independent India.
He returned from Burma to be called 'Lokmanya'
not just the Marathas but by all Indians.
He took the concept of education to a new plane;
that was his life statement.
Everyone knows the story of Ashoka.
When he was most victorious,
life offered a road less taken and he chose to follow that path.
The latter part of his life was his new 'avatar'.
(Today the word avatar has such a vulgar connotation.
It is used in conjunction with Britney Spears — OMG.
Our youth are taught by gossip columns that
coming into a new life consists of changing the
hairstyle or the husband.) Ashoka perhaps paced
the war tent all night weighing his life as it was;
perhaps he saw only mindless repetition of patterns.
They did not appeal to him anymore.
He decided to turn right around and he did.
Life was new again.
He is really Ashoka the great because
he saw the chance that life was offering and took it.
Very rarely do people recognise the chances that are offered by life.
How often we read about the stand a person takes.
Refusing knighthood because he was
aghast by an event — that is what made Tagore.
To willingly and firmly refuse recognition and
fame is possible only when life statement is clear to oneself.
Dignity and divinity of man were Tagore's guiding words.
When he stood by his life statement,
Life took him on.
From being the poet Rabindranath
he went on to become Gurudev.
Long ago, after the first heart transplant,
Dr Christian Barnard was touring India.
He was interviewed on the DoorDarshan.
He was praised for his pioneering work.
It would have been so simple to soak in all those praises.
But his profession was to care for people and
Dr Bernard took caring to new heights when he
genuinely and gently acknowledged the support
and work of his team; care here was for the
mental and emotional well being of his team.
We need to teach history as value education
at its most complex and simple form.
Each of the actions cited above would
have been construed as a wrong move by the world at large.
But the results were contrary.
If only we could teach children such secrets as a science of life!
To come back to the point, dreams are values.
The source of the dream may be an experience,
a book, an event or a role model. It runs its course.
The first is to qualify and then work in the field.
The end is to pass on the knowledge and experience
to the next generation so that they start where you leave off.
--
Dreams come true.
That is an attribute of dreams.
It is a fact that if there is a fire burning brightly inside,
it will draw all the support required to make that dream come true.
If you then plan right and work as per plan,
dreams come true even faster.
In the last few days I have received a number
of letters from young people who have done
well in their twelfth standard exams and hope
to join a professional course;
some who are fresh graduates who have landed dream jobs,
whether with IT companies or as fine art teacher
in a public school.
Whatever the content,
the mood is always one of exhilaration.
It made me smile, reading the letters.
And then I wondered:
Are the young prepared
for the work of stoking and nurturing
of the fire that burns brightly today?
Are they aware of the temptations that can take them
so far from their dreams that they do not remember
what set them on that course in the first place?
Do our classes in history prepare them?
Do our sessions in 'value education' prepare them?
Do our discussions in literature prepare them?
History is the only subject taught that is relevant to life.
Yet, it is taught so badly and made so removed from
their lives that students wonder why it is taught at all.
I am reminded of a song in Hindi, translated reads,
"Porus fought Alexander, so pray,
what has that to do with me?"
We can use history to understand how life works.
Dreams are really values.
To dream of joining the medical or the teaching profession,
at any rank,
is to state that you want to serve.
To dream of being an engineer is to state that
you want to make living easy; to dream of using
computers is to find ways to take away the drudge
so that more time is spent in creative processes.
For each profession, for each walk of life,
we can make a similar statement.
Making the statement is simple;
living by it is more difficult.
The challenge is not in securing a medical seat;
the challenge is in being a caring doctor.
Contrast this with Balgangadhar Tilak.
He founded a school because he believed that
education was [and is] the answer to India's ills.
Many years later the teachers in his school wanted
a raise in pay.
Tilak offered fifty rupees a month,
a princely sum in those days.
The teachers wanted seventy; their argument was that it
would lend them a status. After many rounds of discussions
Tilak agreed to pay the sum and he made the arrangements for it.
Then he resigned from his own school.
And for that we can thank God,
or his attention shifted to India as a country.
He equated education and freedom
— for him one did not exist without the other.
So in solitary confinement in a jail in the then Burma,
he wrote the Gitarahasya. It was a book that inspired
the Marathas to work towards an independent India.
He returned from Burma to be called 'Lokmanya'
not just the Marathas but by all Indians.
He took the concept of education to a new plane;
that was his life statement.
Everyone knows the story of Ashoka.
When he was most victorious,
life offered a road less taken and he chose to follow that path.
The latter part of his life was his new 'avatar'.
(Today the word avatar has such a vulgar connotation.
It is used in conjunction with Britney Spears — OMG.
Our youth are taught by gossip columns that
coming into a new life consists of changing the
hairstyle or the husband.) Ashoka perhaps paced
the war tent all night weighing his life as it was;
perhaps he saw only mindless repetition of patterns.
They did not appeal to him anymore.
He decided to turn right around and he did.
Life was new again.
He is really Ashoka the great because
he saw the chance that life was offering and took it.
Very rarely do people recognise the chances that are offered by life.
How often we read about the stand a person takes.
Refusing knighthood because he was
aghast by an event — that is what made Tagore.
To willingly and firmly refuse recognition and
fame is possible only when life statement is clear to oneself.
Dignity and divinity of man were Tagore's guiding words.
When he stood by his life statement,
Life took him on.
From being the poet Rabindranath
he went on to become Gurudev.
Long ago, after the first heart transplant,
Dr Christian Barnard was touring India.
He was interviewed on the DoorDarshan.
He was praised for his pioneering work.
It would have been so simple to soak in all those praises.
But his profession was to care for people and
Dr Bernard took caring to new heights when he
genuinely and gently acknowledged the support
and work of his team; care here was for the
mental and emotional well being of his team.
We need to teach history as value education
at its most complex and simple form.
Each of the actions cited above would
have been construed as a wrong move by the world at large.
But the results were contrary.
If only we could teach children such secrets as a science of life!
To come back to the point, dreams are values.
The source of the dream may be an experience,
a book, an event or a role model. It runs its course.
The first is to qualify and then work in the field.
The end is to pass on the knowledge and experience
to the next generation so that they start where you leave off.
--
Waiting for my dream...
Waiting for my dream...
Your sparkling eyes light all my dreams
Your smile & laughter jingle in my ears
Taking my finger you step by my side
You fall & cry loud ; I cuddle you so tight
Leaning on my face you look into my eyes
And watch your cute image in it
Your pearlwhite teeth shine like silver stars
Smooth palms I feel on my cheeks
Lying in my lap you listen to my tales
A tale of a brave little prince
With enlarged eyes & your tiny mouth open
How suprised my sweet little prince
Sun dawns everyday & the time flies on
And I know that your day will come soon
I'm waiting for you;My precious most dream
I will love you more than my life
Rohan Aneja
Your sparkling eyes light all my dreams
Your smile & laughter jingle in my ears
Taking my finger you step by my side
You fall & cry loud ; I cuddle you so tight
Leaning on my face you look into my eyes
And watch your cute image in it
Your pearlwhite teeth shine like silver stars
Smooth palms I feel on my cheeks
Lying in my lap you listen to my tales
A tale of a brave little prince
With enlarged eyes & your tiny mouth open
How suprised my sweet little prince
Sun dawns everyday & the time flies on
And I know that your day will come soon
I'm waiting for you;My precious most dream
I will love you more than my life
Rohan Aneja
DICTIONARY FOR Men And Women
DICTIONARY FOR
MEN/WOMEN
What MEN / WOMEN Says and What their actual Meanings.
WOMEN WORDS
1. Yes = No
2. No = Yes
3. Maybe = No
4. We need = I want
5. I am sorry = you'll be sorry
6. We need to talk = you're in trouble
7. Fine, go ahead = you better not
8. Do what you want = you will pay for this later
9. I am not upset = of course I am upset, you idiot!
10. You're very attentive tonight = is s@x all you ever think about?
*********
MEN WORDS
1. I am hungry = I am hungry
2. I am sleepy = I am sleepy
3. I am tired = I am tired
4. Nice dress = Nice cleavage!
5. I love you = let's have s@x now
6. I am bored = Do you want to have s@x?
7. May I have this dance? = I'd like to have s@x with you
8. Can I call you sometime? = I'd like to have s@x with you
9. Do you want to go to a movie? = I'd like to have s@x with you
10. Can I take you out to dinner? = I'd like to have s@x with you
___________________
MEN/WOMEN
What MEN / WOMEN Says and What their actual Meanings.
WOMEN WORDS
1. Yes = No
2. No = Yes
3. Maybe = No
4. We need = I want
5. I am sorry = you'll be sorry
6. We need to talk = you're in trouble
7. Fine, go ahead = you better not
8. Do what you want = you will pay for this later
9. I am not upset = of course I am upset, you idiot!
10. You're very attentive tonight = is s@x all you ever think about?
*********
MEN WORDS
1. I am hungry = I am hungry
2. I am sleepy = I am sleepy
3. I am tired = I am tired
4. Nice dress = Nice cleavage!
5. I love you = let's have s@x now
6. I am bored = Do you want to have s@x?
7. May I have this dance? = I'd like to have s@x with you
8. Can I call you sometime? = I'd like to have s@x with you
9. Do you want to go to a movie? = I'd like to have s@x with you
10. Can I take you out to dinner? = I'd like to have s@x with you
___________________
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