After a hardwork and serious studies of 4 years, my friends and I got our Economics degrees from the University of Karachi. Before jumping into the job market we were all afraid of our future because we had heard stories that in Pakistan, good jobs are only landed by using bribery, influence (sifarish) or other unfair means.
On the contrary, soon enough, most of my University buddies landed themselves good jobs in banking sector which paid them handsomely with attractive perks and all on merit. So it came as a blessing and good surprise that most of us got decent jobs without any unethical means.
At present, most of my friends qualify as part of the burgeoning middle-class, which has been progressing decently by earning good money. They live in comfortable houses, their kids go to good schools, they travel in cars leased from the loans from their banks and they eat fast food. To sum it all up they have the status and the lifestyles that remains a dream of millions of other Pakistanis.
Life is imperfect though. My friends also have their share of problems which is affecting their lives in one way or the other. In most cases, these problem occur due to creeping work hours. In the begining they look harmless and go unnoticed, because they are accepted as a norm of corporate life in Pakistan. But slowly but surely cracks began to appear in the fabric of family life. Earning men and women in Pakistan now find themselves spending more and more time in office and less and less time with thier spouses and children.
Some say it is the norm of corporate culture; Some say it is the way their bosses want them to live their office-lives and some say it is nothing but the way things work in a salaried society. But I want to call it exploitation. Exploitation of making employees sit late in the offices to work like a bullock in fields. The work hours now go well after their scheduled 9-5 timing.
Sitting late in the office is making people perpetually tired and irritated. Wives are getting enormous burden of caring for the whole family without due support from their husbands. It is disturbing the balance at home and can lead to lot more severe repercussions. More and more, wives alone are helping children to do well in studies in stiffer competitions at schools; they do shopping for the whole family including their hubbies alone; they drive cars to pay utility bills and look for plumbers, electricians and what they get at the end of the day? A sleepy and tired husband irked after long and tiring day at job which usually spans around 12-15 hours.
I have come across several people in private companies who work untill midnight just because their companies look to get bulk of work done with the lean work force. In some offices, bosses like to sit late in the offices just to show how efficient and effective they. This puts extra pressure on the staff who also tend to stay late and don’t want to appear as those who dare to leave before the boss.
My brother works in a renowned Pharmaceutical Company where work hours stretch to days. My family has seen him spending nights in the offices sleeping on the office desks because they have to finish a project no matter how and no matter what. Recently, I heard from my brother that one of his colleagues quit the job because his parents, and especially his sick mother couldn’t bear his late sittings after what happened with peace and law in recent months in our country.
Money is important. There is no argument against it. But one should not get so blindedsighted in the greed of it that we fail to understand that money is good only when we can have time to spend and enjoy it.
As increased numbers of heart diseases and heart attacks in Pakistani males has something to do with the kind of culture that prevails at our workplaces. Enormous pressures of getting the most out of our jobs to give better futures to our children are making men and women of Pakistan, money-making machines. Our marriages are also getting disturbed by this trend because wives think of themselves as maids who were brought from their parents houses to tender to husband and his family single-handedly. Children are also getting used to the fact that they have only one person to tell each and everything and that is their mothers because their fathers are always in the office.
We need to understand this and stop this exploitation at the hands of our organizations because we are their employees not their slaves.
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ATP post on Similar topic: Job Security in Corporate Pakistan
@Anwar, I am not sure where do you work but there is no such exploitation in US. I was in Karachi, last month after 5 years and I saw the same situation every where told by an author of this post. Most of my friends were making 80-130K in corporates but they had pretty long hours. One of my friend who works for Allied Bank Investment services could not come home before 9 pm any day and I was thinking what is the use of such money when you do not have time for your self. I have worked for few top IT companies in US and we do not have to put many long hours , if we work honestly 8 hours a day then it is enough for us to get out tasks done completely. Yeah there are some days or even some week ends where we have to work long but that is not a norm and week ends are always compensated by our managers for extra off days. If I stay beyond 7pm at work any day then I am eligible for free dinner at company expense.I have also seen that these top companies always hire 10 persons where there is a need of 8 persons (if those 8 stretch) because they do not want dependency on any one and if any one from team leaves company then the tasks are not held back due to lack of personnels(think that 2 extra person salaries as an insurance for timely completion) . Most companies in US force their employees to use the vacations, they have a policy of “use it or waste it”. In Pakistan no one generally utilizes his PTO because he has so much work load that he simply can’t take off and there is a peer pressure on every one not to take any days off because no one else is taking. Ah, so much for hard work.
Young man – you are complaining of hard work – you ain’t seen nothing!
This is norm for us in the US academia and luckily living away from our babysitters. Our wives have also taken the burden of raising kids, grocery shopping, balancing books and so on without complaining. And for all the traveling and late hours in the labs and offices, kids are doing well and family life is fine because whatever “little” time we have together is a quality time.
Not to mention my medical professional friends – they work even harder and under a lot more pressure.
By the way, heart problems have nothing to do with hard work – it is bad food choices and poor eating habits!
There is a price to be paid for professional satisfaction, or moving forward and upward – call it sacrifice if you want to extrapolate to national level – Jinnah used to work relentlessly and so I hear all great leaders.
looks like you are still nesting – find a niche for yourself and be proud of what you do – earn a good living rather than easy one – as the old saying goes “better wear out than to rust away.” Good luck.
Whining, Cribbing & Complains galore.
I am rather perturbed to hear so much complain from the younger segment of corporate culture. Complaining of late hours at at your age is disconcerting, rather unprofessional and spells nothing short of disasater for the next generation of Corp Exec who will be running the shows at major Banks, Fin Inst, Pharma, Textile, Service industry etc etc across teh country as hopefully provide world class manpower, talent and skills for the global markets.
Married or not, kids or no kids, domestic problems, personal issues etc – just remember they all stop short of your office and should not have any affect on your performance. Do remember that the show must not stop and that we all are dispensable at the end of the day including teh top paying CEOs and Presidents of giant corps.
This is your age to learn, to absorb and to crave for any opportunity that comes your way instead of counting the hours on your watch.
If we need to be anywhere near India (forget rest of the world) we need to do soem serious thinking and work on our lackluster presence in the global comity of corporate culture.
The mad drive for instant riches, better jobs, promotiosn, bonuses without putting in your due share is becoming an acceptable practice and sadly so these louts do not see any issue or shame in it.
Interestinglly enough Pakistanis do well on above counts when they work outside Pakistan as they see and realize that it is a norm and that they are no exception.
Grow Up
This used to be pretty common in the software industry too but I was working for a company who besides being one of the best in Pakistan finally realized that if they dont shoo off their employees at 6pm, they wont get good results.
culturally speaking, we desis like to chit chat our way to work and thus we have to spent overtime. Simply be rude, dont participate in conversations and leave ur desk at 5pm!
But…..but….unbridled capitalism, maximum profits at minimum cost, and no rights for workers are a GOOD thing!
We know, because the Americans said so!
Corporate growth is the only thing that matters on the whole planet! So long as corporations are getting bigger and amassing more billions everybody will be happy–absolutely everybody! You just haven’t waited long enough. Sleeping on your desk is a small price to pay for living in an Americanized world. So now it sounds like Pakistani middle class wives are living like their sisters in the American suburbs, so cutely parodied in the show “Desperate Housewives”. This, too, is nothing to worry about!
Didn’t you get the memo?
A meeting to discuss this Commie trend of ingratitude towards your company masters will be held at 11:45 p.m. Be there.
*sigh* posts like this are so discouraging. For what do American congressmen and Texan millionaire socialite/businesswomen meddle in Pakistani politics for, if not to make the world safe for… for…well, for their own cash flow?
And then people still gripe. Sheeesh.