5 Myths about 1st JOB!

The day I received my 1st employment letter was a very proud moment for me and my family. Im not trying to be negative but I really feel that 1st job is overhyped pretty mush like most of the 1st's in a person's life.

To list down the 5 most common bubbles around the 1st job that eventually burst with time let me start with the most common one:

Bubble No 1: Monthly Salary = CTC/12 

This very common myth gets cleared for some lucky souls early;whose elders have warned them or who know the existence of HRA/PF/TDS etc. For other regular IQ chaps like me the shock comes on the 30th of the month (salary credit day) and then we go rushing to Finance dept (Cant disclose salary to colleagues) who give us some jargon but we eventually come to accept the existence and importance of the word "Cash in Hand".

Bubble No 2: Wardrobe Revamping (Flawless Formals : I'm a professional now)

A lot of english series/sitcoms are responsible for this bubble. Stunning smart men in impeccable suits and women looking fabulous in white shirt and grey pleated skirt. This is reality for only top 5% white collar job holders placed in MNC's, for the rest of us the tropical heat & perverts inside and outside the company, limits the wardrobe for men to basic Shirt & trousers and women to Salwaar suit.

Bubble No 3: Expense Planning 

Personal expenses + Money sent home + Girlfriend/BF gift budget + Savings = Monthly Salary

This equation is just not correct. There will be unforeseen expences like extra booze/cigs or a simple "This is my money I can spend it the way I like" reasoning. Hence the personal expense variable just keeps bloating up. As monthly salary is fixed "Savings" is the variable that diminishes and in most cases gets kicked out of the equation by other superior variables. 

Bubble No 4: I have a great job and I love it

Its plain luck or out of this world hard work & determination for bubble no 4 to be a reality. Most of us are blinded by the independence and most important Money associated with the 1st job that profile/company or work culture take a back seat. This bubble does not burst suddenly it takes years to wear off and in some cases people spend an entire lifetime in it.

Bubble No 5: Corporate Bubble

The 5th bubble is an omnipresent corporate bubble that all of us are a part of. The lust for money and achievement, the drive to thrive among colleagues , the innate sense of power over reporting employees starts defining us as an individual and in turn thickens the layer of this bubble. There is no way out of this bubble, its a part of society, but we can ensure our bubble is thin and transparent enough for us to enjoy the other important things like family, friends, and ourselves.

Facebook Scorecard

Consider Facebook to be a school which grades all its pupils in a big relative grading system called "SOCIAL STANDING". There are marks assigned for everything from attendance to time spent in school (On Facebook). Like most schools it gives its pupils a constant chance to work hard towards improving their social standing. Though it does favour the best and the brightest of the lot as according to the grading system the more you score the more chance you will get to shine on others walls to score further. (PS: Score refers to scoring points)

Likes:
Likes on pics and posts are basic points which keep getting added to your report. This is also the most common base of comparison between students to do a self evaluation of their social standing

Comments:
Comments go a level higher and work as point boosters, can range from +5pts to +100pts depending upon the social standing of the person who commented (Somebody actually took out time to type all that, even though they might have just copy pasted and tweaked a previous comment). Considering average attention span of individuals when online is just 2secs unless its porn, comments are considered to be high value by both the users and Facebook.

Share:
Share is a Multiplier. Every time somebody shares your content all the basic points that you accumulated via likes and comments gets multiplied by the no of pupils who shared your post.

Friends:
The total no of friends on Facebook for an individual can in some cases be more than the no of people the individual has actually physically interacted with in his entire lifespan. Its just a way to get more points. Adding people who you don't know is cheating for getting a higher social standing but Facebook promotes it by showing you common friends (In some cases you might not even remember the common friends but still add them because 5 common friends means you might just know them)

Messeges:
That has no relevance in the score card its a means for FB to ensure students don't shift to other schools of social standing like Google+ with its enticing Gmail and Gchat masters programmes.

Facebook's Social standing calculator is a much more complex algorithm whose components i have tried to explain in this post. Watch this space for more such tit bits on the different schools of social standing.