Just when you think you've begun to wrap your head around your qualms and have it all figured out, life shows you that you still have a ways to go. Assimilating no amount of knowhow is enough; there is always something which can still surprise or bother you! Nearly half a calendar year detached from having left Flipkart and beginning a career at IOCL, I seem to have more questions than answers...
The differences in the working philosophy of a public and a private sector are not just huge but insanely immense. It can't just be termed as a clichéd different ball game as it's the same as comparing something like cricket with boxing with no correlation whatsoever. The first thing that hits you right off the bat is the goal differentia; while privates are largely lucre oriented, PSUs are mostly all about responsibility to the masses, though profit does become a factor when it boils down to long term survival. This contributes to fuss-free working of privates where you can easily push your brain-child through if worthwhile; for example, drone inspection is carried out annually at Reliance but all such initiatives taken in IOCL thus far have failed simply due to the difficulty in obtaining security clearances!
Another glaring difference is the way new entrants into the firm are trained (or rather not trained). In a private org, it is solely up to the individual to get himself up to speed as one is handed direct responsibility to play a major hand in revenue generation of the firm from day one itself. It is very simple; if you deliver you are handsomely rewarded or else you get laid off. On the other hand, in a PSU, getting fired is as far from the rule books as anything can be. So the company shoulders a major chunk of the responsibility for getting the newbies trained.
One of the most important things in the private world is a practical approach meeting deadlines and being accountable for your own actions, while the public sector adopts a more theoretical approach where trainees are quizzed and tested day after day, month after month, although I do acknowledge its need in IOCL to some extent as human lives are at stake and margin for error is close to nil. The latter also incorporates quite a bit of unnecessary formalities like multiple daily meetings where the focus is to have an elaborate chit-chat session with snacks rather than a quick work briefing; periodic external audits too point out jobs that can be reviewed and acted upon internally itself. In privates, your deadline might force you to work after-hours thereby exploiting you to the fullest, while in PSUs you might need to stay back once in a while sometimes even without any real work, fruitlessly sacrificing life outside of your office, as an eyewash to portray the illusion of hard work, trying to elevate your image in your bosses' thankless eyes, call it either strategy or an extra time for fawning.
Few aspects may be common to both the public and private sectors viz. favouritism and politics, though more prevalent in the former many a times taking the shape of communal lobbying. Truth be told, people working in the private world hardly have the time to engage in such nonsensical bulls**t, not to mention that their days in a particular firm are usually numbered, which serves as an added incentive to focus on self rather than surroundings. Also, while delegation of work is quite uniform and very objective in the latter, it's totally subjective in the former, where few may get both the work and the limelight. Although this might be of little to no consequence as performance is not the only factor guiding growth in the public sector and getting you in the top 25% of that silly bell curve, that distinguishes between individuals who make equal contributions and someone ends up as the sacrificial lamb.
On a personal note, as I've had the opportunity of working in each of these starkly varied worlds, I'm still trying to find an optimum middle ground between certain avenues. For example, the one thing that I loved in Flipkart was the feeling of doing something new every single day no matter how small, but too much of that increases pressure and plays havoc with long term planning. My day-to-day work at IOCL although relatively routine and boring, provides me with an opportunity to refine my technical knowledge, not to mention giving me a daily natural workout too... haha... It lays down a clear itinerary of what is to be done to achieve success in the long run, whether in IOCL or elsewhere. PSUs, if nothing else, are a good place to learn and achieve expertise in your field of work. So I guess I'll just focus on self-development and profile building until the next best opportunity comes along!
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