Don't get sentimental

S. Subramanian, New Delhi

Dear Sir,

The article, ''Passing the buck'' by N. Nagaraj in eWorld dated October 17 was most thought-provoking.

I do not work for an IT company. I am with a steel company headquartered in London (formerly called British Steel but now christened Corus). As global integration deepens and makes the world a global village (it looks as though it will really become a village with a few rich people and a large mass toiling to make these rich people richer), money will flow to the most efficient markets and most profitable products.

As a corollary, the investors (and acting on their behalf, the CEOs) will move in and move out of industries, depending on the profitability.

As days go by, the CEOs' responsibility seems to be only to increase the net worth of the investors and things like employee loyalty (which cannot be straight away translated into money) do not matter.

So employees will be like labourers working on construction sites - move on to another site if there is one or stay in a shandy dwelling until the next job.

Such a move is evident if you see the terms of employment of American organisations. They pay a good salary - period. They do not want a long-term relationship with the employees by providing loans etc.

So as employees, we should learn not to be sentimental (we built this organisation with our sweat and blood - nonsense!) and try to maximise our monetary worth at every opportunity.

We are going to face a lot of hardship in generating ''secure'' jobs - this is a big price we have to pay for globalisation.

Please e-mail us at eworld@thehindu.co.in if you have queries on computer usage or if you find an interesting way of using the computer.