The Rs. 1 Crore Salary

Recently, there was a news item that proclaimed, “IIM A grads turn down Rs. 1 crore offer to start own business”

My eyes popped out (like they show in the cartoons). I mean, they should have some guts and absolute belief in their ideas to turn down an offer like that. Kudos to them! India needs more entrepreneurs, who can take this country forward. (Till this point in the post, I’m NOT being sarcastic).

Now, moving on, I have an interesting proposition for the Company which offered them the fat dollar salary…

Why not take 3 people from a lesser reputed Institute for Rs. 1 crore? I mean, I would be more than willing to work for Rs. 33.33333 lakhs a year, and I’m damn sure that I can convince 2 more friends of mine to do the same. And, we are also MBAs, though we are not ‘branded for life’. We learnt the same courses, maybe not from such illustrious Profs, but our Profs are not too far behind. We cracked the same CAT, with a percentile or two lesser. We worked the same 20 hour schedules in our b-schools, and read the same HBR cases. In short, I’m pretty darned sure that three of us combined can take on a single IIM-A grad any day (in fact, my friends might say, we can take them one-on-one, but this is not a post on Insti bashing, or glorifying our own).

So, the company takes three of us, and pays us 1 crore in all. We share it among ourselves, and the company need not bother mediating on that behalf. We will do work equivalent to three people. (As it is, the companies nowadays believe in “Take one, Pay double and extract thrice the work”). So, the company gets the work of three people done for the price of one.

Why should we sell ourselves cheaper? B’coz, when three people work on one job, it essentially means that I have to be in office only 2 days out a working week of 6 days. So, I go Mon-Tue, my friend goes Wed-Thu, and the third one goes Fri-Sat. and so, we keep rotating. If the work load is larger, two of us will come instead of one. Man, to earn 33 lakhs by working 2 days in a week. I’m sure many of friends would say YES to that.

In fact, in extreme conditions, we will also work shifts. Each of us works 10 hours a day, and the company gets 30 hours of work done in a 24-hr day. I mean, I would gladly work for 8-10 hours a day, and take only one day off, for 33 lakhs. Much better than working twice as long (16 hour work days are the norm) which is what I would be expected to do otherwise, while being paid nowhere close to 33 lakhs. Occasionally, as long as my work-life balance is not being threatened, I will work 16 hours and so will my friends (which translates to a 48-hr man day for the company!!!)

So, IMHO, this is as good a WIN-WIN situation as it can get (yeah, Mr. Covey, I did read your book).

If that Company’s HR were to ever read this, my number is…