Pros
Opportunity of working with senior government officials
Some motivated young colleagues
Cons
I knew Samagra very well both during initial stages and later stages (from when it was a smaller development concern, then through its merger with and de-merger from another company with whom relations had soured, and in its latest avatar as "transforming governance"), and so it pains me to write this review because I used to really believe in this company, and in its original founder. However, as I worked within the company I found two broad areas of great concern:
- Behaviour: the behaviour of the company towards employees is very very poor. In addition to not having the right policies and biased treatment, there has been outright manipulation of both facts and individuals. The company is not transparent and does not promote transparency; on the contrary it manipulates statements from different employees; during my time there, I saw two of my colleagues break down and cry because of management; several times. Consequently, there is a huge mental heath issue for employees, which the management is entirely indifferent to.
- Intent: this 'intent' can be further be subdivided into intent (external) for country/government and intent (internal) for employees. With respect to external intent, I have seen the company grey over facts (it's called 'storylining') to funders; when challenged, there was no admission of guilt or even a sense of an apology. By effectively misrepresenting the quality of government's own initiatives to international funders, the company does a huge disservice to the nation, just to make a space for itself. After all, if the government can do good work without such agencies, then this agency will not make money itself. Further I began to wonder that the intent is not genuinely to have "impact at scale", but to show impact (real or imaginary) to stay in the marketplace.
Similarly, with respect to intent for employees; the management is very manipulative and deceitful; the same issue of unfair treatment, unfair promotion, unfair work hours, unfair compensation etc etc keeps cropping up; the management, however, will pretend each time that it is unaware of these issues and not deal with it; this is why people keep leaving and these people keep trying to hire, but they will never solve this problem, because they genuinely don't intend to. They will exploit individuals and throw them by the wayside.
The intent factor is most troubling and hurtful because if people can behave badly without intending to, but when the company has no genuine intention of behaving well, it never actually will do so, but it will only pretend that it cares. But it doesn't.