Lord Brahma was a bad software engineer...

Lord Brahma was probably the first system architect… Much before anyone of us could imagine. He has designed this wonderful system called the “HUMAN BEING”. But well, he seems to have gone all wrong in the implementation of the same (of course there are a few exceptions to the rule)… Whether the timelines were restricted or he did not get enough support from his team-mates (Vishnu, Shiva etc.) is still a question mark… But Brahma’s appraisal rating has to be on the lowest 25% of the band because of the highly flawed system he has constructed… The following were some of the flaws identified in the system…

• System has no input check – Accepts any crap as input
• Whatever input it takes, the output is crap
• System gives unforeseen reactions when it interfaces with other dissimilar systems (namely the other sex)
• Despite extensive testing for many situations, system breaks down at the most crucial of times
• There is no documentation of the logic to explain why system acts the way it does in many situations
• When there are exceptions the system cannot handle properly, it makes a loud screeching noise
• System runs fine and at full productivity only when called by the wife program
• Some other times the system runs fine but is of typically no use to anyone other than itself
• Ongoing maintenance and support of the system is very expensive, specially when the system gets old
• Despite little use, the system has been designed without any useful upgrades or patches to last a very long lifetime

The manager has invited everyone else to contribute any more flaws in the comments section…

The Indian Software love story

When you think of it sometimes, life in software is more like a typical Indian cinema love story. You could draw parallels from different phases of a software engineer’s life to a typical college boy – college girl love story. The ending of the story is deliberately left to one’s own imagination.

Let us first look at the typical college love story step-by-step...

The usual love story

Nice smart innocent boy enters college and thinks of all Indians as his brothers and sisters. By the 2nd year, he gets mentally mature (as well) and starts to have a more open mind about other Indians. By the third year, he is open mouthed looking at every Indian (hopefully of the fairer sex) that goes by. In the final year, he writes a love letter with 90% crap and submits it to one of those many fellow Indians. One of the dumbest to fall for the trick accepts his proposition and the love story starts. The initial days are all rosy – they go to the park, the beach and restaurants and spend their time. But soon the reality of the situation dawns... Boy starts to realize that he has to listen to everything the girl says. He cannot see TV anymore and has to spend night-outs forcibly talking to her. The worst thing comes when she decides that its time to introduce him to her dad. The dad has a one-on-one with our dude and rates him as suitable / not-suitable / absolute trash.

Well… There is more than one possible climax in this scenario

Scenario (1) – Boy accepts that this is the life for him. He decides to marry the girl and settle down for a life-time of misery with some rare nice moments in between.

Scenario (2) – A villain character in the form of the girl’s mom’s brother lands in from the USA. There is a long fight between our dude and the mom’s brother. But eventually, our dude comes just after the nick of time to see the girl married away. He starts drinking, sports a beard and lives the rest of his life like a Devdas.

Scenario (3) – Boy does the wise thing of not fighting with the mom’s brother who has landed and instead opts for going to the USA to forget the girl… He thinks he can opt for live-ins instead as he wishes - only problem is that no girl there cares a damn for our desi dude!

Disclaimer: The whole story is equally applicable to girls too. I am sure there are equal number of girls who propose to the guys(!) And hence the whole story can be reversed for the other sex :-)

Let us now look at how this story compares so nicely with the lives of those countless dudes who are sucked into the S/W bandwagon…

The love story modified for the S/W scenario

Nice smart innocent boy enters college and thinks of all the good companies that would come for campus placements for his branch of engineering. By the 2nd year, he stops reading his books and decides that the software industry is the place to go with a lot of money and nothing to study during college. By the third year, he is open mouthed looking at every Indian software company that goes by in campus for placements. In the final year, he writes a resume with 90% crap and submits it to many companies. One of the dumbest to fall for the trick accepts his resume and the dreaded association with software starts. The initial days are all rosy – he is taken to joining parties, sees a lot of nice people in his batch and has fun in the weekends at the beach with other co-joinees. But soon the reality of the situation dawns... Boy starts to realize that he has to listen to everything that the company says. He cannot see TV anymore and has to spend night-outs forcibly setting right the code. The worst thing comes when he goes face to face with his manager. The manager has a one-on-one appraisal meeting with our dude and rates him as suitable for work / not-suitable for any important work/ absolute trash.

Well there is more than one possible climax in this scenario...

Scenario (1) – Boy accepts that this is the life for him. He decides to carry on in the same company and carries on useless without any contribution till the age of 58 when he decides its time to retire. Now and then he sees some rare moments of niceties. (like those once in a blue moon pay hikes)

Scenario (2) – A villain character in the form of a new grudging boss lands in from the USA. There is a long fight between our dude and the new manager. Obviously, and eventually, the boy backs down and is kicked out of the project. He is put on bench and serves the rest of his life in the most insane of projects.

Scenario (3) – Boy does the wise thing of not fighting with the current boss or the new boss and opts to go onsite to enjoy life! Only problem is that he is alone in his town and no one onsite cares a damn on what he does or where he is…

So what is the end of this story? There is no end actually. We continue to churn millions of software engineers who live these lives in the utopian wish that something someday will change and they will do something better! Maybe become a Sivaji and come back to India and start a lot of colleges!!! They probably need to work for a million years to earn 200 crores in our software industry :-)

If we were taken over by...

I was just wondering what are the 3 stand-out things that would happen if one of the following “imaginary” companies took over our existing companies…Any resemblances to the top 5 in the not-so "imaginary" Indian IT industry are purely coincidental! As usual, completely on the lighter side of course…

If we were part of IB^^

• The chair you sit on, the bottle of cola you drink while working, the phone that you use and the under-garments that you wear are all made by us – totally integrated solution offering
• We follow a 6.5 in a box model and have a business development manager, a sales person, a client partner, an engagement management, a senior business consultant, a junior specialist and an intern as go to people for any problem a client may have
• We plan to bring down the servers of this client and charge them double for the maintenance since they didn’t give us the software services for a different project

If we were part of A66enture

• We have just signed up Rajinikanth and Amitabh Bachhan as brand ambassadors for our company – the former would be used in APAC and parts of Silicon Valley; the latter would be used in RoW.
• We would go in for a joint marketing exercise with Viagra – since they are also High performance, delivered…
• We have to shed two thirds of our resources since the offshore companies have ruined our direct variation model of placing 3 consultants for 3 days where 1 could do the job in 1 day.

If we were part of TC$

• We just hired our 1 millionth non-Indian local employee – actually she is a part time hire; her main job is as an immigration officer at the visa office at Bosnia.
• Though we actually had a good year, we could not give much bonuses - we had to divert our money to pay employees from steel, chemicals, salt, tea, refrigerators and other divisions which were all running at losses.
• I can’t type more than this because 6 of us here are sharing a room at onsite, and my chance with the 486 is over for the day.

If we were part of In£osys

• We build the largest football stadium at Coimbatore and have the FIFA president plant a sapling in the middle of the ground during his Indian visit
• Our CEO stands for President of India, Our CIO may become the Minister for Education and our HR person would most likely get the Defence Ministry
• I become the CEO of the company next quarter – My turn came after the successive succession planning…

If we were part of Wi9ro

• I got good ESOPs this time - 2 shares to be exact, given the management is letting go off very few stocks outside of what they hold
• Our total income stood at $5 billion for the year – 25% from sale of marine products; 30% from coconut oil; 22% from mineral gas; 26% from voice BPO and the rest from software services
• We crossed Oracle in the number of acquisitions for the year and are still grasping with how many employees we have now

Disclaimer:This is purely meant to be for humour and nothing else! Anyway, I have hidden the actual names very well, so I am sure it would take a lot of time to unearth those :-)

Work Life Balance in the IT World

The topic of achieving a work-life balance is so close to each one’s heart and I am sure everyone would have an opinion on whether current work circumstances allow us to achieve the same in the IT World. I have captured some of the possible theories of the as-is and the desired to-be work life balance situations...

Work-Life balance in the ideal world
Theory 1: The Work – Life Balance

• 06:00: Wake Up, Brush, Take Bath, Shave etc.
• 06:30: Update yourself on GK and current affairs with “The Hindu”
• 06:45: Idly / Dosa / Vada + Sambhar / Chutney cooked by mom
• 07:00: Travel at 80 kmph to office on your super-bike or fashionable car
• 07:30: Settle down in place with a cup of “Coffee Day” coffee
• 07:45: Finish off all previous day mails
• 09:30: Greet people coming in with a huge grin indicating that you have finished off most of the work in a quiet environment while they are just coming in!
• 12:30: Hog to glory in the canteen / Dhaba next to office
• 13:15: Chat about non-work related topics with colleagues
• 13:30: Back to work
• 16:30: Travel back at 60 kmph (till Madhya Kailash) & 30 kmph (till home)
• 17:15: Go to gym to show off those biceps
• 18:00: The second bath of the day to freshen up
• 18:30: Time to spend with family, friends, kids, grandpas, grandmas, etc. + Watch Tamil Serials + Eat Light food + Browse the net / computer games / read the latest Harry Potter => Basically have a good time
• 23:00: Sleep like a good kid after your prayers for the night
• Weekends: Go for a short trip / Play games / Go to the movies / shopping / restaurants etc.

The real world offshore – Faced by thousands
Theory 2: The Work – Wife Balance

• 07:45: Wake up; Brush & take bath if possible and if in mood to do so; Make sure your wife does not find out that you didn’t do either
• 08:15: Run, run, run till you are just able to shout to the driver to stop the bus
• 09:15: Stand at the end of the breakfast queue at canteen in a sweaty shirt
• 09:45: Stare at your angry boss as you enter your place
• 10:30: Get reminded by wife about dinner outside at night
• 13:00: Go for lunch at canteen if you have the time, else settle for a bite at the pantry
• 13:30: Back to more mails and stares from boss and module leaders
• 14:30: Get reminded by wife about kid indulging in some pranks in school and hence the need to attend the PTA meet this time
• 17:30: Team meeting where boss says that nothing in the project is going right
• 18:15: Call with onsite to check out what is the problem (they are the more informed of the people around)
• 19:25: Run for the bus only to realize that the clock at the security gate seems to be showing a different time today, so you just missed your bus
• 19:28: Crib to wife about how the bus guy was really mean to you; Hear a bang of the phone on the other end
• 19:30: Go back to your place since your next bus is only at 20:15
• 19:35: Pick up the phone to get more requests from onsite
• 21:00: Finally take the bus back home
• 21:50: Reach home after a combination of bus + walk + auto
• 21:55: Listen from your wife on how you had ditched her for dinner
• 22:30: Settle in to have a cold dinner at home
• 23:00: Watch TV
• 23:02: Sleep off with TV and lights on
• Weekends: Same as weekdays; If the project has good times, then you can hope to sleep a lot of the time if you don’t have to go shopping with your wife.

(Disclaimer: This is applicable to husbands as well for the ladies, just used “wife” for rhyming purposes, so the ladies please excuse)

The real world onsite
Theory 3: The Fork – Knife Balance

• 07:15: Wake up after the tenth alarm
• 07:20: Brush, take bath, shave etc. in the biting cold cursing all the while that you don’t have an option to not do these at onsite
• 07:50: Make your own badly done breakfast with just two options – bread or cornflakes; Practice eating it with a fork and a knife
• 08:00: Catch a tram + a train + a bus to finally arrive at the workplace
• 08:30: Stare at the same three faces in office
• 10:30: Pester the client(s) for a meeting or a project
• 13:00: Lunch with the client where you have to eat even a chapathi with a fork and knife
• 14:00: Run around for the nth registration form and the mth office in which you have to reinforce that you are not a native of the particular country
• 15:00: Settle back in office to maybe talk to offshore
• 18:00: Finish up all calls, mails and chats with India
• 18:45: Buy vegetables and other groceries on the way back home.
• 19:30: Reach home after a combination of the three modes of transport.
• 19:45: Start the long cooking phenomena
• 20:45: After multiple design, construction and testing cycles, settle for a rice that is half-cooked, a sambhar that has a vague taste of the sambhar powder and a vegetable that may be a bit too deep fried
• 21:30: Finish off the food by watching the only English channel on TV, CNN
• 21:45: Settle down to see what you need to get / buy / finish for the next day both on personal and work fronts
• 22:45: Iron out a pant and a shirt for the next day; After multiple attempts when ironing one side spoils the other, realize that you can’t do any better and stop for the night
• 23:30: Crash on your bed
• Weekends
  Saturday: Sleep till evening and catch up with everyone online after that;
  Sunday: Do the laundry including washing, drying and ironing

I am sure a lot of different people would have even more thoughts on the same. Do post your thoughts in the comments section...

Are you a true onsite return?

I wanted to capture some of the most popular mannerisms / characteristics of people returning for a short while from onsite before going back. Clinical research data shows that you cannot consider yourself a true onsite returning dude if you don’t possess at least 70% of the following mannerisms…

• The guys dress up in ½ or ¾ pants, typically with loose hanging cloth material till the knee levels – the probably didn’t realize that there are a lot of animals on the road in India who take a liking to such attire. Women seem to prefer a combination of an open jacket over a plain top along with a vague skirt / pant. Kids are always dressed crampily despite the heat and taken around stuffed on their baby-trolleys.
• They feel that the weather is very bad in India and the place is just too polluted.
• They start using words such as “wazzup”, “high fives”, etc. use words such as “dude” (pronounced dood), “cool”, “hip” etc. a lot more often and pronounce fast, past etc. with a ‘ae’ sound…
• They can’t take their eyes off the NBA shows on ESPN / American political debates on CNN.
• They add 2 kg by the time they leave by hogging on home food as if they have never eaten food before.
• They go to Grand Sweets to buy one or more of the following - vetha kozhambu (a type of dish like sambhar) / puli kaachal (tamarind paste) / mysore pak (special south indian sweet) / murukku (I have already reached the saturation level on translations)
• They go to the top malls in the city to buy a lot of top quality apparel cause they can get a $8 - $12 reduction in price (converted amount) as compared to what they will spend abroad.
• They spend the saved dollars in buying original music CDs of Tamil / Hindi movies which they are not going to watch more than once ever – a couple of years back they were wise enough to download mp3s of these songs.
• They bring a lot of chocolates – specifically Snickers, Kisses, Mars bars (only for the managers and dear friends) and Toblerone (reserved for family) to office.
• They say that they will never leave the country and will be coming back in probably a couple of years cause this is where “they belong” - they will only return cause their parents are either too old or their kids need to get the “right” schooling

As usual, just for fun… So chill out :-) The original research data of course is very confidential and the researchers have refused to share the sources etc. Researchers are open to any new data in the comments section…