Thursday, March 30, 2006
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Another day in the cube farm
Disclaimer:
The stuff written in the post below, is only a reflection of the general perception that developers have in the IT industry.It is not meant to hurt anyone or any role(specially the parts about managers) ,nor, is it meant to demean or insult anyone or any role. As, in any profession, there will always be exceptions to the commonly perceived notions(and I can happily say that I have the privilege of working with such exceptions).In case I have ruffled a few feathers , then please note that it was not intentional and please tell me how that has happened,so that we can have a nice and meaningful discussion about it :-)
Good Morning
Alok could hear some weird tunes.Something that sounded like "Chaleeee...Chaleee....blah..blah....".Out of sheer irritation, he got up and realised that it was his cellphone alarm. Though he cursed the tune everyday, he knew that it was only irritating tunes like these that could wake him every morning.He saw the time and realised it was only 6AM.
Reverse Engineering
His calculations started.I have a meeting at 9:15,so,I have to be in office at 9:10.The auto-ride would take 10 minutes,so,leave home at 9.To leave home at 9,start getting ready by 8:20.Then, why the heck am I awake at 6.The alarm got promptly set to 8:20 and his head hit the pillow again.
Getting ready for office
After 5 snoozes,Alok finally got up at 8:45 and realised that he would be late for office.That started the parallel threads of brushing,boiling the milk,putting ON the heater and searching for decent looking clothes,all happening together ofcourse.
The ride
After much running,Alok reached the auto-stand. As always, he got the seat to the left of the auto-driver. He knew that sitting in one of these share-autos as one among six passengers was a real health hazard.Right at that time, an Octavia zipped past him and that started a thought process."When will I own one of these?"Not now, he knew that for sure.Maybe another 5 years,"when I become a manager"."Ah, how good a manager's life must be.No need to worry about learning silly things like Java and Perl.All you have to do is attend a few conference calls,assign tasks,put it in an excel sheet and just mail it".His thoughts were abruptly broken when the auto screeched to a halt in front of his office.
The cube farm
Alok's office always reminded him of Dlibert's cube farm--a place where evil managers extracted the maximum out of hapless developers.When he stepped into the office, he caught sight of maybe the first and the last pretty thing in office--the girl who did the documentation."Why doesn't she start coding and come to my team?", he thought. The next cubicle was occupied by the testing guy. He was the ideal illustration of"The grass is greener on the other side" thing.His life was filled with only two things:
--> Filling bug reports with statements like "the response time has been measured as 5milliseconds,much higher than the agreed time of 3 milliseconds.
-->Complaining about how the whole project would change,only if he was in the development team.
The next guy in line was from the project management group.His world was divided not into black and white or grey or anything like that--it was divided into person days,revenue,expenditure and cost budgets.Alok could never understand how 8 hours could form one person day, when everyone ended up working atleast 12 hours a day.
Coffee break
The coffee break was the only activity that Alok was punctual about. 11:15 and you could be sure--Alok could be at only one place--the pantry,but, true to the software engineer attitude,Alok could find fault with the coffee also."This powder milk is not adding any value to the coffee", he would think, and, true to the software engineer lingo-- coffee powders were not supposed to add taste, they were supposed to add value.
Work
Work consisted of replying to some 15 mails,writing some meaningless piece of code which would never see the light of day,arguing for one hour with a fellow developer as to whether the clicked link should turn red or blue,peering over the cubicle wall to see if the documentation girl was still there,meeting the manager(which brought out Alok's dual personality -- the sincere,spirited and ever diplomatic Alok in the front and the disillusioned and frustrated Alok in the back) and the most difficult task--waiting for the manager to go home, so that he could also go home.
The post dinner discussion
Dinner(home delivered form some restaurant--Alok always thought, he would cook tommorow) was always followed by a discussion between Alok and his fellow software engineer roomies. The discussion veered around exactly 5 things:
--> Bitching about ofice and managers
--> Cribing about the shortcomings of Java/ .NET and how all of us ended up wasting time because of that.
--> Some Bollywood heroine(Bollywood doesn't have any heroes--it has only Emraan Hashmi).
--> Thinking of doing something new.
--> Thinking of changing job/giving the CAT exam.
Good Night
After the totally meaningless discussion,Alok hit the bed,but, not before he thought"this software life is totally sedentary,I need to workout,I need to go to the gym,so,let me keep the alarm at 6AM and get up in the morning and go to the gym".
The stuff written in the post below, is only a reflection of the general perception that developers have in the IT industry.It is not meant to hurt anyone or any role(specially the parts about managers) ,nor, is it meant to demean or insult anyone or any role. As, in any profession, there will always be exceptions to the commonly perceived notions(and I can happily say that I have the privilege of working with such exceptions).In case I have ruffled a few feathers , then please note that it was not intentional and please tell me how that has happened,so that we can have a nice and meaningful discussion about it :-)
Good Morning
Alok could hear some weird tunes.Something that sounded like "Chaleeee...Chaleee....blah..blah....".Out of sheer irritation, he got up and realised that it was his cellphone alarm. Though he cursed the tune everyday, he knew that it was only irritating tunes like these that could wake him every morning.He saw the time and realised it was only 6AM.
Reverse Engineering
His calculations started.I have a meeting at 9:15,so,I have to be in office at 9:10.The auto-ride would take 10 minutes,so,leave home at 9.To leave home at 9,start getting ready by 8:20.Then, why the heck am I awake at 6.The alarm got promptly set to 8:20 and his head hit the pillow again.
Getting ready for office
After 5 snoozes,Alok finally got up at 8:45 and realised that he would be late for office.That started the parallel threads of brushing,boiling the milk,putting ON the heater and searching for decent looking clothes,all happening together ofcourse.
The ride
After much running,Alok reached the auto-stand. As always, he got the seat to the left of the auto-driver. He knew that sitting in one of these share-autos as one among six passengers was a real health hazard.Right at that time, an Octavia zipped past him and that started a thought process."When will I own one of these?"Not now, he knew that for sure.Maybe another 5 years,"when I become a manager"."Ah, how good a manager's life must be.No need to worry about learning silly things like Java and Perl.All you have to do is attend a few conference calls,assign tasks,put it in an excel sheet and just mail it".His thoughts were abruptly broken when the auto screeched to a halt in front of his office.
The cube farm
Alok's office always reminded him of Dlibert's cube farm--a place where evil managers extracted the maximum out of hapless developers.When he stepped into the office, he caught sight of maybe the first and the last pretty thing in office--the girl who did the documentation."Why doesn't she start coding and come to my team?", he thought. The next cubicle was occupied by the testing guy. He was the ideal illustration of"The grass is greener on the other side" thing.His life was filled with only two things:
--> Filling bug reports with statements like "the response time has been measured as 5milliseconds,much higher than the agreed time of 3 milliseconds.
-->Complaining about how the whole project would change,only if he was in the development team.
The next guy in line was from the project management group.His world was divided not into black and white or grey or anything like that--it was divided into person days,revenue,expenditure and cost budgets.Alok could never understand how 8 hours could form one person day, when everyone ended up working atleast 12 hours a day.
Coffee break
The coffee break was the only activity that Alok was punctual about. 11:15 and you could be sure--Alok could be at only one place--the pantry,but, true to the software engineer attitude,Alok could find fault with the coffee also."This powder milk is not adding any value to the coffee", he would think, and, true to the software engineer lingo-- coffee powders were not supposed to add taste, they were supposed to add value.
Work
Work consisted of replying to some 15 mails,writing some meaningless piece of code which would never see the light of day,arguing for one hour with a fellow developer as to whether the clicked link should turn red or blue,peering over the cubicle wall to see if the documentation girl was still there,meeting the manager(which brought out Alok's dual personality -- the sincere,spirited and ever diplomatic Alok in the front and the disillusioned and frustrated Alok in the back) and the most difficult task--waiting for the manager to go home, so that he could also go home.
The post dinner discussion
Dinner(home delivered form some restaurant--Alok always thought, he would cook tommorow) was always followed by a discussion between Alok and his fellow software engineer roomies. The discussion veered around exactly 5 things:
--> Bitching about ofice and managers
--> Cribing about the shortcomings of Java/ .NET and how all of us ended up wasting time because of that.
--> Some Bollywood heroine(Bollywood doesn't have any heroes--it has only Emraan Hashmi).
--> Thinking of doing something new.
--> Thinking of changing job/giving the CAT exam.
Good Night
After the totally meaningless discussion,Alok hit the bed,but, not before he thought"this software life is totally sedentary,I need to workout,I need to go to the gym,so,let me keep the alarm at 6AM and get up in the morning and go to the gym".
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
The beauty of a face
"She is so beautiful"----thought Alex.Those cute dimples that would get formed when she smiled,the lock of hair that she would push back every time it fell on her eyes, ah, those beautiful eyes.He knew , he could spend the rest of his life , just looking at those eyes.
To Alex, her face was like the moon itself--full of radiance--not only an internal glow,but, also a glow that would make everything around it look beautiful.He felt like forgetting everything around and just going and touching her face.He could already imagine the smoothness of her cheeks in his palms.
For all these years, there had always been some kind of a barrier which stopped him from reaching out to her.
She was just on the other side of road---so near, yet so far.The distance between them was not physical,but, it was the distance put up by society and its barriers.This was his predicament--always.He had known her for a long time now,and still,he was afraid to tell her about his feelings for her. He was not afraid about how she would respond,cos, he knew that even if her response would end up in the negative,still, his admiration for her would not diminish a single bit.Even if she were to ditch him for another man, he had no problems,cos, his happiness existed in her happiness,but, his problem was the fact that society would not see them as companions.They were from different communities, weren't they?What would people think about them, why people, what would their own parents think?Would her parents accept him?Would his parents accept her as one of their own?When he though about all these, his heart filled with sadness.The clouds of gloom started filling the clear sky.He always tried to stifle such thoughts with the excuse that he would think about them when the situation actually arose,but, today he felt helpless. He felt as if his life itself was being sapped away from his body.He felt his whole body going numb.
Then he looked at her and saw her beautiful smile,and immediately felt courageous enough to accept that the thoughts about society was just a mental block,what he was really afraid of, was the fear of the unknown--what he was going to do,he had never done it before,and, maybe, he would never do it again also.
With these thoughts in his mind, he took the rose from his shirt pocket and went ahead to cross the road.
To Alex, her face was like the moon itself--full of radiance--not only an internal glow,but, also a glow that would make everything around it look beautiful.He felt like forgetting everything around and just going and touching her face.He could already imagine the smoothness of her cheeks in his palms.
For all these years, there had always been some kind of a barrier which stopped him from reaching out to her.
She was just on the other side of road---so near, yet so far.The distance between them was not physical,but, it was the distance put up by society and its barriers.This was his predicament--always.He had known her for a long time now,and still,he was afraid to tell her about his feelings for her. He was not afraid about how she would respond,cos, he knew that even if her response would end up in the negative,still, his admiration for her would not diminish a single bit.Even if she were to ditch him for another man, he had no problems,cos, his happiness existed in her happiness,but, his problem was the fact that society would not see them as companions.They were from different communities, weren't they?What would people think about them, why people, what would their own parents think?Would her parents accept him?Would his parents accept her as one of their own?When he though about all these, his heart filled with sadness.The clouds of gloom started filling the clear sky.He always tried to stifle such thoughts with the excuse that he would think about them when the situation actually arose,but, today he felt helpless. He felt as if his life itself was being sapped away from his body.He felt his whole body going numb.
Then he looked at her and saw her beautiful smile,and immediately felt courageous enough to accept that the thoughts about society was just a mental block,what he was really afraid of, was the fear of the unknown--what he was going to do,he had never done it before,and, maybe, he would never do it again also.
With these thoughts in his mind, he took the rose from his shirt pocket and went ahead to cross the road.
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