Beati pauperes spiritu, or how I got a job

Disclaimer:

The opinions expressed herein are the author’s personal ones, and as always the characters, sequences and identities are all spun impromptu.

Finally, Mr.Average engineer got a job in a prestigious software company. He’s termed as a “fresher” by many of his fellow species. He gets a warm red carpet welcome and is showered with lot of “to be followed” rules and regulations during the first course of the week. That is the heaviest dosage of powerpoint presentations he’s probably ever exposed to in a lifetime. He’s as ebullient at first as a puppy with new teeth. Least does Mr. Average know that long in the future, he’s going to return home with sore eyes and an aching back. That brings us to one important point. Occupational hazards of the software industry.

Back in those yonder years, when computing was mostly done in pen and paper, there wasn’t any software industry. Well, all industries had a product cycle, be it a telephone, or a chip, or even a ball point pen. They had their own customer base, acceptability criteria etc to fulfill. One fine day, software industry also felt the dire need for this lingo. I am in perfect concordance with the fact that, software industry, is a service industry under the deception that it’s a manufacturing industry.(not me, Eric Raymond said that). Mr. Average writes several “Kloc” of code, he fixes so and so defects and fills up a lot of formal documentation for the above process, and boy, that’s an overkill I tell you. These are the canonical mandates confronted by any Mr. Average lurking around in the industry, and take my word for that.

When I was in college, I loved coding( yes I  really did!). I didn’t bother in the heaven’s name about time constraints, quality assurance and other cribs back then. But this is a different place altogether. Mr. Average is first made one unwritten rule clear, software projects are mission critical, nay I prefer to use the fancy term “real time”. It’s a euphemistic way of putting that if you don’t write bug free code, bid goodbye to your job, and at times, your organization. And you that it was easy!

I had all the time in the world and dictated the “customer” as an armchair programmer. Mr. Average has a lot of things to live up to. If the rules of the game were followed ideally, he sailed his way smooth and nice. But it doesn’t happen that smooth always. God said “let there be code: and there was bugs.”

Bugs are the biggest predicament facing the programmerkind and robbing Mr. Average of his sanity and after-work life. Ask any random software engineer and he’ll say a quick “yes”. The software industry spends generous amounts on fixing bugs. Not to mention the countless overtime hours, caffeine and empty pizza boxes spent by plenty of Mr. Averages annually. Sadly, bugs are man made. Believe it or not, Mr. Average is the brainchild behind every unsquashed bug. After years of retrospect, may smart folks figured out ways to minimize bugs by lot of methodologies. And they were the people who mined gold in software industry.

tedium and Boredom are a dangerous effluvium.(otherwise I wont be hanging around in the bloggosphere while at work ;-)) . I mostly try to avoid decision making aspect here and there, and I leave it to my peers, no matter how crucial or how trivial it sounds. It might sound to most people that I’m getting it personal here, but I always give a choice to Mr. Average regarding the decision making of his decision making. That was the prime cause for me to stick to my stand as a no-frills technical guy, and not to become a manager.

I don’t loathe people wearing suits nor am I telling that managers are technically incompetent nincompoops, but I am naturally inclined to the geeky component in me. You call it my inability to make decisions or what ever you want, but I sweep all decision making under the carpet. I prefer spending my weekend fixing umpteen bugs rather.

Being a manager is more or less like being a parent or grandparent.(yawn) more in the next blog……..

Layman's guide to surviving in the software industry

Disclaimer:

All the characters, places and supposedly copyright stuff I scribble about only exist in my subconscious. Passing resemblances to real life is sheer coincidence. Any offence regretted.

Part 1: the brave new world

It takes real guts to be an engineer. I stumbled upon this truth after a series of long experiences rather, most of them with mixed flavors. At the fag end of third year, when one walked past the canteen halls or the long corridors of any building, all you could hear was professional mumbo jumbo. Guess what, we had become professionals! Wow, what panache that word attached with it. You were no longer an oversleeping, careless, economically dependent half-baked engineer anymore. That didn’t mean a lot to me anyways. But to many it did. The first step towards becoming a full baked engineer from one of the scores of engineering colleges scattered around Tamil Nadu was to get a job, and get it before you graduated. This task was reasonably easy. The average guy was faced with a lot of options by behemoth software firms and the not so famous ones. He had grown in the midst of a heritage which was fostered by his parents and the rest of the society. This trend is kept up right from first year. And that brings us to square one, getting in a college. I mean becoming a part of one of the 250 odd engineering colleges from the oddity of a mediocre school student. This traced the following easy steps:

Firstly, join a school where they train you like a secret agent or something to write examinations. You write them until you are squeezed dry of ink and imagination, the end point is you become exam-o-phobic and you get withdrawal symptoms if you don’t give exams for more than one week.

Secondly, write all the entrance tests conducted by institutions across the length and breadth of the Indian subcontinent (that way your hit to miss ratio of joining a college substantially increases). One fine day when you are blissfully enjoying your almost never ending summer vacations, if you get a letter or two from a college whose name you can’t even pronounce in the first attempt, congratulations, my boy, you are well on your way to become a “successful” engineer. Now back to square two.

They day is not far off where they will make “quantitative aptitude” by R S Agarwal as a part of the official first year curricula. I see one out of every three people carrying that book, no matter wherever they go(statistics may vary from place to place). Some odd places I saw people reading these books include railway stations, loos, fast food joints…to name a few. Second in the list comes Barron’s guide to GRE. The average engineer is innovative and open to many alternatives. If India doesn’t embrace him and recognize his abilities, he leaves the burden to uncle Sam to figure it out. And yes, he’s successful in that facet of life also. Very few morons actually go for weird things after their graduation, these include the under privileged strata who don’t fall under any category. The are deemed geeks by the rest of the “lucky” ones.

Its eventually one week before placement time, and you have crossed all barriers and have been keeping fingers crossed for this moment. Some people are highly confident of landing in a three letter software company in spite of all odds, and they manage to do it. Placement season comes and goes like hurricane Katrina. There have been a lot of trials, tribulations, realizations and ego wars over the week. Some won it, some unfortunate think they won it. Its celebration time for the placed ones. They never have to worry about work or education or problems plaguing mankind for the next thirty years of their life, or that’s what they think. Id like to steal a line from the movie con air, where Garland Green(Steve Buscemi) mutters

"What if I told you 'insane' was working fifty hours a week in some office for fifty years at the end of which they tell you to piss off; ending up in some retirement village hoping to die before suffering the indignity of trying to make it to the toilet on time? Wouldn't you consider that to be insane?"

That was quite befitting in the present context. Whether we study about computers, aero planes, IC engines or oil rigs, we land up as software engineers. I am so snobbish about being one. It gives raise to cultural shocks. You have the notion that you are suddenly pricked by a pin at you bottoms to run a rat race, no matter what, and you run it, nevertheless you know about it or not. This has been an unwritten custom, the normal life cycle a guy goes through, especially when he is under the umbrella of some big brother university( I needn’t translate it in tamil though), without knowing why.

I honesty don’t know answers to some questions darted at me, like why does software industry need so many people, how do I find the guy next door to be my cold cubicle mate down the line next Monday, to what extent is the normal state of affairs is affected in the country when I pour in some serious work by burning the mid night oil over several months, why am I paid so much for just sitting in front of a monitor all day long etc….

I will try to answer them, again honestly(and candidly), through the insight I have garnered over time.

 

“we have the papers."

“Fast man, open the door.”
“Not now da, we’ll smoke after 12. There are only 3 cigarettes left.” I sounded very calculative, besides being conservative about cigarettes. “open up man.” Motu started to hiss. Then I figured out that the matter was more provocative than a regular smoke, so I opend the door half heartedly.
Motu closed the door with extra caution before allowing K6 in. even the signing of Magna Carta wasn’t done with such an air of importance, I thought. “we need to help each other out, please.” He sounded like a gangster in one of those old godfather movies.” I was puzzled. K6’s stony silence was irking me way too much. Rahul made a disappearing act while I was busy calculating about evading the exams. Finally, K6 lit a cigarette, took a deep puff and thus the master spake
“we have the papers.”
I would have stripped and jumped in the room had I been alone. But I had my own ego to protect. No more reading of 8051 ports. The biggest curiosity of my life (at least for the time being) were stuffed in one of K6’s pockets. And I will be getting it in a moment or two. Life wasn’t that unfair after all. A friend in need was a friend indeed.
I pretended to be calm, composed and principled (damn I hate that word!), and I was very good at it.
“that’s good, how did you manage this time?”
“that I will tell later, but we need your help to pass.”
“no way I am looking at those papers.” I lied.
“please, I want to pass this last time”, Motu pleaded. He presented himself so pitifully, that he appeared like a helpless animal behind a cage(but for the cigarette stuck between his lips). “you can’t tell that you don’t have time, because preparation for a test whose questions you already know, needs no substantial time.” K6 added.
“no, I’ve already studied some 80% of it. That’s no problem guys.” Another lie. “but…”. I wore an expression on my face as though I was in deep thought, but actually I wasn’t. greed blinds a man’s reasoning ability, whatsoever. Whenever we do something bad, conscience calls us out in the faintest voice possible, and we pretend as though we don’t hear it. Most of the time we never pay attention to it. But, life just goes on. Ultimately we end up doing what we like. “philosophy is too vague to apply to the present context” I said to myself, and stubbed my inner voice like another cigarette.
Motu stubbed his real cigarette impatiently and said “please” loudly, to emphasize that he’s been waiting for me to say a “yes” for too long. “ok, fine.” I muttered. I felt like the referee of an India Pakistan cricket match. I was of prime importance in one of the few instances of my life, and I instantly loved my new role. I forgot Rahul. We had one problem now. We had to keep him at bay. Life suddenly became overwhelmingly simple.

a rescue in disguise

“abbey yaar, I do have a network cable. I’ll get it shortly.”
Undoubltedly, it was Shiv. I didn’t know why I had a prejudice against many short and self-centered people in the wide world, but that was the way it was. Probably he was buzzing about network cables to transfer a movie or something. Rahul was cocksure that he had the papers. Because no sane guy from our department would even dream of recreation on an exam eve, not even toppers like Shiv. Yes, Shiv was a “topper”. The world acknowledged his success in a very weird way. Getting a 9 GPA thrice continuously was his raise to fame, and people looked at it with knit brows. Still, the department wasted not time in bestowing him with scholarships, secretary posts and what nots! Afterall, they wanted a puppet who was stupid enough to dance to their tunes and clever enough to improvise too. Shiv fit in the mould impeccably. It was a kind of symbiotic relationship between him and the department, and both found peace in the long run. But for all this, Shiv was yet another hairy creature taken for granted in the hostel landscape.
“hey did you find any notes for 8051 ports, I hunted for it in the library in vain.” he queried Avinash. “old trick” thought Rahul, and he was right. Shiv wanted to be doubly sure that nobody questioned this “movie in the eve of exam” anomaly. So he acted naturally (wow, I stumbled upon an oxymoron accidentally) to avoid stirring any controversies. He had been mothballing all the questions and answers for tomorrow well in advance. So clever of him! Rahul really disliked Shiv from the bottom of his intestines, as he put it. And the fact that he was doing under table work made matters worse. It fuelled the fire all the more.
The blaring speakers in Kareem Reddy’s room brought me back to reality. I had been sitting here and trying to analyze inter-hostellites relationships and it wan ten o clock. Rahul was blissfully spending time in the land of nod. The syllabus was unimaginably vast. Something had to be done soon! Some super human act. I speculated some unexpected storm or cyclone tomorrow, but the weather had been irritatingly hot and predictive this week, so ruled out. “Say, maybe, Mr.Vasudevan, the dean dies or something. Nope, he’s in the pink of health.”
“hey(a loud hey within myself), I read in the papers about a hartal being called off tomorrow.” I churned out all socio-political, meteorological and biological issues to procrastinate the inevitable study of 8051 ports. It was ten thirty.
Motu banged the door. I knew it was Motu because it was sounding like a holocaust.

“we are now a part of the whole conspiracy theory because we need to be united now.”

asserted Rahul.

“but how are we to help?”

“don’t you understand by the way the henpeck us. They’ve got it man. They’ve got the God damn papers already.”

“c’mon, then why would they hide it?”

“I exactly don’t know for sure. But sooner or later the cat will be out of the bag.”

Even this exams will pass through somehow, I thought. But a lot of things didn’t make sense at all. Like how they got the papers in spite of Mr. Adi, even if they did, why was it so classified etc. As a matter of fact Motu was too magnanimous to suspect any foul play. We spent the rest of the night on stale late-night movies and talking hostel rumour.





“yup, metallica was responsible for the napster controversy.” blared Eashwar, apropos to Bat’s nagging talk on pop stars. The were sitting on the steep wall outside their house. K6 was trying a hopeless trick with ping pong balls. For a change, Motu wasn’t eating (he was sleeping, btw). It wasn’t another dusky Saturday evening where they could just wile away the time and sleep. At the far end of the city, some eerie guy was seriously attempting to coax a printing press worker to do God-knows-what. Everybody were anxious and waiting for the phone call to happen, except some ignorant souls like Eashwar and a few others, who never knew the gravity of the situation. Minutes seemed like years, Bat couldn’t swallow his own phlegm. People were tongue tied and keeping their fingers crossed, for the “result”.



K6 and co became day scholars(not by the literal meaning of the word) circa 2005 november. The got a wonderful and partially furnished house at Tanjore. It was the unofficial HQ of Tobacco republic, the official one being 294, where myself and K6 were yesteryear roomies. The unofficial HQ of TR, was peopled by more then seven or eight members who lived a synonymous hippie culture surviving only on the bounties of Arya vilas and a faulty home computer network, engineered by Motu and a few others. They were fairly self sufficient, and had no worries in life, till tonight, where the worst was yet to come. And it came just in time.



Motu thought it was a usual cell phone scheduled alarm, but it was in fact a call from “him”.

He woke up as though he was charging in a battle front and saw the phone with sleepy eyes. His facial expression changed. “not this early”, Motu thought, and ran to the terrace. That was the third time K6 swore he saw Motu running, the other two being instances where they served ice cream at the hostel mess some time in second year.

“hello, tell me da…”

“look, its just not possible for all the papers this time ok?”

“ok…”

“listen, even jana doesn’t know this, only shivin from your gang knows and…”.it wasn’t that clear.

“I swear da. But you got to understand, it’s the first and last time. Next year everybody gets it done.”

“who’s along with you now??”

“nobody da. Only K6”.

Then how was that nobody?? White lie.

“I will call in another hour. You just stay put.ok?”

“sure man.”

K6 was a wonderful evesdropper.

Apart from being the fastest SMS typing machine, Kicha was the dream boy for almost any lass out there. He had what people call lady luck. He had it so much that, even if he threw a dart blindfold, it hit bull’s eye without fail. He had a stellar GPA to his credit, thanks to the way he wrote exams. He wrote as big as tabloid headlines, and he wrote pages and pages of that gibberish(he claimed so), and eventually ended up with a decent score by any standards. If he entered a class late, the prof was in a good mood. If he didn’t complete his assignment, the prof would have forgotten it eons ago.

I advocated a theory wherein, I did whatever he did, like entering the class late along with him etc, so that I got away with all that along with him. But we both got grounded for that(the reason being, my misfortune being bigger in magnitude than his luck :p).

This time, even he was not having a hint of hope. We thought “all good things must come to an end”, and here it was now, all the bona fide and unchallenged criminals of ECE III yr were sitting and bidding adieu to our good old days(sans Motu, who was still avidly eating).

“my guess, this time Adi takes an ad hoc print out of the question papers. So if we can manage to sneak in at that moment, or if you can get even with Adi. We’ll do it for sure.” cried Kaushik.

“Plain vanilla simple. Get even with Adi.” Motu mimicked K6. “Are you nuts? I’d rather fail.”(read die). I also wanted to be a part of the conversation.

“don’t you remember the enquiry last time?”

Nobody paid any attention. People wanted ideas. The tobacco republic(as we called ourselves with some airs) wanted “no frills” attached ideas. not analysis.

Rahul thought he had come up with a solution.“first things first. Whats the syllabus?”. We all looked at each others faces. Some guy even turned the pages of his note book.(I didn’t have any!). K6 was probing his pockets, probably for the previous exam’s chit I guess.

“anyway whats your point?” Kicha yelled out.

“my point is, we’ll really study this time….honestly”. Rahul couldn’t help a slight smile on his face.

There was stony silence as soon as he said that. Motu even stopped eating, and looked at him, with a murderous expression.

“come on guys. Im not being defensive. But once in a while its ok. You people come over to the hostel and well pull out a wonderful group study. huh? what say?”

We churned out such a hilarious laughter, that the whole skt reverberated with our sound(Motu was responsible for 96% of it.)

“well well, group study…he he heh..” K6 giggled, as he stubbed out the cigarette. “ok guys, no more studies, lets chill out with some movies and all, its still a long way to go, we’ll chalk out a strategy and…”. The talk drifted off to hang outs, girls and pornography.

It was human tendency to postpone indecisive situations sine die. Most of them would rather die than think. That was so true amongst us. We opted not to think about the inevitable. We all split up after hours of tete-a-tete, unfinished cups of tea and coffee and mountains of cigarette stubs. Me and Rahul walked towards hostel with fear in our heads and hope in our hearts. I was surmising what would they be serving in the mess tonight for dinner, while Rahul hit upon something interesting.

“Badri, these people are sure getting the papers this time.”

“what??”

“because the got it the last time, and the time before that, and…”

“wow, are you trying to prove this fact by mathematical induction?”

“no, but Adi has been muddling with their business for 2 monthlies now. And they have been smoothing off pretty well, without studying a word.”

He said “their business”, because it was obviously theirs. To be very honest, we hadn’t got the question papers ever in our college lives, in spite of so much fervor. Now I may sound like I am the hero of the story or something, but that was really true. My principle, or our principle as I call it, was radically different. We thought till that day, that it would be better to get a big zero and get kicked out, that get kicked out for copying. In simple terms, we were afraid of copying(here copying is the broader term that is the sum total inclusive of all malpractices followed by a chap to increase his mark significantly). Yes, two members of the fearless dauntless tobacco republic had a secret, unshared apprehension. And that was the last day we stuck to our principle.

“ok, so what are you trying to put across?” I asked pre meditatively, even though I wasn’t paying any attention to his words. I wanted an idea which worked, and I didn’t give a damn to how it worked and all.

Part deux
Apparently, Mr.Silver bullet was chilling out in skt. Kaushik I mean. Besides him was Arun chandrashekar. But nobody in the wide world called him by that name. he was better known by pseudonyms which mocked at his appearance, like Motu, fatty, Gunda and all sorts. You could guess easily now that he was munching his way through some bizarre poultry product which was exclusively skt-made.
Rahul tried his luck with Kaushik.
“hey man…any luck this time dude?”
“papers? Are you kidding? Don’t ya remember how that f**king Adi f**ked with our microcontroller paper last time? You still dreaming huh?”
Hmmm…this guy has been listening way too much Eminem raps or so, I thought.
Motu gave us an insight on “how to smuggle papers yourself” for five minutes. We weren’t interested in that either. Our purpose was pretty abstract and clear cut.
To get the question papers or die.
Any elementary guy would think why should we be bothered about doing all this rather that just sit and study for the exams. But all this setup had a larger than life story woven around it. More than good marks, placements, under world connections, raw deals. It was a war to protect our egos.
The modus Vivendi out here was, three days before the exams, the profs would dictate us all the would-be questions, we would note them down happily, study those for the exams and “pass out with flying colours”. This was so regular that it almost became our second nature. But, an engineer’s mind aint so static. Its always on the lookout for problems to existing solutions. So he began to automate this process also. In other words, junta started taking chits for those predestined questions also. As a consequence, exams were a test for your copying skills, like how much syllabus could you cover in a single bit of paper and other such “nanotechnological” feats. People came out with smart solutions to such problems. The earliest ones made hell a lot of hay while the sun shined. Soon even the dumb ones, like me followed suit. The fittest passed on the art to the next generation, to their favorite girl friends and so on. Soon, everybody was covered by this radar. The college, was surprisingly oblivious to what was happening. They thought that the students were working real hard and churning out original stuff….until one man cane and broke it all.
Adi. His name spelt terror in the minds of the people. The story of how he curbed all this, some other time. But, whatever he did, it was a death blow to the life of everybody studying for exams and monthlies. No wonder Kaushik was so verbose in abusing him.
More than everything else, we had to defy him and bend the rules imposed by him. Indeed it was a war to protect our egos, to re-establish our Hellenism, it was our birth right to….
“hey are you pass on that cigarette or not huh??”
My chain of thoughts were interrupted by Kicha.

9.30 am, some anonymous morning (which I could barely remember)

It’s been six weeks since I was conferred upon with microwave assignment. Wait a sec. did I say “assignment”?? worst part of all, it was, as usual the last day to submit it. I just rushed to the bathroom and found out that there wasn’t any water, which was not so uncommon. Not a big deal, it was just the 3^rd consecutive day I was going without a bath. Still a long way to go before I beat Kaushik and my other peers hands down….

Rahul, the male chauvinist pig, was still asleep. Last night had been a movie galore. Not a single movie had been left unseen. I just fished out a crumpled dirty shirt from out of nowhere and wore my blue jeans for the 12^th time maybe. Rahul just landed in the stickiest, sweatiest and driest bathroom of the lot, apparently for a bath. Even his bathroom search ended in vain. We marched with vanity and ruffled hair towards college. God destined that let the first period be microwave. Also, he destined that we be late. But that never stopped us from going to skt best and having a smoke or two. Out attendance at skt best was 78% more that the college’s.

We entered the hallowed electronics block which was a walk away(well, quite a walk)….but wait, first some prelude about skt best for the layman….

Skt best was a roadside tea shop cum everything owned by a band of brothers whose past is more deep rooted than the history of the pandavas. It meant more than a roadside tea shop for most of us. That’s where we used to hang out, have a tete-a-tete or jabber, break and rebuild our love lives, study for exams…even chalk out tangible strategies for copying in the sem exams.

…and now back from the small flashback. Mr. Selvaraj, handled microwave for us. He looked like a guy who’s about to die of a rare disorder in a couple of days. And his ego was taller than himself. He thought that he was a smart handsome and a brilliant young man who’s wit and talent was wasting away in a dusty college in south India. Fortunately, he was too oblivious to notice us slip through the door in broad daylight. We waved at Prince and drew something in the thin air indicating to drop in our respective attendances. He nodded his head profusely, but didn’t seem to care. We weren’t either, after five minutes.

Now this wasn’t an easy trick to play, to get yourself marked present in spite of being absent. You shouldn’t be too noticeable enough to make your absence felt, nor should you be absolutely stealthy like a spy agent. We cultivated the tao of this subtle art(if you call that one) over days of practice and patience.

I was munching the occasional cold samosa in the canteen, and rahul cooed in.

“Baddu, we have monthly coming monday….”

“………and I have no clue what we’ll be doing this time.”

Two things are indicative of an approaching monthly. First, you get f**ked up with life and time. Second, you lose your syllabus book (along with your interest). I could imagine the smell of the poor quality kerosene Xerox(oops, Xerox is a copyrighted word, and I’m too lazy, btw, to type Photostat.), the endless terrace sessions and the cramming creeping up behind me. This time, we needed a silver bullet. There wasn’t an iota of doubt about that. Just then, the interval bell rang, and the canteen was flooded with hungry information junkies and the aroma of oily puffs. A horde of girls came in to empty the shelves of their contents, followed by a horde of boys who came to be emptied of their purses (thanks to the girls’ appetite). We were bored of this happening, and we legged our way back to skt, thinking of the silver bullet which might save us