Plight of a Software Engineer !

(Inspired from a forwarded mail I received. This is not my original write-up but I wholely subscribe to what is mentioned in here. This happens to me more often then none)

After lots of meet ups with my mom-IT friends, relatives, strangers, rickshaw wallahs etc; I noticed that the moment you say that you are an IT guy, they have already made some assumptions about you.

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Myth #1: If you haven't been onsite ...u are a loser

Uncle: "Tum do saal se IT company mein kaam kar rahe ho na?"
Me: (tightening my collar..head high) "Haan uncle ......bas....."
Uncle: "Tum videsh nahi gaye?"
Me: "Nahi uncle project mein requirement nahi hai onsitekaa"
Uncle: "Lekin woh deepak ko toh maanna padegaa.... engg mein 2nd class milaa...fir bhi usne jamke mehnat ki aur usse company ne USA bheja!"

Aaaha! thats the problem. People think that only the smarty pants are sent on site while the loser ones are the people left behind in India. So the assumption is that if you haven't been on site then you don't work hard nor you have any sincerity and ... ok that's enough for now.

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Myth #2: If you are not in the biggies... u are a loser

Auntyji : "Beta, kaunsa tent?"
Me: "Persistent! Aunty I work in Persistent. "
Aunty: "Tumko Info*** mein nahi mila kya?" (in short: "tum second grade gadha lagte ho")

Then I have to make efforts to tell them how I actually work for a much
better company. In case the opposite person is technologically sane then I
give him some product development 'funda' (arrogance).

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Myth#3: You can fix any computer..and calculator and may be clocks too

Most of the computer engineers around must have at east once gone to a friend's place only to fix his /her comp. The task can be from installing a software (next..next.. finish) to fixing a computer which gives electric shocks when its metal areas are touched.

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Myth #4: You have lots of money

Once I met up with my friends from school ...from various fields. I just mentioned that it is such a pain to go to office nowadays and said that I wanted to buy a car.

Friend1: "what problem do u have man .. u are an IT waala"
Friend2: "Tu toh Honda CRV le saktaa hai"
Me: "CRV!! aabey CRV kyaa mere pass VCR lene ka paisa nahi hai"

Even after 5 minutes of convincing them weren't getting convinced.

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Myth #5: Coding means sitting in front of the computer

During my college days , my classmate had an encounter with a guy from mechanical dept:

Mech guy: "Your Computer engineering is a big nautanki.... four years
You learn the same grey dabba... and all you ppl do is sit nicely in front of that dabba and punch the keys"

Well I don't completely disagree

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Myth #6:

One more thing which oldies say : "Now you work in such a big company , you are settled , you should marry now !! "

OMG!! this salary is not enough for one poor soul.. how to handle two ???

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Myth #7:

In Diwali...u get questions like......"Are you gonna get a bonus this Diwali.....??" And when we reply in the negative.....they seem so surprised...!!!!!!!

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Myth #8: A common issue that I have seen:

When I tell anybody that I work with TCS, many times I get a reply "My son/daughter/relative Mr/Ms XXX also works with TCS. You must be knowing him/her" and if I answer in the negative, they feel disappointed (sometimes even angry with me).

How to explain to them that there are around 1,60,000 employees in my company (around 35,000 in Mumbai alone), and I cannot know everybody in my ODC, forget about knowing everybody in the company.

LoLzzzzzzzzzzzzz.....

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Add ons:

#How many times do you face this question

"What does your company make...???"

It's Ameya. No, No... It's Ameya

A few weeks back the Times Of India – Goa edition was flooded with ads from a car manufacturer. Right from the front page to every alternate page thereon it had bought out the newspaper space to advertise itself. Needless to say the marketing department must have shelled out more than a few million dollars to grab the place on the newspaper and thereon grab the attentions of more than millions of TOI readers, only a small fraction of which could turn out to be prospective buyers. The high end and top-notch technology laden cars that the manufacturer was selling, I wondered whether it was a right strategy that they had followed to showcase their plethora of products. My half-baked (if I may say so ;)) MBA knowledge inclusive of the interesting and truly involving “Integrated Marketing communication” lectures that I attended professed that when a product is from a niche segment involving state-of-art technology and coupled with a price tag which only the “most blessed” section of the society could afford, then one should resort to direct marketing. Direct Marketing is the term given to the practice of reaching out to individual prospective customer and then marketing him the product as per his taste and specification. This made pure sense to me as it was very rational to follow this approach and not go for a mass-marketing through newspapers especially when each square inch of the prized newsprint space cost a bomb and could potentially burn a hole in the pocket to the tune of millions.

When the rule of directed marketing is so crystal clear, which even I can recite without flipping back through my notes, what propelled the marketing team into such a major Gaffe? After all they aren’t richly paid only to commit such a costly mistake; leave aside the major PR blunder that come alone. “No ways! The marketing team at this automotive giant aren’t this big a fool” I unknowingly said to myself . This very inquizitive thought made rerun through the entire series of ads once again and there I found the purpose for them follow this means of advertisement.

The reason was there right on the front page, which inadvertently I had missed during my first run through these Volkswagen ads. The line in bold read “Its Volkswagen. No, No... Its Volkswagen”. The foundation level course in German language that I had cleared with flying colours had ensured that I wasn’t the intended target audience for this catch line. A second read along with the small assisting para beneath it cleared all aspertions that I had regarding this marketing strategy. Here was this Deutsche major taking to get a strong foothold into our nation with their quality products. But before all this, they were onto a campaign which would set their brand identity firm into the people’s psyche. And how could they achieve that without getting the people to pronounce their name right. I am unsure about the etymology of it, but blame it on the Germans who pronounce “V” as “F” ( फ as per Indian pronounciation). Reminds of the awesome shahid kapoor in his movie ‘Kaminey’ wherein he were mischievously proclaims “mein fha ko fha bolta hoon”. On second thoughts VW could have used his character to get their name right into the Indian Psyche. Who better than a bollywood actor to influence the Indian masses? Thus I was really pleased eventually by their attempt to make the people pronounce ‘volkswagen’ as ‘Folkswagen’ (as it is actually supposed to be) meaning “people’s car”.

After this rather very long prelude, let me get to the core topic of this blog which deals with my personal identity crisis. Very much as VW suffered with mispronounciation, so has been me right from the time of my birth. It was the difference in the way ‘V’ is pronounced in the different parts of the globe for Volkswagen that proved its nemesis; for me it was the extra ‘a’ (or is it?) that did me in. As it has been a very much prevelant practice in this part of the world, my parents named me “Ameya “ (अमेय in devnagari script) which is one of the numerously infinite names of the elephant headed god, Ganapati.

Needless to say I was way too young and worse still very much ignorant of these happenings in regards to my naming ceremony to fight with my parents then. But that only meant I had to fight with the majority of the people I encountered till date getting to make them pronounce my name right. My parents had very lovingly bestowed with this nice name (which I personally love too 8)) thinking that I would have showcase all the virtues of the original bearer of the name; and so I did to a great extent if not all (I would rather say that with a tinge of modesty ;)).

On face-value it doesn’t look too tough to pronounce, but in reality I had been struggling to cope up with the numerous variants that I encounter when interacting with fellow planet-mates. The most common variant being the ones over-stressing of suffixing ‘A’ in my name. The way they pronounce it, makes me feel as if I have a stream of never-ending ‘A’s tailing my spelling (i.e. AmeyAAAAA.... and it goes on... :( ). I do emphasise to them the trailing ‘A’ in my name doesn’t have the tilde over it and thus spared from the hard sound (i.e. AA अमेया in devnagari) but it doesn’t seem to be effective convincing tactic from my side. For me it gets doubly tough when I come across instances (read people) of AMEYA without the trailing ‘A’, and then it’s just like fighting a losing battle. And to my bad fortune, I have many such instances of AMEY (with the trailing A missing), one at college, two at office, and many more in routine life :( . Their existence meant I had to back off and accept that my name is a typo (since birth :() and only justification being the trailing ‘A’ is silent. But even for that there are a handful few who don’t let go the chance to pull my leg and call me with the extended version of my name “AMEY with the silent A”.

The irony of the extra ‘A’ (or otherwise) is a bit bearable and I could blame it upon the inconsistency/incompatibility of English alphabets in the devanagari script (Spare me for dragging my feet into the Devanagari v/s Roman scripts tussle). But my plight doesn’t end there. Still struggling with the mysterious instance of ‘A’ in my name, I was stunned when I came across a superior at my workplace. He seemingly had donned the shakespherean hat and had conveyed to our international clients his prophecy. He said to them and I quote “All Indian feminine names ends with a ‘A’”. I had a tough time before I cleared the doubts in their mind about my gender. Although I was damn sure what my manager has professed was blatant lie and a brainchild of his own; but the todays corporate world is such that whatever your manager says is the rule. So I consoled myself by self-proclaiming my name as just a one off exception to his rule without totally discarding his hypothesis. I don’t know whether this existence of exception to his rule put him off, but he never awarded me any extra brownie points during the appraisal cycle.

Then there exists the variant of my name like AMAY ( अमय in devnagari)। I don’t know where that came from. But I still have a handful of my friends calling that. I don’t know whether its the ease of calling by that name that acts as a motivation to them but surely they have slipped into a comfort zone calling me by that name and I don’t see them changing it soon. This is not all and the weirdest version is yet to come. Rewinding back to my kinder-garten days and I remember my teachers calling me ‘AMBEY’ (where the hell that 'B' came from?). I even have a certificate at some drawing competition featuring that name. Anybody would have doubted whether it was actually me who achieved that laurel at the drawing competition back then, if they are unaware of the moderate talent that I possess even now. I was probably too young, too timid, and too ignorant to fight with argue with my teachers and must have not gauged what lie ahead. Probably that was just precursor to lie in stores for me.

So here I am, with more than a quarter of my life on earth behind me and still struggling with the identity. I won’t say it’s a identity crisis but still it’s not a very pleasing experience if someone don’t pronounce your name right. So humble requests to all the readers of this, for you are the only people who are aware of my plight and surely you can help me a bit. Not by anything else, but just by calling me by my name, ‘the right way’.

Its simple. It's Ameya. No, No... It's Ameya

Yup, you got it right. Thanks :)

Enough of reality

“Don’t watch the TV from so close,” my granny used to thunder “lest you will spoil your eyesight”. Though this was back in the days of adolescence, her words still echo in my ears. Not that I was a TV buff then, at least I don’t remember to be one. However, hectic schedule has meant that my TV viewership has reached to an abyss. But whenever I have nothing more significant to do, I somehow involuntarily find myself leaning on the couch. Lying next to me and giving me good company, is the graceful curves of the TV remote. And that’s for once I have given into the human instinct of being a couch potato, and aimless gazing at the inappropriately termed ‘idiot box’. The television, TV for most, is in fact one of the historical invention to have rocked the world. The reach and the influence of it could be used for larger public good. There have been instances in the past where TV has been also related to birth control; wonder how? ;) However like many other ‘historic inventions’ TV too has attained some bad name, thanks to the ‘abuse’ of it. And that gets me to theme of this post.

As I mentioned earlier I am not an avid TV buff. And whenever I find myself in control of this priced possession of any Indian household, I find myself flipping among some news channels and onto some sports frequencies. However, while hoping among these frequencies tuned at the extreme ends; I choose to browse those all the channels in between. The reason from this action of mine eludes me for I could have comfortably skipped all the in between ‘pain’ to tune the channel I desire. Well, if you too have scanned the channels on your TV you would definitely agree to my profanation of calling it a pain.

“Excessive use of anything is abuse”, I had heard Vijay Mallya shouting this on a debate. Though he had mentioned this in context of alcohol, it perfectly fits the bill for many other things. The current (and it has been going on for years now L) trend on the TV being ‘reality TV’. And it has been stretched and re-stretched in so many different variants, that it’s hardly anything but reality. For the starters, each of these series is aped from the western counterparts. There isn’t anything wrong in copy-pasting, but before getting on such expeditions there should be a thorough understanding about the relevance in Indian context and followed by some customization to suit the local audience. However, what is happening is a blind adaptation of the original series. From the “American Idol” to “Who wants to be a Millionaire?” onto “Are you smarter than the fifth grader?” , each of these western series have appeared in their desi avatar. Though initially the rich and educative content of “Koun Banega Crorepati?” and the novelity of “Indian Idol” did strike a chord with the local audience; reality TV soon lost its sheen as such series started hogging prime time by the dozen. And not surprisingly, with the bombardment of essentially same thing with some superficial changes to elude being stereotypical, it was bound to make the audience sick.

At any given moment there are so many singing talent shows going on, luring unsuspecting Indian youth to stardom, that one needs some super power to keep a track and further differentiate between them. More over it has become such run-of-the-mill affair, that a viewer might start with watching one programme and change to some other without realizing he has switched channels. In all things, he can rest assured about not missing on any of the benevolent comments made by the supposedly learned judges, or the overtly enthusiastic pleas for votes by the anchor, or the choreographed melodrama by the participants themselves. To top this unbearable content, there is the back-stage bitching, love affair on the side-lines and controversies offstage that just adds to the pain of viewing.

Singing talent show is just a part of it; and though I hate to say it makes much more bearable than many other variants of the reality shows. Take for example these dance reality shows wherein in these supposedly celebrity, though many of the names many me wonder who?, try gyrating to the beats. Many of them remind me of physical education class, wherein we used to perform the robotic moves and there was no scope for grace or élan. To add insult to injury, comes over the top remarks by plethora of judges, many of whom ironically don’t even have any connection with the field of evaluation. Next come the laughter challenges. Such has been its proliferation of these competition that every joke is been repeated in all possible combination and permutation. All those who end up laughing are a couple of jokers who are been assigned to adjudicate the contestants. It’s a different case that the judges start to giggle long before the actual joke is delivered.

To top this all talent search competition, comes the variant which might be dubbed the mother of all reality shows. These are the shows wherein the so-called celebrities are put together and all they have to do is bitch, fight and finally survive the elimination. No marks for guessing that even these shows are been aped from the westerner, where quiet controversially our very own desi siren came up trumps. All the contestants are mostly in their twilight days of career, and they indulge in loads of manipulative games to score one up on the fellow inmate. Inmate I call it, as the show itself proclaims a subtle tagline “Who will survive in the house?”. I wondered whom do they have to survive; are there any wild beasts looming large in the precincts? On second thoughts, it’s indeed an apt tagline because surviving the fellow inmate is no less a herculean tasks.

All and all, I truly miss those beautiful days of Door-darshan. Though starved for content, it used to telecast its shows with no intrusion for the advertising hawks. There were those kiddish and very rudimentary programmes, those mega-epics which used to take from the harsh world into the land of fantasy. May be for a short time but it was a enjoyable time in front of the TV, unlike now wherein I have only one thing to say. “Enough of reality!” L

P.S: I am intending to write yet another post of one of my TV viewing session. God willing, you will get to read it soon.