Which one out of these would describe you as a person?
A) I know what I want from life.
B) I always think before I talk.
C) All my choices where alligned to my ambitions.
D) None of the above.
I chose engineering because ?
A) My uncles son did so.
B) Papa asked me to do so.
C) Infosys and TCS does not hire BA / BSc.
D) All of the above.
Software testing is a great area to work because
A) I like to find faults.
B) I could use brains for something else.
C) It's better than being in a BPO.
D) All of the above.
System Administration is a creative Job because ...
A) Sys admins create mount points
B) We create issues, by copying scripts and editing them.
C) Staring at the monitor is given a creative name "Monitoring"
D) All of the above
When I am asked to do something....
A) I ensure that it's the best way ti do it.
B) I cross check on the logic of doing it.
C) I suggest alternate ways to do it in an efficient way.
D) None of the above
When I am called in for a meeting..
A) My biggest worry is about the refreshments available.
B) I would call in colleagues who do not have anything to do with the topic.
C) I decline the meeting online and show up as a surprise.
D) All of the above
If all of your answers are D, your candidature in the industry is confirmed, all you need to do is to get ready for a glorious life ahead, keep you brains at home, but ensure that it's accessible over the network at times for personal purposes it comes handy.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
The Real Journey !!!!
Being in a contact center, especially tech support is like being a frog in a well. The only news that you would probably hear is from the customers television, which would be more about snow storms and gay marriages. No where related to your part of the world. Social contacts will die of within a span of a month, cause most of your friends live a normal life and yours is that of an Owl. With ever weakening relationships with the society and a fast depleting friends list you are almost into the vanaprastha before even entering Grihasthashrama.You've salvaged the worldly already !!!!
Excerpts of certain conversations from the life of a Tech support engineer:
Father: How are you son, how is it going??
Son: Doing great pa, what happened to you hands??
Father: Met with an accident yesterday in the afternoon.
Son: Why didn't you all tell me.
Father: Mom asked me not to wake you up, your brother came from work and was there through out.
Son: You should have called me.
Father: Mom didn't know you where home, by the way you have lost some weight from the last time we saw.
Being a guest at your own home, walking out to work on a Sunday evening while the family gets ready for an outing to the nearby temple or the beach is painful. Watching a movie on a Tuesday, when the theater is empty are certain invaluable luxuries this world can offer. So when you walk out of the industry and if that's the only industry you've worked in, you are as good as Denzel Washington in Shawshank redemption. With no weekends in hand, no nights to sleep, no life to celebrate, do you think the Industry is not worth it, That's not what it is in reality. If you've to learn management, have to be a people's man there is nowhere else on this earth you could learn it. That's why the next part of the blog is called the good side.
Excerpts of certain conversations from the life of a Tech support engineer:
Father: How are you son, how is it going??
Son: Doing great pa, what happened to you hands??
Father: Met with an accident yesterday in the afternoon.
Son: Why didn't you all tell me.
Father: Mom asked me not to wake you up, your brother came from work and was there through out.
Son: You should have called me.
Father: Mom didn't know you where home, by the way you have lost some weight from the last time we saw.
Being a guest at your own home, walking out to work on a Sunday evening while the family gets ready for an outing to the nearby temple or the beach is painful. Watching a movie on a Tuesday, when the theater is empty are certain invaluable luxuries this world can offer. So when you walk out of the industry and if that's the only industry you've worked in, you are as good as Denzel Washington in Shawshank redemption. With no weekends in hand, no nights to sleep, no life to celebrate, do you think the Industry is not worth it, That's not what it is in reality. If you've to learn management, have to be a people's man there is nowhere else on this earth you could learn it. That's why the next part of the blog is called the good side.
Monday, February 14, 2011
The Job and the transition of Life !!!!
The only place on this earth, where you can step into work and can crib about not having slept properly is a BPO, and the best part is that you could do it everyday. Drowsiness, indigestion, dark circles and an accent that would make you look like a refrigerator inside an Igloo is what you would earn initially working in a contact center. The ads of most of these companies will have trekkers perched against K2, or a team doing white water rafting fighting all the odds, with captions provoking the young " Do you have it in you", " Define your Success" etc. If any of these models work in tech support projects for North America, leave a camera, they would lose confidence to stand in front of a mirror and introduce themselves.
The initial component of the job is fun, you would most probably meet an accent trainer, who's usually hot and is pro-American. Watching English movies and acting out plays, would make yo feel at college, the only difference being you are your own expense here. The round of fun is usually topped up with a boring process training, in which you will be taught on 100 ways of screwing a customer by not giving him what he wants. For example a policy that I learned working for a renowned computer seller states that an LCD cannot be exchanged till it has 5 dead pixels. That means even if you have three dead pixels at the center of the screen the customer has to live with it. How would the customer feel it if these pixels come in between the peak of a Sharon stone scene, all the customer can do is to cool off. There is an instance in which one of my colleagues had gone ahead and asked the customer to collect three more dead pixels i he was looking for a refund, I found the guy enjoying in communication training for two weeks thereafter.
The process training would ensure that you would use scripts written to perfection which in turn makes customer realize that it's humanly impossible to speak that way and demands for a human being to help him out. " Am I talking to a human being??, Could I talk to anything other than machine" are some common outcomes of using award winning scripts.So armed with thousand ways of grilling the customer, the trump card of those being the accent, we start the revenge against people who once ruled us. The pleasure of tormenting a Brit asking for help, pleading for a refund are experiences loads of Indians would love to be a part of even without a pay.
Experience on calls are extremely funny and would remain with you for a life time. Quoting some of the funniest :
Agent : Thank you for calling "xyz" tech support, how may I help you ??
Customer : Hey, I am an expert on mainframes and have been working on projects for CIA, FBI and top agencies. So please do not treat me like a dumb fellow American, just tell me what has to be done and I'll do it. So no hand holding, all right??
Agent: ( Who's dumbstruck, with popped out eyes) Yes,May I know the issue ??
Customer: Cannot go online, it says page cannot be displayed??
Agent: Could you give me the output of the ping command??
Customer: What would that be??
Agent: Could you open the command prompt??
Customer: How I do that??
Agent: Could you please right click on my computer??
Customer: I am a Lefty, how would I go about it??
Agent: You told me that you are techie ??
Customer: Why can't lefties be techies??
And the agent is convinced about the fact that it's not just his manager, there are customers who would behave the same way. So the job begins, the honeymoon is over and you start talking to wall street smarties to wild farmers. An accent seeps in which would never suit your appearance, short, dark, potbellied Asian with an American accent, how bad it could it get. R's are no longer straight, they are rolled with a rod roller, W is pronounced in an astonishingly funny way and last but not least pronouncing thank you demands your tongue to shoved up between the front sets of teeth. Dressing has to change, trousers and denim has to be worn with the intention that your but crack is visible when you take a seat, drop a pen or pick up a key chain. Smoking is a ritual, if you miss out on that you're missing out on information only nicotine could bring out. And slowly the kid from the middle class, takes on the bumpy ride to live the great American dream !!!!!
The initial component of the job is fun, you would most probably meet an accent trainer, who's usually hot and is pro-American. Watching English movies and acting out plays, would make yo feel at college, the only difference being you are your own expense here. The round of fun is usually topped up with a boring process training, in which you will be taught on 100 ways of screwing a customer by not giving him what he wants. For example a policy that I learned working for a renowned computer seller states that an LCD cannot be exchanged till it has 5 dead pixels. That means even if you have three dead pixels at the center of the screen the customer has to live with it. How would the customer feel it if these pixels come in between the peak of a Sharon stone scene, all the customer can do is to cool off. There is an instance in which one of my colleagues had gone ahead and asked the customer to collect three more dead pixels i he was looking for a refund, I found the guy enjoying in communication training for two weeks thereafter.
The process training would ensure that you would use scripts written to perfection which in turn makes customer realize that it's humanly impossible to speak that way and demands for a human being to help him out. " Am I talking to a human being??, Could I talk to anything other than machine" are some common outcomes of using award winning scripts.So armed with thousand ways of grilling the customer, the trump card of those being the accent, we start the revenge against people who once ruled us. The pleasure of tormenting a Brit asking for help, pleading for a refund are experiences loads of Indians would love to be a part of even without a pay.
Experience on calls are extremely funny and would remain with you for a life time. Quoting some of the funniest :
Agent : Thank you for calling "xyz" tech support, how may I help you ??
Customer : Hey, I am an expert on mainframes and have been working on projects for CIA, FBI and top agencies. So please do not treat me like a dumb fellow American, just tell me what has to be done and I'll do it. So no hand holding, all right??
Agent: ( Who's dumbstruck, with popped out eyes) Yes,May I know the issue ??
Customer: Cannot go online, it says page cannot be displayed??
Agent: Could you give me the output of the ping command??
Customer: What would that be??
Agent: Could you open the command prompt??
Customer: How I do that??
Agent: Could you please right click on my computer??
Customer: I am a Lefty, how would I go about it??
Agent: You told me that you are techie ??
Customer: Why can't lefties be techies??
And the agent is convinced about the fact that it's not just his manager, there are customers who would behave the same way. So the job begins, the honeymoon is over and you start talking to wall street smarties to wild farmers. An accent seeps in which would never suit your appearance, short, dark, potbellied Asian with an American accent, how bad it could it get. R's are no longer straight, they are rolled with a rod roller, W is pronounced in an astonishingly funny way and last but not least pronouncing thank you demands your tongue to shoved up between the front sets of teeth. Dressing has to change, trousers and denim has to be worn with the intention that your but crack is visible when you take a seat, drop a pen or pick up a key chain. Smoking is a ritual, if you miss out on that you're missing out on information only nicotine could bring out. And slowly the kid from the middle class, takes on the bumpy ride to live the great American dream !!!!!
About Designations and Salary !!!
Greed is a phase that goes by for some, for some it stays, till it takes their life away.What keeps us up, what keeps us going,like in any other industry it's moving up the ladder that matters the most, so let's closely examine the motivations of the growth process, the drive behind the back office of the world:
Designation :
In an industry which is young and vibrant like in Information Technology, there are roles, role names which could not have been coined by writers with highest imagination capabilities, even if they were high on marijuana. Say I have come across designations as big as "Business process architect", the guy who bears the designation would fall by the weight of it, if the same is given in writing on a piece of paper. People who are outside the industry would look at the visiting card and build images of our hero flying across the Atlantic, being served by stewardesses wearing deep neck tops, holing conference calls and finalizing decisions between top government officials of the west. On the ground, he would be running between technology groups, filling in forms and excel files and writing processes directly copied from the first search hit that Google could provide. ( Keywords used are the strictly confidential as that's a game changer).
So designations are something which everyone in the Industry is worried about, Project coordinator, wants to be a manager not because his manager is doing something different, just because Project manager sounds better (Marriage markets love Project Managers, though Job markets give a deaf ear). Job hops are made in the industry because the hiring organization is lenient enough to call the same job by a different name, it's as gross as a prostitute calling herself a pleasure merchant. So we all chase designations and love being called a consultant or an architect and we have an oath that we take while we pull up the socks for the designation chase.A sample on goes like this:
" I XXYY, as a member of the this family will ensure that no matter what happens I will act, walk and pose the way society wants to perceive my designation. As a consultant I would wear dark rimmed spectacles, as a Project manager I would be the torch bearer for cliches in formal dressing and If I accidentally get to become a VP or above I will wear suits even while am taking a walk on the beach with my wife and kids. I would ensure that people know that I am powerful through the gadgets I use, the dresses I wear and If am unaware of the technologies that has changed I'll bring in topics from Adams and crush anyone who acts smart with my arrogance". This is just a sample Oath, please refer to the disclaimer before use.
I have myself chased fancy designations, from Bangalore to Jaipur, I have made one of the most weird career moves just to be a "Leader", on papers. Yeah the designation given was a "Process Leader" and I almost ended up doing the same job under the hot sun in Jaipur, opposed to the cool breeze in Bangalore.
Money :
Hey this is a key factor, Jumping jobs is considered much more important than enhancing your skills or learning new stuff. The trend is to do the same job at different places, for salaries that could never get justified. There are loads of components and terms including the most abused one in the pack CTC. CTC is like our penal code, it could change according to circumstances. There are organizations where in your CTC and your take home would never talk to each other (Take home is another Jargon for the exact amount getting deposited in the bank account, after babu's and the government get's their cut). People who work for one company life long are like "The Bengal Tiger", they do not exist and there is no Amir Khan campaigning to protect this endangered species. Anyways people change jobs and during the last fifteen days in the organization they ensure that enough venom is inserted into their colleagues, flashing their offer letter and the great life promised ahead.
Work Culture:
Work culture, often projected by an Organization in many ways, major categories of these desperate attempts are :
Best Employer Awards: Usually there are 1524 awards every year given out by magazines for the best employers in the country. These magazines have information about the organization, their own employees have never come across. Flashy babes they never saw, in costumes they could only see at the theaters and last but don't not least pictures of gourmet dinners with much more than Chai and Samosa :). So awards project work culture better than anything else!!!!!
T Shirts and Bags with a company logo, a flashy Campus and wear what you are comfortable in stabbed into the dress code policy are the building blocks of any company that would like to project itself as a company with a great work culture. Though work is less, work culture is something that cannot be compromised. Wearing a Benetton T-shirt, carrying the best in class portable, riding into a dream campus, and being on a bench for nine months is Nirvana, the competition of who has more time to waste is definitely won by the company in the longer run.
"Being there done that Certificate" aka On Site Visits:
If one thing the Indian IT industry offers and lures it's employees with, is definitely the promise of travel. There are friends, who could not get enough time to change their underwear because most of them got busy clicking and uploading pictures. And these pictures have a trend they are mostly in front of the London bridge or the Eiffel tower or the statue of liberty. With a pay comparable or just above a Janitor at Star Bucks, we still save money ,we buy gifts for everyone around, and if asked about the visit abroad other than a nerd who didn't save money most of us would not have seen anything other than the spots that's supposed to be visited or told in another way we are good at making "Being there done that Certificates".
So we move on, expecting hikes to come in with lesser work, with expectations of finding code online so that it need not be re-written, with dreams of clients coming in from "Tmibaktu" so that exquisite pictures could be posted on Orkut. The great Indian IT dream is fired up by mostly these factors. Any additions to these are welcome :)
Designation :
In an industry which is young and vibrant like in Information Technology, there are roles, role names which could not have been coined by writers with highest imagination capabilities, even if they were high on marijuana. Say I have come across designations as big as "Business process architect", the guy who bears the designation would fall by the weight of it, if the same is given in writing on a piece of paper. People who are outside the industry would look at the visiting card and build images of our hero flying across the Atlantic, being served by stewardesses wearing deep neck tops, holing conference calls and finalizing decisions between top government officials of the west. On the ground, he would be running between technology groups, filling in forms and excel files and writing processes directly copied from the first search hit that Google could provide. ( Keywords used are the strictly confidential as that's a game changer).
So designations are something which everyone in the Industry is worried about, Project coordinator, wants to be a manager not because his manager is doing something different, just because Project manager sounds better (Marriage markets love Project Managers, though Job markets give a deaf ear). Job hops are made in the industry because the hiring organization is lenient enough to call the same job by a different name, it's as gross as a prostitute calling herself a pleasure merchant. So we all chase designations and love being called a consultant or an architect and we have an oath that we take while we pull up the socks for the designation chase.A sample on goes like this:
" I XXYY, as a member of the this family will ensure that no matter what happens I will act, walk and pose the way society wants to perceive my designation. As a consultant I would wear dark rimmed spectacles, as a Project manager I would be the torch bearer for cliches in formal dressing and If I accidentally get to become a VP or above I will wear suits even while am taking a walk on the beach with my wife and kids. I would ensure that people know that I am powerful through the gadgets I use, the dresses I wear and If am unaware of the technologies that has changed I'll bring in topics from Adams and crush anyone who acts smart with my arrogance". This is just a sample Oath, please refer to the disclaimer before use.
I have myself chased fancy designations, from Bangalore to Jaipur, I have made one of the most weird career moves just to be a "Leader", on papers. Yeah the designation given was a "Process Leader" and I almost ended up doing the same job under the hot sun in Jaipur, opposed to the cool breeze in Bangalore.
Money :
Hey this is a key factor, Jumping jobs is considered much more important than enhancing your skills or learning new stuff. The trend is to do the same job at different places, for salaries that could never get justified. There are loads of components and terms including the most abused one in the pack CTC. CTC is like our penal code, it could change according to circumstances. There are organizations where in your CTC and your take home would never talk to each other (Take home is another Jargon for the exact amount getting deposited in the bank account, after babu's and the government get's their cut). People who work for one company life long are like "The Bengal Tiger", they do not exist and there is no Amir Khan campaigning to protect this endangered species. Anyways people change jobs and during the last fifteen days in the organization they ensure that enough venom is inserted into their colleagues, flashing their offer letter and the great life promised ahead.
Work Culture:
Work culture, often projected by an Organization in many ways, major categories of these desperate attempts are :
Best Employer Awards: Usually there are 1524 awards every year given out by magazines for the best employers in the country. These magazines have information about the organization, their own employees have never come across. Flashy babes they never saw, in costumes they could only see at the theaters and last but don't not least pictures of gourmet dinners with much more than Chai and Samosa :). So awards project work culture better than anything else!!!!!
T Shirts and Bags with a company logo, a flashy Campus and wear what you are comfortable in stabbed into the dress code policy are the building blocks of any company that would like to project itself as a company with a great work culture. Though work is less, work culture is something that cannot be compromised. Wearing a Benetton T-shirt, carrying the best in class portable, riding into a dream campus, and being on a bench for nine months is Nirvana, the competition of who has more time to waste is definitely won by the company in the longer run.
"Being there done that Certificate" aka On Site Visits:
If one thing the Indian IT industry offers and lures it's employees with, is definitely the promise of travel. There are friends, who could not get enough time to change their underwear because most of them got busy clicking and uploading pictures. And these pictures have a trend they are mostly in front of the London bridge or the Eiffel tower or the statue of liberty. With a pay comparable or just above a Janitor at Star Bucks, we still save money ,we buy gifts for everyone around, and if asked about the visit abroad other than a nerd who didn't save money most of us would not have seen anything other than the spots that's supposed to be visited or told in another way we are good at making "Being there done that Certificates".
So we move on, expecting hikes to come in with lesser work, with expectations of finding code online so that it need not be re-written, with dreams of clients coming in from "Tmibaktu" so that exquisite pictures could be posted on Orkut. The great Indian IT dream is fired up by mostly these factors. Any additions to these are welcome :)
Sunday, February 13, 2011
The Phase of Greed !!!
As in the pursuit of happiness, this part of my life is called being greedy.Life was fun, with five room mates and loads of whining, I was the only one who thought the job was an achievement, who could take it as an achievement. I now realize on why everyone gave me that look "How can you be happy here "???, look.
Anyways Suresh and Jaison would have this conversation daily on how to move ahead in life. At 11:00 am in the morning, I could here them preparing for glory, Jaison had a TCP/IP book with him always, I thought it was born with him. Suresh had a book which said " Let us C", and I always thought what's there in it to see !!!!. Suresh would talk about pointers and functions and will coach Santhosh another room mate who was an REC pass out. Santhosh woke up in his eight semester, and suddenly realized that arrears are adding to the weight of the beer belly he had developed. So with a bunch of engineers, frustrated to the core about their peers who moved ahead in life, I started getting this whining habit. Whining about cabs, about food and what not. It's not just drowsiness that's contagious at a contact center , it's a lot more than that, negative influence is a close second.
The negative influences started pulling me down, the fear of Bush losing the elections in 2004 and Al Gore snatching the bread out of my mouth kept me awake. Most of the temples in Chennai, for the first time received offerings under the name George W Bush !!!!. As time went by and my graduation got completed, I started whining a lot more, forgetting the fact that this was the place I was really happy, the place where I always wanted to me.
With the degree cert adding to the already dormant venom injected by the wannabe geeks, I started jumping jobs. Landed up in another IT giant, was a postmaster there, though I actually realized it after intervention from a friend of mine, who quit and joined another IT giant to become a storekeeper (Asset Management Analyst) I was actually happy logging tickets and passing it on to support groups and the sudden flash of me being a post master made the whole job uncool, jumped again and joined a BPO major only to realize that I was an English teacher, anyways greed never ended till I understood the fact that 90% of the industry is about excelling in excel, adding power to power point and last but not least being excellent in English. Now I have figured out that to stop quitting jobs, I need to wipe out the Einsteins image that I had for myself. IT is more of dish washing, it's not a land of creativity unless you have a different definition for being creative !!!.
Anyways Suresh and Jaison would have this conversation daily on how to move ahead in life. At 11:00 am in the morning, I could here them preparing for glory, Jaison had a TCP/IP book with him always, I thought it was born with him. Suresh had a book which said " Let us C", and I always thought what's there in it to see !!!!. Suresh would talk about pointers and functions and will coach Santhosh another room mate who was an REC pass out. Santhosh woke up in his eight semester, and suddenly realized that arrears are adding to the weight of the beer belly he had developed. So with a bunch of engineers, frustrated to the core about their peers who moved ahead in life, I started getting this whining habit. Whining about cabs, about food and what not. It's not just drowsiness that's contagious at a contact center , it's a lot more than that, negative influence is a close second.
The negative influences started pulling me down, the fear of Bush losing the elections in 2004 and Al Gore snatching the bread out of my mouth kept me awake. Most of the temples in Chennai, for the first time received offerings under the name George W Bush !!!!. As time went by and my graduation got completed, I started whining a lot more, forgetting the fact that this was the place I was really happy, the place where I always wanted to me.
With the degree cert adding to the already dormant venom injected by the wannabe geeks, I started jumping jobs. Landed up in another IT giant, was a postmaster there, though I actually realized it after intervention from a friend of mine, who quit and joined another IT giant to become a storekeeper (Asset Management Analyst) I was actually happy logging tickets and passing it on to support groups and the sudden flash of me being a post master made the whole job uncool, jumped again and joined a BPO major only to realize that I was an English teacher, anyways greed never ended till I understood the fact that 90% of the industry is about excelling in excel, adding power to power point and last but not least being excellent in English. Now I have figured out that to stop quitting jobs, I need to wipe out the Einsteins image that I had for myself. IT is more of dish washing, it's not a land of creativity unless you have a different definition for being creative !!!.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Where it Started !!!!!!
Introducing myself in the training room, I realized the fact that I was the only non engineer, non graduate, selected for Dell technical support.Dell was supposedly tough, were people resign, kind of Guantanamo bay was drawn in the minds of everyone, before even we started. I had nothing to loose, cause getting kicked out from Dell would mean moving into a non tech, customer support job, even that's not a bad deal, all that mattered is 200 dollars a month.
Sitting next to me was Mr. Kiran, whose engineering degree came along with a Doctorate, cause the university thought Seven years, is a long time. I had a lot of women, around me, no one dare call them chicks. They always had this "why am I here" look on their face, a look which is a mixture of desperation, jealousy and disappointment. Most of them had long hair, wore spectacles, smelled of some oil and most importantly never looked as if they lived. I thought, that the only thing that would get them to an orgasm would be a block of code getting executed without errors. Most of them solved puzzles about trains running into each other, problems which always spoke about the age of Ramu and Shyamu (some stupid ids I thought), their relationship with each other etc. Infosys another giant hired people who could solve them, so they prayed at the Shakuntala Devi temple all day. TCS, Infosys and CTS seemed to be the only places they wanted to go to, they wouldn't even want to go back home.
Anyways, sitting there in a corner, I knew that headphones is the only way and I had to focus.Without a Graduation, without a family, 200 dollars a month seemed to be huge and I respected it by all means. Being an employee in Tidal park made you one among the elite(Tidal park was kind of Chennai's wall street ), but inside the Tidal park, I felt our employees were just above the Janitors. Yeah, we came when people left, we brushed our teeth and hit the toilet when everyone watched soaps on television and gulped down their dinner. Everything was upside down.
One good thing about India or the society here is the fact that anywhere you go there are classes. In IT we have the Brahman's ( The Priests, closest one to the gods), Kshatriya's ( The warlords), Vysya ( Businessmen, money lenders) and the Shudras ( Janitors, Scavengers etc.), I cracked it within a week. I knew that I would be a part of the lowest stack, cause BPO's figured out to be there. Because working in a call center is marginally above being an actual call girl or a Gigolo.(Apply for a Credit card, you would get where am coming from). The Vysyas were the IT support guys, yeah the ones who fixed desktop's, ran around with Lan cables and also don't forget the System/ Exchange admins. The warlords were Project Managers,Testers,Quality guys etc. The top brass obviously were the developers, R&D team, they would punch in their cards @ the smoking zone and pee @ the desk.
So the first workplace turned out to be an office were everything other than me and the furniture changed once in six weeks.Where everyone thought that they are made for salvation through writing codes or administering databases. I was the deaf frog, just had to go on, cause I liked the company, for them all that mattered was the guy, and the only question asked was, are you capable or not.Picking my first call, was an experience, I would compare to my first kiss, that feel is still there, fixing some ones desktop over the phone was the coolest thing I ever thought I would do. At least, I had a desk to sit, was in an air conditioned office, was picked up an dropped back, was respected for my contributions, looking at it from a retrospective stand point I was the happiest man on earth!!!!!
Sitting next to me was Mr. Kiran, whose engineering degree came along with a Doctorate, cause the university thought Seven years, is a long time. I had a lot of women, around me, no one dare call them chicks. They always had this "why am I here" look on their face, a look which is a mixture of desperation, jealousy and disappointment. Most of them had long hair, wore spectacles, smelled of some oil and most importantly never looked as if they lived. I thought, that the only thing that would get them to an orgasm would be a block of code getting executed without errors. Most of them solved puzzles about trains running into each other, problems which always spoke about the age of Ramu and Shyamu (some stupid ids I thought), their relationship with each other etc. Infosys another giant hired people who could solve them, so they prayed at the Shakuntala Devi temple all day. TCS, Infosys and CTS seemed to be the only places they wanted to go to, they wouldn't even want to go back home.
Anyways, sitting there in a corner, I knew that headphones is the only way and I had to focus.Without a Graduation, without a family, 200 dollars a month seemed to be huge and I respected it by all means. Being an employee in Tidal park made you one among the elite(Tidal park was kind of Chennai's wall street ), but inside the Tidal park, I felt our employees were just above the Janitors. Yeah, we came when people left, we brushed our teeth and hit the toilet when everyone watched soaps on television and gulped down their dinner. Everything was upside down.
One good thing about India or the society here is the fact that anywhere you go there are classes. In IT we have the Brahman's ( The Priests, closest one to the gods), Kshatriya's ( The warlords), Vysya ( Businessmen, money lenders) and the Shudras ( Janitors, Scavengers etc.), I cracked it within a week. I knew that I would be a part of the lowest stack, cause BPO's figured out to be there. Because working in a call center is marginally above being an actual call girl or a Gigolo.(Apply for a Credit card, you would get where am coming from). The Vysyas were the IT support guys, yeah the ones who fixed desktop's, ran around with Lan cables and also don't forget the System/ Exchange admins. The warlords were Project Managers,Testers,Quality guys etc. The top brass obviously were the developers, R&D team, they would punch in their cards @ the smoking zone and pee @ the desk.
So the first workplace turned out to be an office were everything other than me and the furniture changed once in six weeks.Where everyone thought that they are made for salvation through writing codes or administering databases. I was the deaf frog, just had to go on, cause I liked the company, for them all that mattered was the guy, and the only question asked was, are you capable or not.Picking my first call, was an experience, I would compare to my first kiss, that feel is still there, fixing some ones desktop over the phone was the coolest thing I ever thought I would do. At least, I had a desk to sit, was in an air conditioned office, was picked up an dropped back, was respected for my contributions, looking at it from a retrospective stand point I was the happiest man on earth!!!!!
Monday, September 20, 2010
Am I adding Value !!!!
Hey, That's a question that must have haunted some of us, or at least a question we thought is worth asking at the initial phase of the career.A question which always hanged out from the beard of a yogi, a question always passed around as philosophical one. A question that pinched some of us while walking to the bus stop, with that I pod plugged in, deep into the ears, ear's that's stopped listening to our inner self. The question has a problem, quite a genuine one though, like all the questions we had, it loses it's value as we mature, mature in the sense when we get in sync with our colleagues, who have home loans and troublesome kids to take care, when we are in sync with the presentations that would depict everything on the earth in three colors, Green - Happiness, Orange -- I am Living it out and Red -- Death is coming :). Who has time to add value @ work when your wife is pregnant, petrol is touching sixty and Ohio is banning labor coming to India!!!!.
But I am sure the question rings up a lot of minds and that's why the world is moving on, being in a 1000 dollar a month support job, talking about value is as ironical as President Bush preaching peace, while Iraq was getting blown into smithereens.Adding value need not be inventing something new, it could be a simple change in the way we do the job, might be by making a field in a CRM tool mandatory, which never gets filled and thus delays the processing of customer orders. By removing a bit of waste on a daily basis, we could add value. Am I talking Lean, quality philosophy, no, no ways, Lean is after a certain level of understanding of our own job, after we know to do it right and then we search for smarter ways to do it. Not before that, cause before that Quality methodologies will be as cold as the conference rooms where we took a nap, while these were getting pushed on us.
Thinking about value, one question that would make the term "value" a much more lay man friendly term is when we think about the end customer, he could be internal, external, nocturnal or what not. If we could talk to him on what he think will make life better, that will add a lot of value, assumption is the mother of all "Ups ". In this short span, I would have seen projects worth hundreds of thousands of dollars going into the drains , cause they were built around an imaginary customer, wearing a Gucci, smoking Cuban cigars, with blonds around him, where in the actual customer was an accountant sitting on a pile of files covered with dust and dirt.
I am a mazdoor myself, I do not deny it by any chance, I am paid to dance and so will I, if it's salsa I need to learn it, might be Bharathanatyam is all I know. But then adding value is no choice, you can't compromise on that, cause We spend two hours traveling to work, an hour getting ready for it, half an hour to an hour undressing and getting out of it and those nine long hours that keeps the digestive and the economic system alive, we spend those @ work. In short close to 75% of the time we are awake, we are doing something related to work, could we let it go under the carpet, when we insist that life has to give you a sense of achievement, could we actually remove these long hours and then look at life, what do we have left in that case. Might be it's not the way everyone looks at it, but then it's a good way to look at it, cause out of 10 things we do at work today only two or three must be existing down the lane a year, otherwise you are not just screwing your life, you are adding a lot of crap for someone filling in your shoes !!!!!!
But I am sure the question rings up a lot of minds and that's why the world is moving on, being in a 1000 dollar a month support job, talking about value is as ironical as President Bush preaching peace, while Iraq was getting blown into smithereens.Adding value need not be inventing something new, it could be a simple change in the way we do the job, might be by making a field in a CRM tool mandatory, which never gets filled and thus delays the processing of customer orders. By removing a bit of waste on a daily basis, we could add value. Am I talking Lean, quality philosophy, no, no ways, Lean is after a certain level of understanding of our own job, after we know to do it right and then we search for smarter ways to do it. Not before that, cause before that Quality methodologies will be as cold as the conference rooms where we took a nap, while these were getting pushed on us.
Thinking about value, one question that would make the term "value" a much more lay man friendly term is when we think about the end customer, he could be internal, external, nocturnal or what not. If we could talk to him on what he think will make life better, that will add a lot of value, assumption is the mother of all "Ups ". In this short span, I would have seen projects worth hundreds of thousands of dollars going into the drains , cause they were built around an imaginary customer, wearing a Gucci, smoking Cuban cigars, with blonds around him, where in the actual customer was an accountant sitting on a pile of files covered with dust and dirt.
I am a mazdoor myself, I do not deny it by any chance, I am paid to dance and so will I, if it's salsa I need to learn it, might be Bharathanatyam is all I know. But then adding value is no choice, you can't compromise on that, cause We spend two hours traveling to work, an hour getting ready for it, half an hour to an hour undressing and getting out of it and those nine long hours that keeps the digestive and the economic system alive, we spend those @ work. In short close to 75% of the time we are awake, we are doing something related to work, could we let it go under the carpet, when we insist that life has to give you a sense of achievement, could we actually remove these long hours and then look at life, what do we have left in that case. Might be it's not the way everyone looks at it, but then it's a good way to look at it, cause out of 10 things we do at work today only two or three must be existing down the lane a year, otherwise you are not just screwing your life, you are adding a lot of crap for someone filling in your shoes !!!!!!
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