Even to this day I, Yours Truly, cannot for sure say if I, much like an itinerant happy-go-lucky software engineer, was good at software coding or programming. Indeed, I was content with the outcome of my software engineering efforts, but could I consider myself fortunate to be a happy-go-lucky software engineer in the first place? I guess I just couldn’t say for sure. Do let me offer an explanation…
I was not good at anything that even remotely suggested coding software or building programs that had changed the way we deal with the world today if you know what I mean. However, the desire to “work and earn a living” seemed hard-pressed against my soul’s inner longing for 'spacious distance' and 'peace' even as I seesawed between regular whimpering thuds on the firm ground and software engineering balderdash sending conflicting fireworks to my brain and crashing out loud.
Okay okay now, I concur that balderdash is probably not the word I should be using because once upon a time it was this software engineering thing that had given me my bread, butter, and brown toast on my supper table, and my fledgling career its much-needed foundation, so, therefore, I rollback that word in right earnest.
Designing software applications weren’t really my kind of stuff. But requirements gathering for the proposed business solution offerings, including devising customized plans and strategies; (maybe even) corporate sales; or application deployment, were slightly more interesting and far more intriguing to work on than the mundane stand-alone coding part of the job. Conversely, I was even prepared to take up the whole business of software programming job on a war footing. Uh Uh! Now that’s really something I have just said, a contrarian viewpoint. If you are thinking that I have gone nuts, well, I, beyond any doubt, have gone even past that! I mean, what else could I do as a confused young software programmer?
Whether I like it or not, I needed to pull myself together and become, as they say, a man of honour and do what I am supposed to do: program or write bug-free codes that work out the functionality. So, as a mark of deep respect to the comrades I hung out with, I acquiesced.
As part of my ‘professional practice’ - a brainchild of my alma mater, I’d had a brief stint as a software engineer at an upstart IT organization by the name of Segorsoft. Back in the year 1997, every firm worth its salt (of TATA or anything, preferably iodized) was an upstart firm and so this company too was one such upstart thing. Writing truckloads of software codes using an archaic Delphi and a hot-and-happening Visual Basic (VB) as a haranguing set of front-end programming tools for you to live your life on, and never mind an old-fashioned Interbase edition for a back-end database support thrown-in that I was entrusted with became a regular fixture on my office itinerary.
To some extent I enjoyed doing what I did and I rather wouldn’t categorize myself as revolutionary software kiddo, never have been one, never liked to be one, I wanted to drop everything and just disappear from the software coding scene. But things weren't so natural then as it is now. The fact that I had already smelt a rat in my dire-straits type of situation couldn’t speak up for itself and I kind of imploded within. There were other people who felt the same yet preferred staying confused and lost like me; probably sticking around to catch something good in the future. We hoped the ‘future’ that we talked about will come by and throw a glance at us and take us along to wherever it wanted us to be.
The fact is: it was not about the company I worked with per se, it was about my inner calling. It was also about the brainless chap, of the rank of a project manager no less; the one who held the reins of the ambitious Hospital Management project. All this had eventually become a big drawback, a ghastly let-down of a situation for my young self to go with the flow (of things) at the workplace. Obviously, we bitterly despised this rabid individual for his crotchety ways and it was him alone that was part of the reason we wanted to opt out of the project and quit the darn job too. Problem solved! But no, we didn't do that.
The Fad of Being a Software Engineer
Stuff like Stored Procedures, Database Calling, and Bug Fixing became the order of the day. On most days I survived on creating complex Stored Procedures – not without sweating like a pig. My palms getting reddish, my face flushed and my head feverish; my fingertips ached like a million needles pricking them; my back ached like an abundantly overused Pony; my head grumbled even as I felt like a burnt Sienna! Simply put, software engineering seemed to be my cup of woes, but not Tea!
The software codes I produced sometimes remained in “cold storage” – an "icy stockpiling" my partner at work had reiterated that so nicely once – until called upon to get them a proper usage somewhere within the lines of codes, again without much horse sense if you ask me, and oftentimes they were belligerently appended like quick-fix appendages to other software codes languishing elsewhere within the recesses of my computer or on our escapist dullard project manager's system. I don’t know how many zillion times have I hit the poor ‘Backspace’ key on the keyboard of my life to erase or eradicate my own source codes and make amends to come up with better codes, which almost always used to give up on me like a Gone Case! Yet I lumbered along solely to be able to learn something good out of these professional exertions and as fast as I could muster.
Afterward, call it God’s effortless grace or call it plain dumb luck, I took to using Delphi most of the time at the company as a proverbial duck takes to the pond. VB came later. And as anyone might expect, I liked Delphi better than VB. Not surprisingly, Delphi had caught my fancy big time!
Thus, I managed to code a lifetime's worth of software codes, using them the way it was required to be used. Always at the behest of our so-called project manager. I slowly began to chuck out irrelevant codes that were plain unworthy to be used and started using those ones which significantly made a difference. How could all these come about? Well, when you’ve great co-partners like Sitaram B. and Karthik Krishna to help you restore confidence in yourself, you never will slouch or take it easy from having to keep writing loads of software codes; besides not to mention the mortal fear of Kick-Ass HR Policy that hustles you no end also helps keep you from floundering without a fight.
Unfortunately, as if the gods were in a comical mood when it genuinely mattered to have a qualified mentor well-conversant in software technicalities and the works, our manager turned out to be a worthless and incompetent fellow that we had had to put up with on a daily basis. An escaped convict…that’s what he ever managed to look to me and my precocious partner Sitaram. One is not really sorry to say that upfront.
Our expectations from a manager, who at best could become not only an able mentor but also a capable guide, were nipped in the bud as he was the person unfit to be a manager. We were bedraggled with vicious thoughts taking great leap-frogs in our young minds to have some great black hairy bull gore him to long-lasting debarment or incapacitation!
Sitaram and I hardly ever bothered to “interface” with TP Cheddi unless it became really necessary for us to do so during office hours. It was of absolutely no use to work with this ‘TP’ of a person. If truth be told, Sitaram would go ahead with his steely resolve and perform all the tasks himself without much botheration as to whether or not his work needs to be done at all or done differently to appease TP’s cunning ego; he bashed on, regardless. Since he was good at programming he almost always got everything correct; there was no room for misinterpretations or errors anywhere, rarely ever, for our project manager to pick. Such was Sitaram’s positive nature at work and he excelled at it.
As for this hack who called himself ‘project manager’ (read Task Supervisor!), Sitaram had one perfect retort: Go Take a Dump, You Filthy Animal! We never said that on his face, for that would be tantamount to unprofessional conduct. We said it from a safe distance away. But we knew our project manager’s unnecessary ways: He was a professional debunker of responsibilities, an escapist dud to know real programming standards. We didn’t know how or who at Segorsoft had appointed an irritating hack like TP Cheddi, a useless douchebag, as a project manager in the first place. Sitaram used to say that TP Cheddi was merely a “Show put-up” for the company’s lack of good HR skills. Sitaram was right about that.
We found ourselves constantly flummoxed by his uselessness in everything he attempted to do! His coding or programming skills were bogus and equaled a big ZERO.
Ask him anything and he’d squeak: “Why? You don’t know?” One felt like slapping him across his pot-holed, pock-marked face and making him see the reason "why" and why we "don’t know"! None of us slapped him though, because our sense of professionalism was paramount to us and it was best to avoid such ugly primitive people of no use and get on with their work or whatever they did to survive in their profession.
TP Cheddi’s daily job was to simply sit with an equally dumb girl on his left side and keep a gaping eye on the computer screen without anything going into their desolated unconcerned pair of heads! There were jingoistic nonsense pals of his who believed only in trial-and-error methods (they call it ‘R&D strategy’) - real stuff of programming was sluggish turtles at best - that used to leave them completely high-and-dry, with nothing substantial (not even half an inch of code) coming out of their useless exertions all throughout the day. They were an intolerably slow, futile, and uncreative pack of damp squibs eking out a living from a fledgling IT company.
Good communication skills were not their cup of tea either; they believed in excommunicating you out of the whole software programming business the company was striving to undertake. They were really jealous scoffers, mocking, biased, and a sneering bunch of muggers. Out of this entire misogynist lot, TP Cheddi was the prima donna of a fornicating hack resembling a wolfish ant-eating Badger, and this guy was known to be forever irritated with himself and the other individuals that were plain unlucky to be interacting with him. That is to say, how idiotic, how third-rate, or how lowly an individual can be. If there was one, then TP Cheddi was the ultimate one!
As a fledgling software firm, Segorsoft was no doubt in good stead with added contributions coming from its handful of good IT professionals. However, the company was not a performing asset yet; maybe that wasn’t a matter of immediate concern for the gentlemanly flamboyant MD of the company, but the man had invested well in some people like us to contribute their software skills and hopefully earn profits from that will also catapult his company in good stead.
But really, what was eating it from inside like insect-eating larvae were the company’s own buffoonish IT recruits who used to get a kick out of the chance to call themselves software programmers. TP Cheddi, in spite of being the top-rung counterfeit, had managed to survive for a long time in the company, stage-managing his ways by God only knows how. Fortunately for Segorsoft, some of the folks were somehow good at the job of coding or programming. But others – a good many of them – were a bunch of time-passing good-for-nothing slacks with no proper IT or communication skills!
If there were a Backspace or a Del key to delete our worthless sorry-ass Project Manager TP Cheddi, we’d have had absolutely no qualms hitting it and hitting it hard enough to pop all the keys out of his goddamn keyboard and stuffing them into his mouth! But alas! Tsk-Tsk! There isn’t any such key to delete freaking idiots like TP Cheddi.
End of part 1 of ‘Confessions of a Young Software Engineer.’
By Arindam Moulick
- Written September 2013
- This article is warmly dedicated to my long-lost friends Sitaram and Late Karthik.
