Confessions of a Young Software Engineer, Part 2

Since Segorsoft (name changed) was an upstart IT company, there was an inarguable necessity for us to have at the helm of project affairs someone with fine leadership and great interpersonal skills - the one that showed general proficiency in the pursuit of developing great software while also leading a team of young software programmers. But that was not to be and a timid-looking scamp like TP Cheddi was most certainly not up to such a challenge.

Let me explain further and please I don't expect myself to be cute with this story...

TP Cheddi in his ‘leadership role’ as a so-called project manager at Segorsoft came as a cropper right from the start! He was an unmitigated disaster, to say the very least of the abject situation we found ourselves in. Cheddi was a typical case of one bad apple spoiling the whole bunch (from the heap of rarely good ones though at Segarsoft). He was unfit to be anything of the sort that he was made out to be at the workplace. He was an accomplished failure and his level of skills was a damp squib. But it seems that nobody realized that for a reason except us.

We folks at Segorsoft liked to believe that we were not just another software firm as most firms would naturally do; in fact, in many ways than one, and apart from the fact that we were harnessing talent on a scale that was on par with other reputably known firms in the city, we were expanding our horizons and carried out projects for both private and government companies and brought them to successful fruition.

As an upstart IT organization, our skilled workforce had just the right perspective to achieve what we wanted to achieve, and we were one of the early torch-bearers of raw software talent in the promising new field of the Indian IT Industry in the South. That was a great advantage for Segarsoft as an IT company and luckily they did not squander the opportunity away. The "gentlemanly flamboyant" MD of the company saw to it that we were always on the right track and things were happening fast and bright.

But what he didn't even know was that we had someone like TP Cheddi at the hustings to make matters worse. He was a portable disaster on the verge of turning into something of a terrible doppelganger on the various projects we were working on. Even as an individual, he failed miserably in our young and observant eyes; he could never live up to our raw expectations and knowledge-seeking power we had. TP Cheddi just couldn’t handle it. He continued to remain wet behind the ears, never looking to improve his condescending mindset which - in spite of him being highly unworthy to be a leader - smacked an unmistakable holier-than-thou attitude. He looked like an inexperienced hoodwink, grim-faced and tired from waging his own nuisance battles against software engineers who abhorred him on his face. Still, a dog’s tail remains twisted no matter how many times you try it’s never going to be straight! One wonders how such a 'project manager' ultimately survives in an organization that believes in extracting positive work from its employees. It was really a mystery.

Our numerous ‘inquiries,’ ‘errors,’ ‘doubts,’ and 'code corrections’ were never answered to our satisfaction. Quite frustratingly, we either had to look through big fat reference books or perform the ‘trial and error’ or ‘R&D method’ that even some project managers with some real-time experience worth their salt had openly espoused.

A project manager is supposed to help you when you get stuck with something or not being able to work out the problem; that it’s almost a given considering young people do end up asking a lot of questions, after all, don’t they? But to this dick-head scalawag, it never occurred to him to think it properly through and come up trumps to succeed in the tasks at hand. Apparently, that was not his problem!

Throughout our tenure at Segorsoft, TP Cheddi came across as an abnormal and frustrating chap that knew no social skills even, let alone talk about his software skills. After a point, we couldn't bother ourselves communicating with this stinking toilette Goo because it was simply such a waste of time in the fetid commode of his association! So we opted out.

Getting our goose cooked!

That day just within a few hours on the first day of the new project, this writer Yours Truly, and his partners/friends Sitaram and Karthik had become enormously disappointed when it was announced that the hell-hole TP Cheddi was going to be, like it or not, our project manager! Of all people!

Sitaram held his head in the palm of his hands, found a chair, and bent over. He became totally distressed while Yours Truly frowned to the point of banging his head on the nearest wall or whatever was available to bang his head on. Karthik appeared to be positively stoned as he couldn’t believe what his ears have just heard!

We were fairly motivated young professionals no doubt and had plenty of dreams to fulfill, but frankly speaking, having a project manager whose I.Q. can only be equivalent to a bus conductor or a Kirana-shop bandicoot, a humungous drag passing for a project manager came as a real shock! TP Cheddi as our team’s project manager was a big let-down; certainly a stumbling block for our aspirations to take flight.

We worked on a hospital management project for a super-specialty hospital client, which took over 6 months of hard slog to complete the entire project successfully. After we finished, the bus conductor… err…project manager sensed that Yours Truly could be ‘pushed’ to do the job of “deployment” on the client’s computer system. Yours Truly was up and ready to perform the task in spite of the bad feeling that was left in his mouth about being ‘pushed’ and all. Software engineers like us whenever required are supposed to consign ourselves to such menial tasks as well; many a time without prior intimation to the concerned engineer which ultimately makes it uselessly demanding for him to agree and execute the assignment on hand.

Uploading the finished software product into the client’s computer system was no problem at all, but the task itself sounds menial and unimportant when there’s no definitive timetable or precise planning as to when and where it should get done and how to go about it. Simply demanding to “do it today” was downright insulting and disrespectful to the employee concerned. And when a mentally-inept project manager is at the helm of affairs, the task of software deployment howsoever good it may sound to you, offered nothing of inspiration or interest when that person was around to wipe out the enthusiasm.

Software professionals would like all technical tasks to be taken into account and potentially linked to their annual performance index. That never happened. Nobody seemed to have got the idea that all tasks, whether small or menial, can and should be taken into proper account and serially documented. But they only cared about major job responsibilities and nothing else mattered to them (even if the task was supposedly menial as working on developing the functionality for just 30 mins only), at least to TP Cheddi that is. We believed that in an IT organization, especially an upstart like ours, every piece of work should get accounted for and your reporting manager should know first-hand about it all.

Bakhras for slaughtering!

How does it sound to you if you are asked to pillion ride on your project manager’s bike and travel all the way to the client’s place to upload the software application and while coming on the way back to the office entering into a cloth showroom and buying cloth material and cut-pieces for his new shirts and pants?! All this occurs as per your project manager’s express wish – without even a single word of appreciation or prep talk coming in your favour when the job was done. Who bothers! Did he ever bother him? Never did.

Some of the other Bakhras like us were always available for such slaughtering business! Catching one was never a problem! Put their jobs on the line and you have them tamed and their goose cooked!

I confess: customized software applications development got my goose thoroughly cooked! In the months after they promoted me for what I accomplished for them and before I finally made my mind up to get out of my somewhat brooding mode and TP Cheddi’s crooked, disgraceful attitude, I took charge of supervising software applications myself. I took over handling client sessions, business analysis, overall project management & intelligence solutions, and other consulting tasks. Otherwise, you see, I was certainly destined to suffer from an adrenal burn-out.

Afterward, Cheddi was blotted out of my mind and was ancient history - a history that won't appear in any archaeological surveys conducted by man or Superman.

Bamboozling IT Market!

Life was seemingly good until I decided to get into the raw deal of software engineering. Little did I know that coding is the most intrinsic part of being a software professional, not to forget the unceasing hubbub of new updates and in-vogue technological tools that a software guy is expected to bearably keep up with, in the race to seek out the ‘latest software’ editions in the already bamboozling IT market. Screams, howls, and shrieks as in “Oh!-My-God!” or “I-won’t-be-able-to-do-that” or “This completely sucks!” don’t figure in a software engineer’s dictionary. It’s totally blasphemous or suggestive of being a kaam-chor (escapist) if they do!

Learning new tools and experimenting with new usages was a nuisance for lesser mortals like us to scrape around and make a respectful living. I wanted out from what seemed like a defiant invasion of my privacy and lifestyle breakdown concerns. Needless to say, within a short period of time of my foray into so-called software development, several things at once began to cripple me, asphyxiate me and I wanted out at all cost. Personally speaking, it didn’t matter anymore for Cheddi if I paused and thought it all through one last time before I made a permanent exit from the not-so-hunky-dory world of IT at Segorsoft. To be frank, I wouldn’t even bother to think of him as some like-minded concerned type. He clearly wasn’t that kind of an individual. Caring or advising was not one of his strengths, not even by mistake could he bring himself to care. Never was he known to be a proper IT professional. A pathetic rat-assed mongrel he was; always have been distrustful, sarcastic, cheap, and uselessly tacky!

Thinking that software programming is for so-called ‘nerds’ and not the 'territory' for alternative career-seekers like me, Yours Truly could not ever give up on his hard-earned laurels. It was damn hard not to get attracted to the glamorous world of software engineering or look the other way when you know that people around you are getting better and better at it. Therefore, would it be sacrilegious of Yours Truly to contemplate such an impractical idea of his that only means to desert everything related to IT and walk away? Possibly. Possibly not. Who knows? Do you know?

Being a software programmer means – Yours Truly had gradually realized to his great heart throbbing misery (yeah, nothing less than that) – having to consciously have a crack at learning new software technological gobbledygook year after year. Or otherwise, if learning new technologies isn't your cup of noodles (not Tea) then soon it will be tantamount to professional stagnation - and not to speak of personal mortification that comes off you like old cracked chips as an itinerant side effect! You are caught between a rock and a hard place! Neither here nor there! Dangling in the balance sheet of life! Dhobi ka kutta na ghar ka na ghaat ka! And so on and so forth.

Giving up the ghost of learning new software programming tools sure comes as a big relief to some but for some others, it becomes a necessary evil thing to keep one's job in the IT sector intact. But folks, let that exclusive story spool out later when the time's right and the lucky stars in their heavenly stardom above are set in their rightful astrological positions (excuse my little predilections here please!); only then will I be able to tell you, my dear friend, what it takes to be a young much-harangued software engineer in a world that is increasingly becoming weird and funny at the same time. A world that bamboozles you to no end.

That story, as I said, will come up for consideration not now but later. As of now though, I say chaps, one is not in the mood to hang up one's boots!

End of part 2 of ‘Confessions of a Young Software Engineer.’

(To be concluded)

By Arindam Moulick

- Written September 2013

- Click here to go to part 1 of ‘Confessions of a Young Software Engineer’.

- This article is warmly dedicated to my long-lost friends Sitaram and Late Karthik.