Wolfish, Owlish, Devilish

Our Satyam Days, part III

Long gone are the nostalgic, golden days when I used to go to work at Satyam on Raj Bhavan Road. 

Mornings were so fresh and unhurried, work was interesting, and in the evenings, friends awaited me for tea or sometimes nothing. Lounging on velvet sofas or gravitating upwards onto the still-hot terrace one floor up or occasionally sitting on the compound wall outside in animated proximity under the inky blue starlit sky...

There will never be another era like that, and those friends will never return to the way it was because no one can. That time has passed. The terraces are empty, the compound walls remain abandoned, and the divan has become redundant furniture as friends have parted ways with silent tears. There's no breath of fresh air anymore anywhere. It'll never be the same again for anyone, ever.

Times have changed. Twenty-six years into the new millennium, those days will never return. Let me reminisce about the good old days once again and bask in the splendour of the former Satyam days. That's all I can think about these days. Life will take its toll. Time is unforgiving.

Last two years at Satyam, and exit

Things weren't so easy-going during my last two years at Satyam's STC, and after, I grudgingly relocated to the "fish market branch" in Vikrampuri.

Everybody here clamoured for work; umbrage-taking superiors were the prime delinquents, not to mention their stand-in hoagies or subordinates who liked tunnelling like pack rats under people's credible positions and reputations for their day-to-day survival in their jobs. Much to my terrible surprise, I could find very little reason to like working at the Vikrampuri branch; eventually, it made sense to me, oh God, why it was called the "fish market branch" and why I had to shift here.

While working at STC was not to my liking, the so-called strategic business unit I worked in caused me more emotional as well as physical distress than any positive impact I could have had on the career advancement that I was making on my manager. Besides that, I didn’t immediately know where my instinctive priorities lay regarding my professional progress — within the company before recognizing, much to my astonishment, that there wasn't any left I could contend with. That happened slowly, though. Reporting to a chronically indecisive super-manager, a slightly tipsy at that, was as embarrassing as it could be considering how enormously stagnated I felt in the year I was at STC and after. Devi and Suresh shifted to STC too and were on the same floor as me; that had an effect of salvation on me, as if nudging me to take some chill pill and go about my work, or else my ability to be an IT professional was, believe it or not, diminishing drastically and stupidly I was still none the wiser about the stark ludicrousness of it all. In such a woeful situation, what do people do? For heaven's sake, they offered resignation and looked for work elsewhere, but shamelessly, I didn’t. I came super close to doing it, but I didn’t.

Since Satyam was my first employer and I enjoyed working there, I hesitated to quit, deciding to hold off on resigning for another year. I thought, let's see what happens next.

In the meantime, I relocated to the Vikrampuri branch of Satyam, leaving Devi and Suresh and our joyful lunch, post-lunch walks, and coffee breaks at STC, not before realizing that I might have made a wrong judgment by moving here. I wanted a shift, and thus it followed; I can't possibly repent now. After I stopped taking the company shuttle to STC, I resumed using my private vehicle to get to work every day. The Vikrampuri branch was up ahead. Nonetheless, I instantly hoped that things would be facilitative at this branch so that I could work on the kinds of projects I could handle: that my new workspace, office branch, and assignment would allow me to work on the tasks I wanted to take on while keeping me relevant in an inherently tough, but also the increasingly unattractive, cut-throat world of IT software solutions and services.

Ironically, after having one of the most amazing experiences at the Raj Bhavan Road and STC office branches, I had the grungiest experience of my life at the Satyam branch in Vikrampuri. Even more than two decades afterward, I still regret why I made that unnecessary switch that I shouldn't have. Although it might seem unreasonable not to mention it here, regardless of that, I can't stop talking about it because this blog is about that wretched mistake I made. So there.

(Mandeep and Shiv had to leave our precious Raj Bhavan Road branch before clocking in nearly three years and two years of experience, respectively. Kavitha was the first to renounce her presumably first job. She decided that the U.S. was her calling; subordinating under a manager like GG would not provide her with any learning opportunities, but possibly gaining general Satyam experience might help her obtain a visa to that nation. She had worked that out well. She was walking, talking, breathing U.S., and rightly so. When you gotta go you gotta go. Why not!

Personally speaking, you must learn how to work or collaborate with others as well in order to grow in your career. While I was learning how to do that, I became aware that I was beginning to really miss my friends who had left Satyam, namely Mandeep, Shiv, Devi, Suresh, Revathy, Rafi, and, to some extent, Kavitha because she had moved on quite some time ago, and whose departure was too distant in the past, the first one to jump ship, before one's feelings for a co-worker would mean something to another colleague.)

+*+*+*+

Telling it like it is: At the Vikrampuri office branch — It was a veritable hellhole of hypersensitive egos and a cesspool of opportunistic cynics united in the godforsaken alienating cause of the be-all and end-all of program/project management and analytical computing, where hotdog intimidation and grandstanding behaviour primed up to outdo the cock and bull duels of toxic conflicts, schisms, cold wars, and hostile death-stares of the Upper Lot (read: top-tier executives) and the Lower Lot (read: subordinates) seething day after day, from sunrise to sunset, unabated. A constant shroud of darkness hovered over the business unit. I survived, God knows how, for a little more than a year here.

Egomaniacal, swelled heads were the swaggering show-offs that held the fort there. The GG of the Raj Bhavan Road branch was a pauper compared to the vicious pack that overran the Vikrampuri branch.

Even though it wasn't easy for me to put in my papers, I did it because I didn't want to overthink bitterly about quitting Satyam at that point in my life and live, in retrospect, to regret my decision if it comes to that end. Happily, it didn't come to that.

Most of the staff members at this branch, where I had the misfortune of working for a whole year before ultimately departing, were just plain irritating and obnoxious; they had a zilch sense of professional kinship or relatability and tended to be disagreeable and negative from the get-go, making you feel distressed and overly anxious about completing your daily tasks, let alone learning new things or getting new insights into technologies and processes.

In this mockumentary sitcom of an office, these managers (junior, senior, and everyone in between) openly promoted in-group cronyism and had the sharpest knives in their drawers. All they were steadfastly accountable for was making it possible for themselves to jump ship should the need arise. Like Aliens, as they show in Hollywood flicks, they exploit the company resources and relocate to greener pastures of IT positions, leaving a trail of broken promises in their wake. Such was the lot of your average cabal (of managers) in attendance at this aptly named 'fish market' office branch.

An apt slang phrase to describe these poor chaps is "jerks" — sad to say, that's just how they were. To put it mildly, the people I encountered here were utterly repulsive.

(To be continued…)

By Arindam Moulick

Postscript: Despite my aversion for the group of zombie managers I had to work with, I'm not looking to assign blame or minimize their already tattered reputations; by writing this article, I'm just trying to fairly and impartially present the facts as they were at the Vikrampuri branch.

Also published on Medium

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A Company Like No Other

Our Satyam Days, part II

Within a few days of joining Satyam, I realized the only private emotion I had been used to experiencing until the end of my university days was that I had all the time in the world. That progressively shifted to nearly no time after joining Satyam.

However, while in the throes of youth and young adulthood with the prospect of a job, things seemed to scroll by fast as events such as career pursuits, finding your calling, and earning a means of livelihood began to take shape in various moods and tones at a new-age IT workspace that demands 'continuous learning' and staying relevant — an epiphanic reality forever astride on the edge of time.

I had a lonely, optimistic sense that I hadn't expressed to anyone, which settled into my half-responsive self-introspections as my career started to take a, shall I say, significant shape on account of joining Satyam and stumbling upon some amazing friends there. I thought: college days were well and truly over, officially done, and I'm beginning anew right here, right now, so I should better equip myself for the long IT road ahead. Being hired by Satyam was most certainly a dream come true. And it was seriously wonderful.

At Satyam—the firm I still regard as the most beautiful, inspiring company I've ever worked for—things moved quickly and brightly. That is to say, before I graduated from qualifying as a software engineer and working for a year (essentially, professional practice) before joining Satyam, nothing about life, in general, felt even slightly surreal, and that is because when you start working for a living, you do get some things straight up front: The innocence of being a college goer gradually shrank as my professional life took me over that threshold; as though the proverbial teeny window of opportunity had been unlatched: when a future career in the software technology profession was within my grasp, I took it. And just as it happens, days went by from days to months to years.

Most of my colleagues at Satyam have done more or less similarly.

Things change, don’t they?

Nevertheless, I never liked playing the game of one-upmanship (read: office politics and other BS) at the workplace: Achieving hidden agendas or cultivating domineering habits that inevitably some people are quick to fall prey to, in my case (and of all my earnest colleagues) never held their aggressive claws onto my KRA bucket list. We were far too busy disentangling from our earlier lives to a new one that lay ahead like a burst of bright sunshine.

Throughout my years of experience, I've learned that if you run away from office politics—it exists virtually in almost every organization and is therefore inescapably unavoidable—you can use it to your advantage and still get your things done. You can't avoid workplace politics and its propagators entirely; certain people will always engage in it, something to do with the typical tendency of the personality traits in action that you cannot know when they get unleashed in climbing that corporate ladder, or to sneak into the good books of the boss or some such motivation. It's, therefore, time for you to become politically savvy and increase your political intelligence at the workplace while maintaining your inner conscience, which is also vital. Sometimes, nailing the zeitgeist with your sense of diplomatic optimism (my term: a side effect of MBA education, coupled with bathroom philosophy) yields nothing but positivity around your reputation at the workplace. It helps.

When you work for one of the most prestigious software development companies in town or probably the whole country, people with decent family pedigree do not like to brag or boast about their skill sets or abilities that can take your profession forward. Having a job was important, so I had it. Some goals were achieved, others were not, so what? You don't get everything in one fell swoop. Or do you? More importantly, I didn't let myself get bogged down by the TED-talking competitive types you continually encounter at organizations like the one I worked for. Yeah, Satyam had its share of bigmouth braggarts; our chief was one such inimical character full of bully juice while oozing charm and dreadful friendliness that provoked loathing reactions from us. Fortunately, Satyam only had a small number of these all-knowing narcissistic individuals we could handle — part of the job. Or keep them at bay by carrying out our work with responsible keenness and not letting anyone overwhelm us in any way. Our team of five did not have any of those overly competitive personalities except the Big Cheese autocrat, GG, who thought it was incumbent upon him to be gross. Minus him, life was beautiful in Satyam.

(However, things at Satyam were always exceptional that only a select few like us, of the late '90s era, could be fortunate enough to experience, thanks to my beloved colleagues like Mandeep, Devi, Shiv, Suresh, Revathi, Rafi, and other friends who made it a rejoicing part of life that never could be put out of heart or mind.

I confess, there was nothing like Satyam that came my way again. All those days of hard work and joy were never to return. With Satyam's debacle, everything was lost to us, for we lost our dear friends to the world outside, to the one we had not much known so well and how could we, and everybody went away looking for better prospects, becoming disinclined to return to our Satyam days. Ultimately, only the memory blossoms remained since).

+*+*+*+

Making noise about yourself will have the world lap you up. That's how the workplace atmosphere has come to be so. Making noise is used to express one's importance, often misplaced or misguided, in an office setting in the information technology (IT) industry, whose broad sweep of influence has taken the present world by storm, but our team and the others whom we knew by name at Satyam had zero aggressive behaviour, barring GG, who had a fixed-oriented, fetid mindset and was trying to construct his own self-serving Tower of Babel or the leaning Tower of Pisa, believing that nothing works or moves according to his wish if he is acting plain civil and gentlemanly towards his subordinates working under his leadership.

Or, as your superior might imply by saying, you don't exist if you've never made that noise or represented yourself enough day in and day out. And it entails, as these despotic types reiterate continuously and constantly, that it becomes a dirty reality breathing down your neck and, in the process, if you miss something that is being implied, severely undermining your professional abilities, skill sets, and other trained attributes that negatively influence your superiors to whom you have to report.

The whole fetish is about continually representing yourself in the office, from sunup to sunset, more and more often in the vain hope of being noticed for the work you deliver. The point here is to make a lot of noise amongst the noises to increase your chances of winning your reporting manager's favour; otherwise, you will fall behind the rat race and slowly get killed off as you fall victim to scapegoating, credit stealing, grudges or vendettas, and whatnot. Are all the cogs chasing the wheel? It seems so. That is how the tech industry operates today, contrary to what we experienced in the late nineties at Satyam.

+*+*+*+

It's not all rainbows and butterflies in the tech industry today. Year after year, the technology industry outlook always seems to be positive. Yes, but many years ago, our Satyam workplace was different as it was genuinely positive. We enjoyed being part of that pleasant IT scenario of the late '90s and after, where programming or coding was the heart and soul of software development. Satyam is gone now, and today, along the path of the Indian tech industry, which accounts for 7.5% of the country's GDP, the classic IT scenario has changed drastically as the onslaught of new technologies such as AI, Automation, Cloud, and software 2.0 have taken over the tech business market.

Today, the evolving digital tech 5G, for example, is at the edge. Driven by characteristics of "granularity, speed, and scale," the technological transformation will continue to accelerate; it will not stop, ever. Nothing of that sweet old pleasantness of job satisfaction exists today and perhaps will never from heretofore. Those old friends are lost; new friends are distracted and aloof, living their life in self-sufficient, family-first silos. Even they are fiercely driven to the point of shedding their blood to keep their job and earn their way up the ladder of success in a global economy that means serious business. In the fight to meet deadlines, the work-life balance often goes haywire. Most techies have a similar story to tell.

Today, if you work in an IT body shop with a gluttony of employees, you may fall victim to corporate cronyism or favouritism through no fault of yours. Shit happens; it's bound to. Not to mention that while you continually worry about what you could be lacking: Whether you are falling behind the times or becoming a sitting-duck target of partiality or favouritism, or the mid-level managers are stifling your opportunities for professional advancement by deferring income/financial fulfilment. It's not hard to pinpoint that which worries you. That is so significant to ponder upon. I'd think so. At the same time, underplaying yourself in a business-oriented organization is anathema to you, leaving you stranded between a rock and a hard place. You are in complete control of how you respond to it. Overall, it’s a melancholy fate you need to escape. But how?

At Satyam, I admit, we made GG-specific noises whenever necessary to better survive and grow our careers, careful not to tick him off. Dickhead managers often feel threatened by the awesomeness of junior employees, and in these situations, new joiners have little to no choice, you see. Much later in life, somebody remarked cynically, "You know, it's a lot of fun to work for a jerk!" Ahem…Ahem!

Nevertheless, we'd complete our tasks and go home smelling sweet like roses every day. That sweet, old pleasantness lingers like wonderful blossoms of sweet memories even to this day.

(To be continued…)

By Arindam Moulick

Also published on Medium

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