A sharp pain along the side of my ribs forced me back into reality. Still half asleep I managed to open those dry eyes and found a pair of craft scissors lying near me on the bed.

How dare it break my state of dreams ! and how did it get here?  Then I saw a roll of brown tape and remembered that this must be from last night when I was patching up an envelope which had become torn at the edges.

I sat up and hit the button on my phone; it lit up and said Monday. Oh god damn it, why a Monday ? I sat up cursing the heavens and glanced up at 'her' half of the bed. Instead of her I found these :
1) Two books by Robert Galbraith
2) A diary, a laptop and a hard drive stacked neatly one atop the other.
3) Stapler
4) Torn corner from a pack of Lays potato chips
5) Pamphlet from a nearby food store which read free home delivery in bold
6) Many ATM receipts
7) Half eaten pack of biscuits which was all soggy because of the moisture from the rain a few days back.
8) and a jungle of wires from 3 kinds of chargers, a headphone, a wired mouse and a set of 2.1 speaker system

I was just about to decide what do do with all this rubbish when suddenly the phone rang and brought a smile to my face. Its was her !

Her: Hey you
Me : Morning

Her: Did you just wake up, its 9.30 !
Me: As usual

Her: You never learn
Me: I gotta reach office, cant miss a single day; gotta save all that vacation time for when I come.

Her: Yeah I know. When its time and you do come ; bring along that book we chose together without fail.
Me: Yep, got it right here next me me on the bed. Call you after lunch. Bye

I picked it up from among other items and it made me smile because the baby's face on the 'baby record book' is kinda cute !

True story.

Place : Pune

Found this in my inbox recently :



Its been 7 years since I started out as a IT professional. After a spending considerable time taking interviews and finding more and more amusing characters I had been of the opinion that its just people who are stupid and may be the gods of luck have kept them alive. I've never been so wrong.

Now I sit here like an idiot speculating the possibility how many of those had taken the services of Mr P here. No wonder some one with 5 years in the industry could not answer a basic question.

I must say I'm quite amused.  Indians surely do know how to exploit a basic requirement of job hopping in IT and make a business model out of it.

There is more talent in our country than a hundred of the business schools in the world put together.

Chapter 1

I had been waiting for her for quite some time now.
She asks how my day has been. I say nothing but smile.
She collects her stuff; her shift is over.
I gather my stuff, what I had been waiting for is now with me.
I get out; she follows.
We walk to the parking lot.
She puts on her leather jacket, I fit into my hoodie. It is chilly.
She gets into her Volkswagen Passat; I hunt for a precious thing in my bag
She puts on loud music; I find the piece of paper
She fires up the engine, I pull out a pen.
She screeches to a start; I fill in the usual fare on the taxi receipt.
She disappears; I think about submitting fake bills to claim real pounds, cha-ching!!

Place: ASDA-Walmart cash counter.
Time: Irrelevant.

An excerpt from a chat with a friend who happens to be a DBA on the occasion of us completing 4 years as IT Donkeys :)

Participants:

-------------

Me, Maddy

Messages:

---------

Maddy: gj

Me: Ladke

Maddy: bol bhai

Me: Kuch nai

Me: Sala 4 saal ho gaye

Maddy: haan yaar...

Maddy: buddha ho gaya

Maddy: aur abhi bhi mereko kuch nahi aata :D

Me: Hahaa

Me: I've learned some things

Me: Like how to handle ppl/ manager

Me: How to idiot banao them also

Maddy: he he

Me: In short, the 1st chapter of office politics

Maddy: sometimes i feel why do we get paid so much to run some queries... me alters and u selects :D then i realize these bloody companies charge billions of dollars to client for this service and we actually end up with peanuts

Me: True

Me: Man this chat is so going into my blog :)

Maddy: abhi mera case lelo... i am here for L3 kt tasks

Me: Ok

Maddy: once transferred some of the guys here will leave 80 euros per hour wala project and we'll do L3 and what do we get paid for that

Maddy: GHANTA

Maddy: :)

Me: That's the industry I believe

Maddy: yeah... so we should be humble when we switch or ask during appraisal

Maddy: even if deep down we feel.. jyada toh nahi maangra

Maddy: :P

Me: That's the only chance we have to rip em off

Me: Once u join, things reverse

Maddy: u know what.. i think because of us IT ppl.. the cost of living has increased and others too suffer

Maddy: kerala mein in 25 lacs mein mast 3 bhk wala bada ghar banta

Maddy: idhar maa ki aankh 1 bhk mein kahun duur city ke bahar

Me: Hahahaaa

Me: And here in mumbai that 450 sq ft cage costs a crore and 27

Maddy: :D

Maddy: ek common system hona chahiye.. ppl should have ranks like in defence services and pay should be according to that

Me: Fuck man , back in my home city I can get a lake palace for this much dough

Maddy: there should be a commitee which decids on the rank of he ppl as per their work

Maddy: :)

Me: I object my lord

Me: If so happens the head of that commitee would become a virtual demi god

Maddy: dude.. here we have lot of such commitee where ppl rule.. in my suggestion there would be only one

Me: We need an anna hazare in IT

Me: U r a super strong prospective candidate

Maddy: ha ha

Me: Let's stage an uprising for the IT lokpal bill

Me: I am an awesome supporter

Me: I can light candles and forward emails

Me: ;)

Maddy: din bhar anshan karenge and raat ko tandoori and do do patiyala tika ke aish

Me: Of course, khaana hi padega

Me: If you a dba falls sick, imagine the business impact :D

Me: We can make good money

Maddy: u goof up something and i won't be there to look into the issue and we'll blackmail

Maddy: super

Me: Let's put in a rfp with the indian govt for this

Me: I'll draft up a business plan

Maddy: jhakaas

and more than 9 months since this :

and nothing has changed. Life is still as unpredictable as always, office sucks daily as it has for the past 4 or so years and theres nothing new, not at least now or in the near future. I miss Pune! Its that time of the year when I feel like this, again :

The year is now inching towards its end. I need to do something to remember this year by. Man I'm bored. Thats does it....I'm makin some calls and heading off to Goa. Anybody who's interested, free and/or not providing weekend support to critical business applications are invited.

For some motivation theres always YouTube :)

Happy New Year people !!

After being berojgaar for a whole day, I joined a new software company, but the enthusiasm faded rather too quickly than I had imagined. Waiting to hear from my manager I was made to spend my whole day in the library (for the first time ever in my life !)

# 1: No matter what IT company you join, you will be treated as a dork.

A few days after the 30 of us, bunched together as Batch 4, had commenced our life as SW trainees. First week of training was in its full swing and the hearts were overflowing with enthusiasm. Time passed we got to know each other, we were made to train together blah blah ....and to sum it all up things were going good (not from the financial perspective).

I was just out of college. To leave behind the typical college lifestyle was really a challenge but the real pain , in my case, was to part ways with my friends. CS final year, thats what we were called. Maaaan that brings back memories, sigh !

I had stepped on pune platform with a preconceived notion that all carefree life style is now history and all I'm gonna get here are die hard developers (mostly marathi speaking) who will only look up from their TFTs to either attend a meeting, fetch water or go take a leak. I was correct but only to a minimal extent. Before I knew it the batch of 30 had churned out many great people, FRIENDS !!

When I reflect back on time I can vaguely recall that the idea of finding friends in a foreign state had been a far cry, but all turned out to be beyond expectations. I had a bunch of ppl I could call friends, have lunch/tea with . That half an hour of tea time used to be a bliss, a stress reliever like none other.

But whenever I turned to get back at my desk a thought always crossed my mind: " Lets see for how long the good times continue". It has been more than two years now and the time is finally here when the chapter of "My first IT job" finds its place in respective memoirs. Just a handful of us are left here and its just a matter of time before each and every one of us finds himself in another well paying, better organization (with aliens of course!).

Everyone I met here are wonderful people and probably another bunch of gems would be hard to find !

p.s. I am not lucky enough to get to leave my stinkin organisation yet. This post is for ppl who are to/have resigned or are flying onsite.