Outsourcing and All That...

outsourcing mainly means cheap labor. When you can't keep enough gus in your office, because your business stinks, you can't rent enough office space or buy enough number of laptops for your employees or even giving them salary is beyond your reach you outsource the jobs.

These jobs come to India (or the likes of it) where man power is limitless and renewable( as every second we generate a new source of energy - Human energy). And htere are millions of millions of buggars who will do your job (be it cleaning your dirty linen) almost for free.

So basically money is what keeps Outsourcing alive. As long as you do it cheap you are there. Once u ask for a hike in the contract, oh sir, you see, you do not fit strategically into our company's vision. hence Bubbye. - is hwat most client companies would say to the suppliers. They know there is no dearth of another outsourcer.

Being an insider I have thought about this situation a lot. And I have no doubt that outsourcing works only because of this cheap labor stuff.

We suck at understanding the job or the operations or the business of our clients. We suck at understanding why they do things or how they do things. We more importantly are never bothered about what should ideally be our role in helping hte customer achieving its goal. We do what we are told to do by the customer. And wash our hands with that.

But hten haven't we brought a lot of good things to the european large companies along with us? I happen to be working for a european giant ( a mammoth i would say) company. My job is to provide consultancy and functional designing. before we the wretched contractors came in, it was handled by the company's own ppl.

with us around, the company can now achieve more htan what it could ever do before. know why?

Because, now you can put in a requirement only 3 days before release and expect to bully the contractors to get it done. Now you can never respond to an email clarificaiton which was sought during design or development and later on calmly point your finger to someone and say it was always an implicit requirement. You can now actually look at an individual and expect him to cancel his vacation and come to work on all days.

has europe ever seen a more committed workforce than these outsourced workers? Has europe ever seen a more easily bullied software giants? Has europe ever seen ppl who can effortlessly put in 14 hours a day and get back home and tell his wife how he solved one issue and is so much proud of it? Has europe ever seen a guy to archive an email from a client with a "Thank You" which probably the guy didn't even have to write rather was a part of his standard signature!!

Outsourcing is reducing the whole world to a global village. I wonder whether it will do good for anyone. At one side there are these large corporate houses who are happy to give away jobs that could have been easily done by locals to a far away country. Increasing profit of hte company along with joblessness, insecurity and reduction of spending power in its own country where it sells its products! At the other end it sends money to a country where a few of the blokes earns a tiny share of the large pie (which eventually goes to the company balancesheets or fat paycheques for the executives) and are happy to buy a levis every other month or a pulsar to ride with his girlfriend to a local pub selling very ordinary drought Kingfisher.

The definition of life goes a sea change in different places. I have seen europeans who work only stipulated hours and have taken pride in myself that I can work for 72 hours at a stretch. But then I do take the awe that how these ppl can leave the so called "urgent" or "very important" work behind and go for a fishing trip or a camping session in norhtern highlands! I cant help but wonder, are we wrong or they are?

How this sort of different working culture affecting the world working sceanrios? The europeans(or the americans or those who employ us...no regional bias here...jsut to point out someone) now want more out of hte money they are putting in. With recession knocking at the door, they want 5 guys to be replaced by 3 and 3 to be replaced by 1. work remains the same. deliverable output remains the same. but the workhorses reduce. and we to keep our business alilve, to keep our roti rozi coming, agree to every unreasonable timescales, cancel our vacations, run around the country or the globe for the sake of it.our girlfriends wait at home. our mothers forget how we look and our fathers wary of the future of his bloodline. such is life.

P.S: I know this is one of the most incoherent posts I have ever written. But then an incoherent post is better than no post. ;-)

Perils of a software engineer

“So what’s next?” Asked my boss.

I looked at him. My eyes piercing, trying to gasp what could be coming in the next sentence! will the next sentence blow a deathblow to my career, will I be laid off, will I be given the pink slip and told “Many thanks for your service which were of no use to the company, and you with all your dignity may leave us now.”

Was this question a rhetoric one? the answer hidden in between to indicate, there was, actually, nothing coming up. We finally  were standing at the end of a road, which suddenly without giving any prior notice plunged into the ocean from where we stood. There was no way out. There was nowhere to go. I was the puppet of a closed system, and suddenly that system was dying. It stopped circulating blood and things got deteriorated.

“Well?” Came a probing voice. From the same source. With the same kind of pre-destined sense of finiteness in itself.

“Could be anything. There may be an escalation. Or there might be a complaint.” I vaguely tried to reply.

We were standing in one of those numerous glass rooms of the IT park I work in. It was a bright day literally, although the outer brightness did not bring any happiness to me.  glass-rooms were scary. And you go in them seldom. It was like a federal jail really. There were stony faced Project Managers, angry tech-leads, and in some cases when things went really wrong, group leaders. I had never been to a glass-room before. I had heard all sorts of stories about it.

One of my friend told me his horrific experience, where one glass-room visit had brought down his rating from an impeccable top to the dirty ground, in spite of clearing all the trainings in time, in spite of being the first one to fill in timesheet. Such are the perils of glass-room. Another friend told me, how he felt like inside a glass-room. The AC can not cool down a glass-room. Its usually like a blast furnace. Temperature grows up, up and above. Extravagant jargons fly around. The youngest person in the room is really fried on hot oil, messengers of satan beat him with harsh words, and the listless hapless fellow is reduced to dusts, with all his defense broken, all his mind crooked.

And there I was, in my short IT career, for the first time, in a glass room. I could see my project manager asking me questions impossible to be answered. Obviously I ain’t a clairvoyant fortune teller. I am just a mere coder, who can never foretell what will be the output of his code, leave alone this sort of turmoil filled earth where your whimsical client may kill you (not literally you but the contract) the next minute or he may himself go bankrupt.

I was afraid. I was thinking of all the gargantuan effects my mistakes can have on the company, the industry and the economy of the country.

These days its a fashion to go bankrupt for US companies. Who knows my American client will grab this smallest of opportunity to go that direction, and declare himself as one. US govt. in turn will have to come in rescue. They might see a deep conspiracy by Indian economic powerhouses in doing so. They might declare a war against India which will turn into a world war III demolishing economy of India in turn. OMG, demolishing indian economy is a bit too much I thought. Isn’t that the new avatar of invincibility ? Like they at Dalal street say so coolly?

 

My boss, turned his bespectacled, rude face towards me. “Do you even know what this can turn us into? We will be called novices by the client!”

Errr.. Novices?? Is that what this thing all about is?

After much ado I found out…

There was an error message I wrote in my code, “please do not provide garbaje values in the xml as it will be difficult to read by our production support guys who will read it manually.”

 

It was sent to the client who did not read the document. It was tested by professional testers (or so they claimed) and they did not find anything wrong with that. Now when it has gone live, a user has raised a defect stating that the spelling mistake in garbage is so eye catching that, there has been a million complaints about it.

 

And now we were, in the glass room! Doom looked at me with disdain. A million years of zero rating if I still manage to save my job, is sure to be the next best punishment.

The perils of a software engineer continues…

Breaking Out ... Alone for the first time

I had just given madhyamik.

I was 16 exactly.

And had a 3 months gap in front of me

I wanted to go somewhere…somewhere alone.

Obviously there were huge obstacles….mom's tears and dad's precautionary NO. And to add to the injury there was my sister constantly teasing me as BABU which rightly said is a nickname my mom used to use but in this case became a pain in the arse.

i was adamant

More so because my mate Pat had been to odlabari all alone riding an intercity train which runs through the baikunthapur forest range and described me (with great deal of envy causing tone) the beauty of the journey...and it seemed to me like an adventure only shankar (of the fame of mountain of the moon) could achieve.

I was desparate.

I was eager and keen to show i am no kiddo.

I wanted to show the world that I too can take on those challenges.

Also the possible beauty of the road engrossed me...the simple train journey became like a hitch hiking adventure

and after much bickering
and a bit of water shedding
finally I got a nod from dad

Now when I look at it
After having traveled all the way to the other part of the world it looks kiddish to me. But then it was a small step which built up the hunger in me to look for the unknown. The journey wasn't a long one. It was only from Siliguri to farakka
where my uncle aunt and there two daughters stayed.

Dad was a railway service man. He got me a ticket in the second class sleeper on Kanchunjangha express. A train which will stop at farakka junction after 6 hours since the time it starts from NJP AKA New Jalpaiguri Station.

That day my dad didn’t take his cycle while going to the station which was his office too. He and I boarded a rickshaw from our home. I left home, my mom, didi and dadu back there standing at the doors. It was time to move on. It was time to face the world. As the rickshaw moved on along the roads of Siliguri I could still hear the chants of “Durga Durga” from my mom. I could see the pale face of my sister. And my dadu’s trembling hand giving ashirbad while I did a traditional pranam.

I was feeling weak. I was thinking of jumping from the rickshaw and running back to mom’s lap. The warmth of my dad beside me in the rickshaw reassured me. Dad was telling me how to face things. Those last minute suggestions you know. How never to talk to a stranger. How never to take anything from a stranger. And those instructions while were delivered to boost my morale were in a way denigrating it. But I didn’t chicken out. And How I thank god for giving me enough courage for not shitting in my pants while I alone in the platform waited for the train.

The train was late for 4 hours. I waited and waited. My dad came and went back to work. And all the time I was wishing dad should be there when the train comes. Or else this could be the last time I am seeing my dad.

It was supposed to happen at 12 O clock noon. It finally happened 4 pm. Dad was losing patience and asked me a few times to leave the plan and go home. I was determined to take it on. I was not a guy to chicken out. I had to prove to my own eyes to be a grown up.

When finally the train came, I boarded it, and watched back to my dad’s face. There was no worry. He was quite confident I would make it. He was worried alright for the time I would reach farakka, but then my uncle had given word that he would be there with his car at the station.

The train started. So did my loneliness. There were some people sitting along with me. A big fat marwari guy. Who could not frighten me much as I knew before he tries anything silly I could run away. There were a family with a small kid who was crying hard. I smiled at the kid, and told in my mind, “grow up kid, at least you are going with your mom!! Look at me…I am all alone in this world.”


Things got bad soon. We reached guisal. The famous train accident site! And the train stopped due to some signal failures. It was like amazing actually. A train a man made creation standing in a place from where, where ever you see you could only see miles and miles of paddy fields. I wanted to go down to look out and see the beauty. But parents’ words held me back.

I opened the window and felt the cool wind all over my body. It was giving me strength and suddenly I felt I have crossed 2 hours or 1/3rd of my journey already. Out of nowhere there were chai walas. I had a tea. And dozed off. Then when I woke up, the train had just started and it was 8pm in the night.

I wasn’t worried much. But I was thinking if my uncle could not manage to come at that late night what I would do. And thinking hard only did weaken my confidence. And slowly I left it at that.

It was growing darker. I never knew that even when it’s completely dark it still goes on to become even darker with time. It was something new I was learning with every moment and I was fascinated with life that was around me.


I opened my diary I had, and started scribbling something. This caused me to doze off very soon. I woke up with a shoulder jerk from someone!!

A stranger!!

A guy in mid forties with specs on, and looking like a TT was pushing me…

“Khoka, are you the son of Mr. PK Paul? The CRS of NJP?”

I was shell shocked…this guy knows it all!! Bloody hell what is he!!

Then I nodded and the guy was all smiles..”Don’t be afraid khoka…Your dad just wanted me to check out whether you are alright or not!”


I was thinking, “jeez dad!! You are embarrassing me in front of every one here!!”

And was reasonably annoyed at the same time I felt it funny too thinking about my dad pacing up and down from bedroom to drawing room in worry. And my mom sitting in a corner with an all gone face. And I knew how much they love me!

I reached farakka alright. At night 2 am. My uncle was there despite a storm warning. And in his 1972 premiere I reached his bungalow quite safely. Masi told mom had called at least 10 times by then. I called them up and with that my first journey to the wilderness was over…

It was not as much full of beauty, revelation, adventure as probably pat had faced or not 10% as romantic as Shankar in the mountain of moon, but that was a very original experience which I still cherish. Life was not going to be same again.

Mudiwali Budi( The Old Lady Who Used to Sell Mudi)

Its a tale of love and pain. Love when it becomes unconditional it is heavenly feeling which my mother experienced. That was a long time back.
THat time I used to stay in Siliguri- A small town in West Bengal( on the chicken's neck of north eastern India).

We had a house in that town where I grew up. We did not have a very affluent life. Everything me and my sister asked were not to be fulfilled just by wishing for it. My parents made me understand the value of money and the hard work that goes behind to earn it. But parents words were not enough untill i saw poverty in my own eyes.
An old woman used to come to our house to sell Mudi (kind of puffed rice very popular in Bengal). She was old, too old, i would say, too carry that huge sackful of mudi on her head and walk around. But she seemed to me surprisingly stron inspite of her thin stature. She used to come everyday and sit in the varandah for a while in those hot summer afternoons. My mom used to sit with her for sometime. And the old lady would tell her lifestory. It seemed to me like an endless saga of pathetic incidents pain poverty and sobbings. Which although I was not from a affluent family seemed quite odd to me. I could never believe that life can be this tragic. Somehow it seemed unnatural and blown out of its proportion. She used to come everyday and sit there, probably in my mom she got a friend who would listen to her day to day life lessen her boredom loneliness for sometime atleast.
I used to mock my mom. I used to tease her calling her mudiwali's best friend. Mom would scold me to talk like that. But i never stopped. I thought this lady comes because my mom gives her things( like old clothes, sweaters and all...Once a piece of jewellery as well for her daughters marriage).
What i gathered from the other things that my mom later told me is her life was very painful. and she is very poor. Somehow her son is going to a school in the night to pass the secondery atleast. and her daughter will be married soon( which she was and soon she became the source of another unfortunate event).
This lady was all by herself. She lost her husband as soon as she got pregnant with her second child. She had to work even in her labor months on the field and its only hard work which made her earn a living for her two children. she was lonely and living in a place where few ppl cared about her. In her village none really was a friend to her to whom she could talk aand probably relieve herself from her agonising lonliness. So there was my mom.
As I said earlier I thought this was a give and take relation between these two individuals. I tried not to think as my mom's son, but some third person who doesn't know any of the subjects and analyse their condition. I while doing that I more and more became convinced that this was a petty poor rich relation, the poor is living totally on the consideration of Rich( The word RIch is to be taken relatively here).
But what I failed to notice is the other small gifts that is coming from the woman to my mom, and the smile in my mom's eyes. My mom knew she is poor and can not probably afford to give gifts, but everytime she came she used to come with some or other small things like a small ripe mango from the tree just beside her house in village. a half of a Rohu Fish which her son had caught while fishing in a pond nearby. These gifts were unique in nature. Mom always wanted to discourage her from bringing gifts as she feared this would put additiional pressure on this old lady. But she never stopped. Once she said, "eigula je ani tumar jonno ete amar bhalo lage. "Probably it gave her the chance to give off the burden of all those things that mom used to give her and stand side by side to mom. Probably these enabled her to think mom as a friend and not as a giver. Mom also told me the same thing when one day i asked her. I got a new angle of this relationship that day. I learnt friendship.
Then came the time when we were moving out of Siliguri to Kolkata( previously known as Calcutta). I was not there at home that time. Dad, Mom and didi were there. Few days before the day of departure, the lady came home. My mom had already told her that we were shifting to calcutta. that day it became a spectacle really when she started crying. She was sad. She was crying like a mother who is going to loose a child. She was crying and telling who will talk to me if you go away? who will care for me? when after many days mom told me about this i saw those blinks of tears in her eyes. and I knew there was love. there was friendship a kind I never experienced a kind which I would die for to feel and a kind only people who are very lucky like mom can feel. I am proud of you mom. I really am.

[The picture on the side is not the real woman just an illustration copied from Google Image search]