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. ;-)

The Pursuit of Happiness

I have been thinking lately. I have been thinking hard. Not that I seldom practice it and hence I have to blog (read brag) about it, but then there is something unique about this particular thought.

I have thought about this since long time. When I was a child, still this thing kept me worried. And that worrying thing is nothing but a question: “What is the purpose of life?”

When I was a kid, one fine morning, while playing with my friends, I fell, and I was crying. Suddenly I realized, I was crying for myself. As I had a feeling that my “self” was not in the so called happy mode. I wanted to see if I could do away with the crying part, and I could laugh. I tried and I succeeded. Of course for a brief stint though. I hadn’t paid much heed to it. And my parents and the others around me, found me to be very brave and courageous.

That was not the least true. I am a coward and everyone who knows me a well, knows this about me. I am scared of everything around of me. Not necessarily I cry though in every situation. But I do.

I remember I was scared of lying to my mom when I was a kid. So after flunking a number of math problems in class IV exam, I came back home and lied. I knew I had got a couple wrong, and my upbringing told me that was an unforgivable sin. My parents never would beat me, but still, I feared the very worst, and lied. I am afraid of failures. In games, or in exams. That’s why I was pretty much a studious student till my fourth grade. I feared coming second and studied even harder. All these fears were allayed off one day.

When one by one they came true. I was no longer the best player among my friends (not in cricket, not in football not in TT), neither I remained the best student in the class (came second in fourth). All these slowly ragged the fear a bit down. Things I could do so well, when I was afraid of them, were not my forte any longer since I faced those very fears. In a way, I won over them.

Coming back to the topic, crying and laughing became an experiment for me. I have laughed at strange circumstances where none would have thought of, though never actually tried crying when I should be laughing. Probably it was because a moment of laughter is too dear a thing to be wasted in meaningless tears. The thought that these experiments gave rise to, was of profound importance and gave me a belief which made me what I am today.

I started believing a human being is who he wants to be. The circumstances do play their part in shaping you. I am no master at human psychology to deny or to trifle at that. But I believe I am who I wanted to be. And of course you are who you wanted to become. These played a part in going forward in my thought process and ask a few more questions.

I wanted to know if I am who I wanted to become, then in reality, who I am or rather who I wanted to become. I hope I am not perplexing the reader with too many complex sentences. Then I started asking, why I wanted to become what I have become. What was the purpose that led me to it?

While growing up, slowly trifle things took over my mind. Trifle things like, studies, career, job, onsite, dollar, rupees, pound starlings, and girls and many more. I never took care of thinking about these things anymore. The other day, I was talking to my mom over the phone. And we were joking about my aunt’s devoted faith in Shri Ravi Shankar ji’s “Art of Living” gyans. My mom had a confused state of mind whether to pursue what others are so devotedly pursuing. She said, at her age, people should be devoted to God. She should be now, thinking about religious matters and should be set free from all the trifle things of life. She thought, all her life was spent in trifle things anyway. And now as she nears that ninth gate towards eternity, she should remember the One who sent her here on earth to fulfill her duties. I could not help but laugh. And at the same time, my questions which always had bothered my subconscious came back to me at once.

What was the purpose of human beings life? I, at once, realized that it’s not fulfillment of duties that people think they should be doing. Rather, it’s a pursuit of happiness that human beings are here for. That pursuit of happiness makes what you are. And being happy is the goal of life.

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…

Lonely!! I am so lonely

I sometimes feel so alone in this whole world. Its an uncanny and fearsome feeling. Especially when you feel so even during you are hanging out with friends, roaming the streets with as many as ten people…it scares the hell out of you. I don’t know many people who think like me. May be many do but few speak out.

This is increasingly getting intense in me. Not that I crave for company of people. Most of the time I will choose solitude than people giving me company if I am given a choice. That is most of the time. I have seen times when I desperately avoid people, at the same time craving for more. And throughout my life, the people I have craved for, are the ones who never became close to me. It’s a big irony and I don’t know why, but it is that way.

Hey readers, don’t get me wrong here. I am not talking about some boring one sided love thingy. It’s the friends you have around you.

There have been phases in my life when I have thought that I have found the one friend I want. My illusion has broken soon. Atleast three to four times I have thought in my life that this fellow thinks like me, and yet we could never become friends. You might say like a wise ass : perceptions are deceptive. But that doesn’t solve the problem that I am alone.

Some nights I walk alone the streets of Chennai. Some nights I take my bike out. I breeze past the well lit streets, the happy shopping malls, the churches, the café coffee days, the grinning couples, the kissing brides, the shabyatras and doldrums of the city life, and yet, everything freezes down. Everything just stops. And then I look around, there is none. A dark cover comes over the face of the city. Some scumbags here and there. A little law and a lot of anarchy.

When I was a kid, I always enjoyed my solitude. My little room, my small music system, my bookshelf and my own summer afternoons. I still search for those. Unfortunately none could be found!