Here I am .. This is me.. Presenting Miss Z

Thinking about the Brian Adam's Song, and so inevitably she came in Office, yes with a big O.

"Hey there Programmer Y , hows life? " she waived at him and as of now she has Just started with a new ball game, rather a new stinky project again.

Life for Programmer "Miss" Z never been a cake walk in this tough world. Ahhh.. people might think a good look brings advantage, but actually dude, Miss Z have been always under the knife of crude eyes, staring to cut her off as if she did a big fat mistake stepping into their geeky world. Every Nerd study her first , top to bottom, sometimes complaining "you know what, her good looks did the trick for her ".. and here she smiles again.

Miss Z knows Programmer Y quite a long time now, yes from her previous project and offcourse from the so called "Pappu". She had a quite nice pappu though, but at the end of the day, some nerdy boss is risky. They don't even consider sometimes that nice, beautiful girl's opinion.

With a new project her worries doubled up, how will be bosses here, what about colleagues , will they be more nerdy this time, will she get a small break from not being stared so much...ahh thoughts piled up and then here is Programmer Y.

Programmer Y: Hey there, how are you feeling today?

Miss Z: Good, how come I cant be good, in this first project briefing day.. Hey did you work on that white paper? God help us with the demon thing..

Programmer Y: yeah sure I am on.. What about your functional Document? Is it ready? If not then you better be sick for today atleast cos pappu not at all in good mood seems..

Miss Z: God give me light.. I wannna be surely sick .. but to his surprise, I happened to stay late till midnight to really finish that stuff.. and He was snoring that time at home .. great bloodS(*K@R

Anyways now time to check the mails, reply to the previous production issue details and prepare a report for the morning boring status meeting.

So hang on there , and wait for her to be out of that meeting room..

One Question: Does Meeting solve any potential issues ever , ever ever???

Hold that thought ..

Cheers.

Miss Z..

New project and Miss Z..

Another Year has come to end and along with it the Project; it was another successful project for Programmer Y and his team. All the blame game earlier has now turned into mutual respect and heartfelt gratitude towards each other. The project which a month ago was under immense pressure of curtailing the defect counts and improving quality now is being looked upon as a model project to be presented as a case study on how they implemented "Agile methodology" successfully in an onshore-offshore model working model. It’s the time to convert all the unfortunate events and mishap that happened during the course of the project implementation into a fable story of success.



It’s the time when everybody thinks Programmer Y can let off his worried hat and rest for a while. But as people say you do not get what you wish and what you get is not what you wished for.


Programmer Y has always been vocal to PAPPU (Project manager) of his discontent about the technology he has been working in. This was one of the discussions which happened in one of his 1 on 1 meeting [1]

[1] These meetings are basically the open ended questions meeting with close ended answer. Where in project manger feels that he is giving individual attention and programmer feels that it’s a wasting his time. So all his questions ends up being open ended like "How's it going?" or "What's important to you these days?" gets a reply back of “Fine” or “nothing much”. At the end project manager gets frustrated and he gives programmer the list what he expects from him. This list is given to the programmer irrespective of whether he answers correctly or not.

Programmer Y: There is huge disconnect between my enormous Technical knowledge and the trivial task you assign me.



Pappu (causally): That's a temporary situation


Programmer Y (sort of relieved): Okay! Good.


Pappu (sarcastically): Eventually your technically skills will become outdated ;-)

This discussion had left Programmer Y dumb folded and no hope that he would get a better technology. So Programmer Y continued to live his monotonous boring life and was trying to rest and bask in the glory of his recently completed project by setting aside his worrying hat. But as you know my friend everything in this world is short lived and free time definitely in this time of recession. And Programmer Y was soon assigned to another project in an R&D department [2] to see which latest technology was suitable for this new project.

[2] R&D Department is other way to say that you are on bench or without any work. If you do not have any work in your project you will be assigned to an R&D department or Center of excellence. The only work over there is to create Proof of Concept, which means copying the code from Google and making it run in your own environment. And creating heaps of document supporting it which if anybody looks for copyright, I believe most of the company would get into trouble at most of their documents. In our company these R&D people are no longer called as intellectual but borrowed intellectual because of the reason stated above.

Programmer Y was happy to some extent not because he would be able to work on new technology, but the fact that he now will be able to use internet at will with out any restriction. The technology they were asking Programmer Y to do R&D, he had already worked upon it and he knew in an out of it so creating a POC and a analysis document was a task he could perform even in his free time.


First day of the project was as usual boring with all the introduction and project details being discussed with programmer Y. The only interesting thing which happened in this whole process was Miss Z...


Hey I need to go for a meeting (on a 1:1 meeting but requirements) but stay tuned to learn more about Miss Z..

Chao

- Programmer Y

Best Place to Work For

Every year Programmer Y’s company tries to get into the list of Best Place to Work For. This time the effort to get into that list that had preluded them for such a long time was the gruesome one. This was the new vision of our new CEO and because of this the entire organization was shaken up to accomplish this. Everybody was asked to come up with an Idea to improve our process. And in this turmoil even Programmer Y got caught.

Our Pappu^[1] (Project Manager) had set up a meeting to come up with suggestion on how the company can win the award of “One of the best place to work”.

^[1] BTW we call our Project Manager Pappu because Pappu can’t code saala. Yeah he has been to many countries for different onsite project. He has earned lot of money and doubles his money by actively trading in the market. Paapu has got a big size sedan car, he his handsome blue-eyed bachelor and is a craze amongst the Girls. Pappu also has an UK English Nasal ascent because of his 6 years stay over there. But when you ask him anything about the project he has no idea. He will simply find a team player and burden him with all the question you try to find an answer from him

Pappu has asked our Pandu^[2] (i.e. the Project Lead) to gather all the team members for the meeting and before that asked him to send an email to make sure everybody know what’s this meeting for and can start gathering ideas for it.

^[2] Pandu is a Mumbaiya slang for traffic police. Who feels that he is the boss of that area and everybody fears him. But on the contrary no Indian bother about him unless he is a new unlicensed driver or he is about to slap him with a fine. And why we call our Project Lead a Pandu is because he acts and behaves in a similar manner. He controls how the project works he feels that he is boss around there because our Pappu has no interest in controlling the project. But in the end all of us never really care about him. Only the new comer how does not know the real team structure feels obliged to respect him with the fear that he will be treated badly if he does not respect him.

Lot of talks has already started amongst team member regarding this meeting. Some of them in a constructive way were trying to find solutions to really improve this place, while other senior programmers like Programmer Y always knew that this place was not better than a livestock breeding place and it could never be improved. So the meeting started Pappu had learned a new methodology called as Scrum and he tried to start everything in a same manner. He called up meeting without any prior back time only to say that it’s an agile way of doing a stand up meeting. He was trying to stretch the Agile methodologies loophole in every aspect of his Managerial activity called “Time Pass”.

So he asked everybody to start giving up one idea at a time and he would do is list down and will discuss on it. Now the turn came up for Programmer Y. He stood up and said “Stop treating us like Diseased Livestock”. There was a complete silence in the room after this statement for 10-15 seconds & Pappu expression told that he was very much taken back by this statement.

Pappu tried to control his anger and try to defend^[3] what company did was best for us.

^[3] Project Managers in any company are paid only to defend the company and its policies. Even if they are facing the same problem they will always try to make sure that they have a point that will make everybody think that everything is fine. It’s their way of thinking & turning a blind eye to problems of other makes them the manager. The better you are at in defending the company the more progress you will make in climbing up the ladder.

And he asked me how company was treating me as a dead livestock. Before I could answer his question he shot me another of his smarty pants statement that here is the conversation below

Pappu : If You were a live stock, you would be eating grass.

Programmer Y : My chapatis are made from Wheat flour. Wheat is a grass.

Pappu : You would be than living in a Pen.

Programmer Y : Also known as a Cubicle.

Pappu : Livestock has no freedom.

Programmer Y : Can I go home now.

Pappu : No

Programmer Y: Mooooooo.

Pappu had finally given up his fight with Programmer Y. Pappu cannot kick his butt because Programmer Y manages one of his most critical projects single handedly and client loves him. Programmer Y finally leaves the room with a smile on his face putting down another check mark for his another successful Pappu humiliating effort on his white board in his cubicle. Pappu has started finding pleasure and a calming effect in his small petty fights with Pappu which at the end of the day leave him with a sense of pride and feeling of victory.

This is what Programmer Y thinks and put it as the most important point which makes his company “One of the Best Place to Work”.

Chao

- Programmer Y

Who am I?

There would be lot of question in your mind when you see this blog like "Who is this guy? What kind of name is Programmer Y? What is this Blog all about?

Some of your question I will answer you today right now. Here it goes

Q 1: Who is this guy?

Ans: I am Programmer Y. I am a software engineer by profession. I work in a major sotware company in the land of outsourcing India. Yeah India is no longer the land of snake charmers and Taj Mahal because Meneka Gandhi(animal rights activist) has caught most of the snake charmers under the wild life protection acts and for Taj Mahal is constantly under the attack from pollution of the industrial belt around it and for the rest of the time by politician who want to create a tourist village around Taj and destroy it’s ambience . I think at some point Archaeological Survey of India will have enough of it & close it down for public and for good.

Q 2: Why the name Programmer Y?

Ans: I was born in the era of generation Y. And for that matter I started my work in the IT field also in the same Generation Y. That’s why the name came as Programmer ‘Y’ of generation Y. It’s also a pseudo name to hide my Identity because my company colleagues visit my blogs and if one of my managers knows about my Identity, I definitely will be in trouble. But I promise that I will definitely reveal my Identity at some point.

Here are some characteristic or traits of programmer Y.

• Programmer Y programmers grew up with Google and rely on it to perform their jobs better. Armed with smartphones (BlackBerrys or iphones), laptops, ipods and other gadgets. These things are Programmer Y’s basic necessity.
• Programmer Y is plugged-in 24 hours a day, 7 days a week prefers to communicate & socializing through e-mail and text messaging, networking sites (orkut, facebook) rather than face-to-face contact and prefers webinars and online technology to traditional lecture-based presentations.
• Programmer Y wishes to live this ideal life of fast car or a super bike, Big house, great bank balance, nice chic to date. But in order to achieve this Programmer Y needs money so he works day and night. In the end when he achieves this Programmer Y has lost half of his hairs.
• Programmer Y is confident, ambitious and achievement-oriented. They have high expectations of their employers, seek out new challenges and are not afraid to question authority. Programmer Y wants meaningful work and a solid learning curve.
• Right from the start of his career Programmer Y participated in team activities in office. He does not want to get involved but these programming methodologies have made Programmer Y a team player. He has to interact with other person to get his code working. If he does not he will not be able to get his code working.
• Programmer Y craves attention. Early in his career Programmer Y works harder to get appreciation and learns new technology because he thinks that it’s related to his appraisal. Soon he realizes that it’s not the case, you get promotion in only two scenarios.
• Case 1: You are a beautiful girl and I don’t think I have to explain much after this.
• Case 2: You threaten to leave the company.
• Programmers Y in the later years realized this and choose the 2nd option to be in the limelight and crave attention whenever needed to get a hike.
• Programmer Y likes to party(mostly booze party) because it relieves him of all pressure. He likes to follow the saying “work hard and party harder”

Q 3: What is this Blog all about?

Ans: This Blog is POV of a Mango(aam) Programmer i.e. Programmer Y who has spend enough time in the IT industry to know that he is stuck in this daily chores of applying patches and making thing work. His so called old Waterfall life is stuck and wants to re-invent & make it more dynamic & Agile. This is a story of an unsung Programmer Y and his journey in the binary world.

So keep hooked to this site for more interesting stories and insight to the World of Programmer Y.

Chao

- Programmer Y