Life of a software engineer…

Well, this was an article I wrote to a magazine or news paper supplementary called “Corporate Buzz”. Unfortunately, they did not like the article too much and hence I thought I should post it here. Its quite a few months old.I am not sure I have seen such an magazine or news paper supplementary named “Corporate Buzz” around… But here it is for you to enjoy

All your suggestions, feedback and criticisms are most welcome..I am all ears to you…

A software engineer is a most envied person in the whole world. Not just because of his educational background, not just because of his expertise in software development, not just because of the humpty number of his positive traits – its mostly because of the life style. Here are some of the outstanding features of a software engineer’s life, right from the alpha version to the production version.

Most of us almost have our tags around our neck or in our belts all the time, even when we are out of work. When we walk, when we eat, when we drink or when we are waiting for a cab. Only few of us are born with silver spoon and rest of us are born with our tags. Sounds funny, but a real fact.

You know whats our favorite web site, its google and other search engines. If one day, these search engines goes down – almost every software company around the world is going to face a heavy productivity loss. We are the guys and girls, who are exposed to a lot of changes in our technology areas. The changes are so used to us, if one day my house vanishes from Chennai and goes to mars I wouldn’t be surprised. It would be a days game for me.

Bugs are own dear most buddies. They are the by products of the software we develop. We are so used to them and they are our every day issues for eternity. The test engineer has the habit of filing bugs and we have the habit of saying its a feature or its working as expected. Of-course, we don’t say it all the time, we just say it when we can’t solve it. Our worst enemy and night mare are the test engineers. I wouldn’t mind even killing my best friend who eventually happens to be a test engineer in the same project, just for one sole reason, that he filed a bug in my module.

Workaround is one common word you can hear from us. In simple terms, if we are unable to derive programatically that sum of one and one is two, we just write programs that sums up five and ten, then subtract thirteen from it. Don’t ask us why we do it, its a workaround.

Our favorite food is anything junk. Wait don’t raise your eye brows. I meant, we like burgers, pizzas, sandwiches and cup o noodles than proper cooked and healthy foods. Our clients not only influence us by the work they give us, they also do influence us in our food habits and culture.

We studied computer science to make things simple. We make it really simple such that, we don’t like walking few yards or climbing couple of floors to have a chat with our friends, we just use our local office chat software or public chat software to talk to our friends.

We provide job opportunities to thousands of people around the world. As us how, we are unable to perform our day to day errands due to our work nature. Hence, eventually, there are a lot of third party companies coming up who help us pay our bills, book our tickets and helps us do our basic works. Aren’t we great??

“Monday morning blues” – a terminology every software engineer feels. A sense of dizziness or laziness on every Monday morning which prevents us being productive at an higher extent. And if it happens, such that we had to work on the week ends the terminilogy is slightly changed to “Monday morning darkness”. Sounds like a horror movie name, but its a horror only a software engineer feels.

Apart from alcholics, smokers and other forms of people, we also have special kind of people in our industry who are called workaholics. They are special breed of people whom you can find in office any time of the day including weekends. If we drill down to the cause of this issue, we also get to know this is because of the difference between “hard workers” and “people who hardly work”.

Our english is some times too really peculiar, like -
- Whatcha ya wanna do on a odd day like dis with a damn bug like tat??
- I am fighting hard with this OutOfMemoryException(worst than a software engineer’s spouse).
- Could I buy some of your time?(Its too costly and not for sale)
- I need a F1 from you(F1 is help).
- You better shut down(instead of shut up).
- I have a personal work, I need to ctrl+f9 or f9 home(run home).
and, we always expect that whom ever we are speaking to knows these jargon’s. Be happy that we don’t expect you to know a programming language for communication – Other wise if you ask us “Can I borrow some money from you??” we would say “Unidentified literal in line 1 word 4 character 19. Please fix this compile error and run again”, or we will give you a blue screen with a error code 0×00005e so you can google what that means.

Self development according to us means technical certifications or something that adds values to our company and client. You know we are people who live selflessly, we always consider our company a part of us and that’s why we do this self development. That is the reason why our only self development is always towards an technical area.

Status reviews, client conference calls etc are the so called “official meetings” where we get some time to relax. Some one talks to another one and another one talks to some one, and I am in my own dream world. Finally my turn comes up, I say “No updates from my side, Thank you !!” happily ever after since the last 4 years. And did you notice, I said a courteous thank you for not bothering them with my updates. How good of me??

For us, any word with a “e-” as a suffix is quite interesting. We like emails, we work in e-commerce, we book tickets by e-booking. I honestly guess, there should some “e-food” or “e-family” research going on some part of the globe so one day we have everything in “e-”.

We won’t die if we don’t have air or food or water or shelter. But, we are sure to die if you don’t let us be connected to the internet.

We love and hate(depends on the situation) one god given gift to us. We talk or think about more of this particular person than our family members or girl friends/boy friends. This person is none other than our project managers. They have multiple personality disorders, some times they are poor souls and some time they are the red eyed chinese dragons spitting fire on us.

We like our official email IDs so much. Some times we are often identified by email IDs in most of our power point presentations and achievements list. I am so obsessed about it such that, I don’t store contacts name my mobile instead use their email IDs.

Inspite and despite of so many hard work and tough times, we are just called as “resources” not even engineers or developers most of the times.

We are so obsessed to binaries, that’s zeroes and ones that most of us remain as a ZERO or a ONE in our life in this career. We never tend to be striking a balance between a zero and one. I think, our life would be much better if we just use these binaries for programming alone.

 

 

Innoru kirukkal….

Vazhkaiku dhaan ethanaai parimanangaal,
Andha parimanangalil dhaan ethaain thirupangal,
Thirupangalil dhaan ethainaai valaivu nelivugaal…

Thodarandhu sendralum…
Thodramal irundhalum…
Thodarandhu varum ennangal…

Engeey thodangi..engeey mudyum…
Engum thodaramal nindru pona latchiyangaal…
Mudiya mudiya thodarum pudhu pudhu vazhigal..

Vazhkayum ulagamum oru vattam…
Ner kottil kadandhalum…
Valivu nelvil kadandhalum…

Thodakamum mudivum ondreey…
Dhuraam mattum veru…

 

Miles to go before I sleep…

Whenever this word comes to my mind…I feel, I have a lot more to do. Well, we all feel that too…The days seem to be running faster. I am understanding what speed of light or wink of eyes means these days…24 hours does not seem enough. 

Some other times I also feel, I am not planning my time properly. This seems continous and never ending. I feel Robert Frost’s words are true, we got to keep running to keep up with time

Whose woods these are I think I know. 
His house is in the village, though; 
He will not see me stopping here 
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer 

To stop without a farmhouse near 
Between the woods and frozen lake 
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake 
To ask if there’s some mistake. 
The only other sound’s the sweep 
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, 
But I have promises to keep, 
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

So lets keep running…!!

 

Relationships are delicate…

I did not feel so, for so long, that relationships are delicate. Relationships are made with level of understanding and kind of bonding. The configuration of relationship is really hard to explain in terms of words. Day to day, each and every relationship  towards each and every human varies. I may not talk the same to a stranger as I talk to my best buddy…The chemistry and quantity of various chemicals involved in each relationship does vary and keeps varying from time to time.

The time we take to understand people, the time it takes for the relationship to grow and mature are some deterministic factors which contribute towards the bond and time of a relationship.

What was new to me was…Relationships impact relationships, sounds confusing…yes, as it was to me till I felt it in recent days. Yes, very true..relationships impact relationships meaning my relationship with X will impact my relationship with Y…I am not sure if this is true in all the cases, I realized it was true in my case

Relationships are delicate too…They need care…The care, equvalent to caring a rose plant or any other plant in your garden. Incase, the rose plant dies off due to some reason..there is no way you can get it back even if you stand upside down May be you could buy another rose plant of the same kind, but for sure you will miss your old rose plan (old is gold)

I was about to lose such a rose due to lose of care or unexpected mishap…but my good time the after effects were not so bad to really lose the rose…But I am feeling the thorns in the rose after this mishap which I had never felt before. And thus, relationships are delicate in their own way…

So own a relationship. Own the good and bad of it…Care for it…Groom and grow it…Cherish and feel it…Don’t ever lose it…

 

Need or Want!!??

Yes, what we want badly, so badly that we are ready to sacrifice anything for it is not always what we need.  And what’s really good for us is not what we always want…This is an old lesson which I learned, but which I forget often…

This is not just for me, but for all of us…There is always a difference between a need and want…If I am getting it right, need is something without which life cannot go any further and want is something which is auxiliary that can make life better by its presence but not certainly THE best… Also, a need is something without which you cannot live…but a want is something which can always be compensated or let go or replaced…

There are some things which leave an impression in our heart, mind and soul; this impression creates an illusion which makes us think that we are really in need of that SOMETHING. But stop right there, it’s an impression or a pleasant memory. Because, it has affected us so much we feel we NEED it, but sit back and think if it’s a really a need or a want…You can always get anything you want, but what really matters is how badly you need it…

As Paul Coelho says in The Alchemist,

“When you want something, the whole universe conspires in helping you achieve it”

And I would say,

“When you need something badly, the whole universe conspires in helping you achieve it”

Personally, I feel this is the difference between a need and a want. If you have anything more to add on or change in this, do comment

 

Matter of choice or chance??

I have always felt this, most of the times, life just was a matter of chance for me…Some times for good and some times for bad !!!

One such good example was, I never wanted to set my foot into Java programming. I don’t know for what so reasons…I never liked it as a language…But, when my first job forced me to be a java programmer, I started loving Java like anything. It has become my passion in other words

That was one good example of life was a matter of chance…similarly, there are lot of bad examples too. However, as humans we just prefer good ones {natural human tendency}…

I liked one of the quotes from spider man -3,

” Whatever comes our way, whatever battle we have raging inside us, we always have a choice. My friend Harry taught me that. He chose to be the best of himself. It’s the choices that make us who we are, and we can always choose to do what’s right.”

First read these lines in one of my friends blog, but when I saw it in the movie, I really liked it. I felt each and every word in it is true…We always have a choice, whatever is the situation!!! Its which choice we prefer to choose that decides the what we will be or what we are or what we were

Forget about situations where you don’t have a choice, but for most of them we do have

 

The small hero who impressed me…

Last weekend….

It was around half past ten in the morning, when I was back from my french classes. I was on the bike with usual, unusual thoughts in my head and a slight head ache. The thoughts in my head was because of my work and skill up gradation plans. The head ache was due to the newly painted class room where I go for learning french. It was mixed kind of feeling, but it is very usual to me.

I was blocked by the red light near the lakshman shruthi signal, I was cursing the traffic lights for increasing the magnitude of my hunger by just increasing the time for my reaching home, that too just very few kilometers from my home. It was at this point, I saw the young guy who impressed me a lot….

He was a small guy, should be little less than 10 years of age. But, the job he was doing was a job of a talented person. I would never push myself into that job because it involved, lot of talking, convincing, canvassing and selling your product. Yes!! you guessed it right, he was selling…he was a young sales person. He was not selling computers or mobiles or laptops or not a highly worthy thing, he was selling ear buds – a thin plastic straw which has cotton rolled on both the ends, which we use for cleaning our ears.

He should have been one of the usual boy who was born in a poor family, who had heart and will to learn…but no bread to fill his stomach. He should have been forced to sell ear buds to earn his living. It was tough job, I agree…The probability of people buying ear buds was so less, out of the little more than thousand vehicles(inclusive of four wheelers and two wheelers) in the signal, not even one of them braught the ear buds, though it costed just 10 bucks.Ten bucks, is not a huge amount, when compared to what we spend on unneccasary expenses.

Despite of all this short comings, I liked the attitude of this small guy. He would go near each and every vehicle…And give a broad million dollar smile  to his customers and ask,

“Buds vangikongaa anna/akka, verum pathu ruba dhaan….”

Some of them would be polite with him and say a gentle NO…and some of them would be harsh on him and shove him off…

But however his customers reacted, he still maintained his winning attitude and his mesmerizing million dollar smile…I was astonished to see this…What an hero he was?? Heroes, are not the persons who bear all the pain, kill/hit hundred people and save the heroines in movies…nor they are persons who have extra-ordinary powers nor they are persons who are like our fake politicians…The real hero, in fact the first hero I met in real life was this small kid….

He had no money, no education, not sure if he would have his next meal…probably even no shelter and nothing to fulfill his basic needs…but still he had the good will, winning attitude, ever lasting hope, patience, understanding and the hunger to achieve…and lot more good things

Without hesitation, I brought a packet of ear buds from my small hero and wished him good luck with a broad smile back…I saw his eyes glittering and bubbling with energy…I thought every week I should buy buds from him, if or not I use it

But, the majority of the population in India have all our basic necessities fulfilled, but we never have the attitude that this guy has…But still, we are sad, we are not contended…we run behind material wealth…At last we forget we are humans… why?? Can’t we change for good?? If we cannot be heroes, can we at least be good humans??

I thought I will meet my hero this week also…but, he was missing in his office place, open air office rather…I thought may be he changed his office location or rather shifted from his current job…however, I admire him a lot…hope I will get a chance to meet him again…

 

Smileys…or Lifeys…

Common term everyone would have heard, or yahoo terminology would be emoticons…

These small icons or graphic images map our real emotions to a computer based emotions…Some emoticons are real cute, they express more than what humans do in reality.

One question I had always had when using them is, Are we heading towards a virtual world where we often have imaginary character of our-self.Like, Mr.Anderson and Neo in the “The Matrix”…The emerging social networking sites are incorporating features to even map our physical and mental self into an virtual image. Though it has some good, it has weighted bad too, psychologically we are tend to be under a self pressure…What all we are unable to do in reality will be capable in virtual world…so the human mind just tends to stay in the virtual world where there no failures, no sadness, no defeats and no negativity. This eventually leads to addiction which eventually eats our own mental self.Then we would turn mere living cells feeding our expressivity, our thoughts and our emotions to our virtual image and end up no where…

Well, that was not the real thing I wanted to convey, that’s one thing that’s greatly occurring these days.

Now back to the subject of discussion…

In our real life, we forget that we are humans born to live a happy life and enjoy life. We often just get behind some or the other thing, would have started with studies…then work…then skill set development…then onsite…then again a study or family…and it goes on and on…If we ever give a thought to us, “Man!! stop !! if you go on running behind something when would you live your life??”…The instant answer we would give is, “After achieving…so and so..so and so…” and the list keeps growing…By the time we reach the end of it, we would have already finished meaningful part of our life

So the answer eventually is – Live your life while you grow and while you are in your achievement or growth phase…Don’t forget the key purpose of life and don’t just concentrate in the surrounding factors…

I felt this occurring commonly in me, one common comment I receive from my colleagues is, I always have a tensed face or probably an serious face…I don’t really know how it got a fit inside me…A little observation to my facial reactions proved they were right. I analyzed and did find out that, I forget to smile or keep a smiling face…this is naturally because every-time my mind/brain seems to be preoccupied with something..even if its a lightweight brain thread or a heavyweight brain process it just keeps consuming answers to what next? what next? what next? what next? and goes working on it…

I think its time, I shut it down and do something else to get it back to normal…stop taking things seriously…make work as just work…concentrate a bit of self development…concentrate a bit on enjoying the beauty of life and nature…Overhauling time for my brain machine

Some-other things which I am going to try are,
- When I walk, when I eat, when I breath, when I sleep or whatever I do…I am going to auto suggest myself to stop thinking too much and just concentrate on whatever I am doing in the present.
- No parallel processing and no concurrent processing. Going to be in single threaded model for some time.
- Take good time to sleep, to eat healthy food(of-course fat free) and read as much as “out of subject” books.
- Try and smile whenever possible…whether its necessary or unnecessary.
- Stop frowning
- Finally, LIVE MY LIFE
So guys and girls…its your turn now…Do whatever get out of it !!! Its not really good out there

If you have tackled these kind of situation better, please do let us know.

 

Rose is a rose is a rose is rose rose….

The title does sound funny…its a starting line of a bollywood film song

It was around 7:00 AM in the morning, I was as usual cuddled in my bed. My mom, jolted me and I slowly opened my voice. In an excited voice she told me that few roses have blossomed in our garden in a rose plant she had planted few days back.

I am not a guy who is interested in gardening and it did not make any sense to me about the roses. So I just slept back again.

W hen I went to the terrace to get something is when my eyes fell on the newly blossomed rose. I was feeling it was something special. Though our garden was not so spacious and there were lot of plants, the rose did catch my eyes with all its beauty. It was as though, the only shining smiling flower around in a whole population of serious people around.

Its true !! In our daily life where people are so concerned and serious about their life n work…there are only few people who take time for others. Who make others smile…Who take time to enjoy life and who take time to be positive and spread positiveness around… They are just like these roses which catch everyone’s eyes

How would you feel if you had a garden full of roses??

Have a look at the pictures of one of the roses,

 

Is life always in infinite loops??

Is life in infinite loops always?? I mean, do we do the same old things day by day?? Atleast, most of us do… Wake up…do the routines…work…sleep…eat…

It was today morning it striked me, I am not getting life to the fullest. I am wasting a lot of time into the ways I should reach my goal rather than the goal itself. These are energy drainers

Sometimes we are so hooked up with things we tend to see what takes us to the goal right from what we are…Just step back…and look at the whole picture…This is where we understand we are bound so much to what we do rather than why we do…

In other words, only when we break our normal life…burn the self-desire each day in us…atleast spend an hour in a day for figuring out how to reach our goals…and keep track of it we could reach our destiny.

There are lot of concentration diverters and energy drainers around. Watch out for them !!! Stick around to your goals