Requirement Analysis: It’s a game where you either kick others or else, you are kicked. Where you say you have done your full even though you don’t know what’s happening. It all happens in a place where you smile at strangers and congratulate people when they have just given a presentation you could not understand. It’s a place where you steal someone else’s good work and show case it as your sole achievement. All these and more action in one place! No, it’s not Bollywood; neither it’s a big gambling casino in Las Vegas. It’s our own software industry.

You don’t have to job hunt to get into this place. It hunts you. Easy to get through an interview. But surviving is grueling. You may survive if you have properties like over activeness, sleeplessness, tirelessness, self praising and enthusiasm without any reasons. Arranging project parties, getting involved in team lunches are added advantages for success in future.

Design: Once you are in here, you must develop the property to sit where you are asked to without further questions and get up and leave when you feel that the stars are out. The training period is actually to develop that quality in you. After the 2 month training period you are ready to take any crap that is put our way. First few weeks people live in dreams, they are absolutely in a different world. Company provided hostels and world class facilities are enough to lure college kids.

Work, it’s not easy to get. After training there is a period called “Bench”, most of people get into that zone and most important thing is unlike training no time limit is defined for it. If you are lucky enough you might get a PC, so you can come to office, send forwards, browse internet, write blog and fill bulletin boards with brilliant ideas. For few days it seems very good, no work and at the end of month you get salary, what more can one want. In few days a person gets bored of it, he goes to manager asking for work, he threatens to write mails to higher authorities, he is ready, ready to work, he wants to show his skills.

Coding: But once you are put into project, you are expected to work, work like hell, day and night. And yes, at the end of the day you will get some doggy biscuits. Beware, if you are not smart enough to show case your work (however meager it is), you end up with more work and of course, you very well get to clap for the appreciation showered on others for the work you had accomplished. But there is something more that the biscuits and that is the bone. That bone is always dangling in front of you, its called onsite. People say once you get the bone, all your poverty is gone, but at what cost?

As it is rightly said, the crowd is always at the bottom of the ladder. Once you are up a few rungs, then its smooth sailing. But getting there is the challenge. It not only requires technical skills but quality to over ride all others in your way. The harder you fight, the easier you climb the rungs. And the best part is that the fights need not be just. They can be anything ranging from back stabbing to arguing. This is for your fellow competitors. With your higher ups you have to be a smiling, sweet, hard working figure. It definitely need not be genuine. You can always act. It’s surprising why we don’t have an award for best performance in acting rather than in technical skills.

So it’s basically wearing different masks with different people within the same place. Ultimately you forget who you were, who you wanted to be and what you are at present. Summarizing it – you lose your identity.

Load Testing: The sad part is yet to come. There are souls within such firms who don’t fight, don’t back stab and don’t have a voice but they are hard working, dedicated and sincere. They are genuinely interested and are real gems. The only quality they lack is self praise. They don’t know how to project what they did and what they want to do. But given a platform, they can be great achievers. Alas, the company doesn’t favor people like that. So our poor souls slog like anything, day in and night out. Finally on the D day the project is released, it is a success but the limelight is shared by the great fighters. In the celebrations and bash that follows, the poor souls are all but forgotten. They are the foundation, but who cares about the foundation, it’s all above that matters.

Well the story never ends. The appraisals come and go. And now we don’t have to explicitly mention who got appraised and who did not. But it is business as usual in the industry. Poor souls are promised on-site opportunities and hence not appraised as of now. But we know nothing is going to change. We know who is going take the flight to work on site next time.

Deployment: Ultimately we understand that we have wasted some prime part of our life in a worth less place that never recognized our sincerity. They never had the confidence in us, not because we were less worth but because we forgot to show case ourselves. So now we end up with nothing but some doggy biscuits.

Project Scrapped