A Coffee With …

“You know, the Manager wants to see me… I don’t know why the heck he is interesting in meeting me . He just said , wants to talk about some project related thing.”
“Oh , That’s a positive sign, maybe he wants to involve you in some good work. Might be some change of project.”
“Let’s see, what happens !”
A tall, dark man with well maintained physique, passed my cubical saying that he wanted to meet me in next five minutes , in the meeting room situated at the corner side of the working area.
Within five minutes we were inside the room sitting face to face. The only difference had been a cup of coffee, that was missing in my hands. While he was enjoying a cold coffee (surely taken from CCD), I was sitting idle along with a spiritless look.
“So, We have something really important to discuss. As we have a lot of people finding opportunities to move to the location of the client ,so called ‘on-site’ , we are left with  a lot of places to filled after they leave. Such an opportunity awaits you. You have been in this project for marginal time, and I think you are quite familiar with both the front end and back end technologies and terminologies…” 
“Actually front end,in back end, I just, worked on only few enhancements.”, I interrupted him in the middle, with a half grinning, half grimacing, look of distaste.
“Okay, I think you must have a proper understanding of current project. There are some people, in the support section of this project, who are moving apart, and I am here to suggest you to avail this opportunity.” 
“But… I am not interested in the kind of work done in support field.”
“What do you mean you are not interested ?”
“I mean…Err… I don’t feel the kind of work, good enough, they do in support.”
“You never have been in support , how can you say like that ?”
“Yes, I have been in buffer for some days in support team prior to coming into this one. I have seen them working. And  I also, don’t like the timing in which they work,generally, there was two shifts there. One was morning from 7 am to 5 pm and another from 12pm to 9pm. I am not comfortable with either of the shifts.”
“That’s not a valid point, how can you say about there work not  good enough. They also do the same work as we do in development.The only difference is, You get tickets there, and you have to solve them within a time period.”
“Yes , when you get tickets you solve them and  the rest of the time, I have seen people wandering around the food courts for tea or gossip. I don’t find it as a challenging work. And also you have to work during weekend, providing support services sitting at home.”
“That’s a misconception that support work in not as much challenging as development. I want to tell you about one of my colleagues, who is, at Manager post, in Apple. Can you believe he was in support work, for a long period of four years. You can be there just for a short duration of 18 to 24 months.”
“That’s not a short duration. I don’t see any work pressure there,  you get tickets, you solve them , other times , you sit idle. And you can’t learn things without feeling any pressure. We have less opportunities of learning new things…...”
Meanwhile the conversation was interrupted by a phone call at his mobile. Finishing his call for 2-3 minutes, he came to the point again.
“Yeah! ,Sorry for the interruption, Where were we! , OK ..Think about it more like this, you get idle time, you can utilize them in learning new technologies. You can learn whatever you want, whether its Java, .NET or web based html. I don’t see any valid reason , why don’t you want to work in support ?”
“Err…. the reason is still same, I am not interested at all, I don’t see that work neither inspiring nor motivating.”
Thinking for few seconds he said, “Well, I just want you to wait here for sometimes, till the TL of the support team visits you. Let me check whether she is available or not. Talk to her, and if she is able to convince you then we are all set, otherwise don’t say directly ‘No’ to her.”
All I wanted was, to yell at his back , Is it like so. First you killed our technology interests and now you want us to do work as per your likings. Forget about the Customer Delight, you boast about, are you keeping the delight of your own employees.
In a duration of five minutes a lady walks in, with glasses perched on the tip of her nose, and the same drama was repeated for one more time.

Good Programmers Copy

“Ek Bagal mein Chand hoga , Ek Bagal mein Rotiyan….” the melody was buzzing deep inside my ears through the ear buds. It was half past one, the afternoon timing, when you try hard to keep yourself awake.And, once you put ear buds on , you can the feel the world off ! Some people still manage to find the whole day refreshing, and I am certainly not one of them.

In the mean time I could sense somebody was calling my name. Putting the dream of, both ‘Chand’ and ‘Rotiyan’ aside, I managed to  I snuck around the neighboring co-worker. I could see him working on some hot issues , he faced during our daily job: ‘coding’- what we call it as.

“I got a problem for you. Here is piece of code that I had, exactly  copied from the code snippet, you had written earlier. But I am getting some kind of issues with this piece of code. Can you check and tell me , what the issue is ?” 

I managed to give him  a ghost of nod. Sniffing around of his piece of code, I could found nothing of my interest.

“Okay, leave it I will find it by myself, he mumbled.

“Yes sure . Also let me know what is the problem”.

Meanwhile, the phone rang, displaying an unknown number at screen.

“Hallo!”

All I could hear was a distant person’s voice chattering across the other side of the phone.

“Please, speak in English on Hindi.”

“I am already speaking in English, Sir.”

I figured out,the accent of English, was totally different to what we Indians speak. And for we, all English accent, other than Indian are hard to grasp.

“Hi ! I am calling from Kindle customer services UK . You had raised a request for replacement of your Kindle device, as you had mentioned that some of the keys on your device are malfunctioning.”

“Yes that’s true.”

“Okay. So for security reasons I request you to add the payment details on your account in amazon.com. You should have a valid credit/debit card for filling up those details.”

”Can you please call me tomorrow or may be day after tomorrow as I don’t have the credit card details right now.”

Getting a positive response from the other side of the phone , I hung it up.

“Hey ! I think you have forgotten all the coding logic , you had implemented some days ago.” the neighboring person said sarcastically.

“Who remembers the logic implemented codes, that was written two months ago.” I replied, giving a wounded look to him.

“You ,even can’t explain the solution of the problem which I had mentioned you, sometime earlier. You must have copied and pasted all the code snippets from somewhere else.”  he argued.

“Definitely I had copied and pasted a lot of code snippets, but that was a successful copy and paste. And you did the same thing, but yours is unsuccessful.” I  defended.

“ Its not all about copying and pasting, there are some concepts behind coding.” he said, more irritably this time.

“That concept part may called Programming , but The ‘Coding’ seems to be nothing more than a successful copy and paste or a lucky hit and trial.”

It let me reminded the the famous statement of the cofounder of Apple,  Steve jobs:

“Good Programmers copy, but great programmers steal ideas. Every novice can be a coder but it takes years to become a programmer, and some people can not make it, till the end.”

Later on, he asked me , whether should he include the update of  work done by me, for the day, as ‘copied and pasted codes’.

“Of course! You can, but append the word “Successfully”  as a prefix.”

The Day the Earth danced at Shakira’s tone

“So you use your own Unix login credentials for data base connectivity.”
“Yes I do.”
“Can you show me the details of your daily hourly effort you put in work ?”
“Yes sure !”
“Whom are you reporting to?”
“Earlier I was reporting to Mr. …. but now its Mr. …..”
It was an audit going on just behind me. The person was shooting questions like a bullet to my team mate and She was taking those questions as an input, processing them and came up with a well verse answer as an output. The big boss was standing beside them watching the conversation.  As it was afternoon period , I was sleeping from inside , trying hard to keep my eyes open. Suddenly I could feel my chair oscillating like someone had played “Hips don’t lie” song and  my chair was well aware of that.Thinking of someone might be shaking my chair intensely,I turned around making a face to see who was it. Aware of the situation the audit person was rushing towards the exit.Probably he knew the fact that if he would be late, God would be taking his audit from next time ! Somebody announced “ it’s an earthquake.” People started vacating the place. No damage was done at that place.I could find many people not aware of the slight tremors. I asked my Boss for a permission -
“Boss ! Could I take one iMac with me ,as, if the tremor  returns with magnitude, there would be nothing left for coding !”
“Yes! Sure, you can , if the security allows you to do so.” he replied sarcastically.
Within five minutes people were outside the building gathered around for the discussion that continued another half an hour.
“If it would be of high magnitude , you won’t even get time to move from your place.Within a fraction of seconds you would be somewhere beneath the  debris.”
“Where is Mr. ….?”
“He said he won’t come out of building. He’s afraid,what if a P1 ticket comes in between !”
Back to work after half an hour I went straight to one of my team mate – “Please  give me your helmet. I want to secure my future for the day. I even don’t have any LIC policy till yet !”

A Technical Viva

“Hey! How is the External(interviewer) ?” I asked one of my classmate, who just got out of the interview room.
“He’s really a ‘Khadus’(bastard) ! He thinks himself nothing less than Bill Gates.” Got a disappointing reply from him.
It’s the semester viva, 3rd semester. The subject is “Principle Of Programming Languages”.We are having group viva, consisting of at least 5 people  in group. The first group, joining the External is the unluckiest one because they do not get any feedback . Whenever a group,comes out of the interviewer’s room , narrates the questions being asked , the mood and personality of External.
“What is the Intel's latest processor ?” came a voice in chaos.
One of my group member looked at me for an answer. I shrugged , murmured Pentium, the only processor I had heard about. He made a disgusting look and went in search for “Raju Scientist”, a guy who had the first assembled desktop in our batch.
Its Quart Core, the latest processor.”
“Is scanner an input device or output device ?” heard another question in chaos.
“It must be an input device , because when I told him that it is an output device ,he gave me a pity look.” came an answer from the mob.
Next was our group’s turn, the second last group. Only thing good was, we could proudly say that we were  nicely dressed ,in formal wear just to impress the External.
“Oh ! You people are really looking nice in formal wear. Let me check , whether your brains are as nice as your dresses ! All the previous group people really disappointed me and now I  expect some smart answers from this group. So should I proceed ? ” A mid-fifties ,half bald person with a large spectacle up on the nose , greeted us as we entered.
“Yes Sir !” we replied in unison.
“OK, Good ! Now , as the subject name is “Principle of programming languages” so tell me ,What do you people understand by programming language ?” He put a glance at the person sitting at the edge of our row.
“It’s a language used by programmers, and programmers generally use it.” He added the answer followed by  a pin drop silence.
“Programming language is a…” another person tried hard to recall but could not remember the rest part of definition.
The interviewer stared at rest of us ,as of asking any thing extra we want to add. All eyes went down as a response to his expectations.
“OK” he sighed. “Tell me in which languages we generally do programming ?”
“Sir , Its English ! We do all our coding in English Language”,came a  quick reply.
“Are you sure ? The programming language is English ?”
“Yes Sir ! We don’t have a Hindi keyboard yet.”
“Have you heard of Dennis Ritchie ?” He asked looking at me.
Who the heck on earth was he? I though,  nodded a negative response despite his anticipation.
“You must be knowing Daniel Craig !” he asked sarcastically.
The named seemed familiar ,so I nodded a positive response this time with much confidence.
Pissed off my response he took a disgusting look at each of us.
“Oh good ! I am overwhelmed to meet students like you.” He stopped and thought for a while, “You must be having computers with you , at least tell the configuration of your computers.”
“Actually Sir , it’s a monitor , a CPU , a keyboard , a mouse and a UPS configured together.” came a girl’s voice as a response.
“Great to see the future of Information Technology. Now , you may leave , please!”
We came out without dignity but  winning a battle against ignorance.
“Hey How is the External ?” One of the person from last group asked me.
“He is really a jerk,a bastard,**** !”