im lovin IT - part I

Man..it's been a while since i've last blogged.Guess I was too busy with my work(hehe..Ya rite).You know what the toughest thing about blogging is... 'The freakin topic"... Sometimes you never seem to know what to wanna write about. Then I wondered, "why should I look around for topics when I can write about something that I see & experience everyday".The IT world.Considering the fact that I've been there for almost three years now so I qualify to make any observations, good or bad.. mostly bad.. really really bad.

The first thing that comes to my mind when I talk about IT is the concept of bench. First of all which retarded,himesh-lovin, tree-huggin,break-dancin hippie from AP came up with this word BENCH for IT. Is this supposed to be some morale booster for us?? I guess they got this word from sports, mostly from football, where u have a bench(for all those keepin score, Football is a game played mostly in the Commie states of kerala and WB & the hippy state of Goa, where it apparently is more popular than "world most popular sport" - IDIOTS!!). The issue is that you get to see more action on a football bench than an old age home(read IT).I heard somewhere that the average bench strength in any IT company(im only talkin about the BIG players here) is around 30%-40%. WOW!! That means out of 10 people, 4 people dont have any work and other 6 pretend that they do! Hey, don't get me wrong.. Being on bench is a lot of fun..Trust a guy who's been there for three years! This is what amazes me with the guys on bench, there are two kinds of them. One,pretends that he is not on bench even though he is and acts all serious and pretends that he is busy all day(hate these losers) and the second kind(that's me) are the guys who act like they are on bench. We have hour long coffee breaks,longer lunch breaks,sit in the caferteria all day discussing Indian politics even though we dont vote. Some guys "utilize" this periods to improve on their TT, Pool, Foosball skills. SO the next time you meet someone who shoots good pool or plays TT well, there a 75-25 shot that he's from IT.

Ok, that's wat 40% percent of the people do, wat do the other 60% of the people. They pretend that they are workin and always try to rub that into the people who are on bench.They always come early into office and leave late in the evenings(that shows that they are not productive, right!!).Another thing with IT guys is that they get really pissed when they compared to the folks at BPO. This is must be pissing them off as they are reading this at this very instant. Cmon, what difference is there really between us. We work in shifts, they work in shifts. We have uselsess status meetings, they have useless meetings. We take hours trying to convince THE client on the phone(also called conference call) that he's an IDIOT, they try to convince THEIR clients on the phone that they are IDIOTS. We get paid exceedingly high for something a monkey with absolutely no social skills(read a developer) can do for us.. You know what.. the same monkey would freak out if they had a do a job at BPO. And dont tell me that they work night shifts coz every in IT company, people do night shifts. The only difference is that we, the IT guys, need to have "technical" skills and they dont need that. Wow. Really!! If your technical skills was so niche, then how come ur so easily replacable in ur office?? IT people need to respect other people and professions too(which I highly doubt).

There are several things unique to IT people and the small little world they live in. Everyone is a mess in IT when it comes to communicating with others, be it verbal or written. Here's a trick to freak out an IT guy.. Ask him to write a mail to the client telling him that his requirements were not met coz they were not clear enough. Here's a guy how can code 5000 lines of code with ease but starts hyperventilating when it comes to writing a mail.Messenger and chat services are a boon to these guys. Otherwise bumbling, stumbling guys become extemely social to the extent of being a pain in the rear. They start messaging the guy who sits in the next cubicle! Meetings is a form of cruel punishment that is employed in the IT world.For those not familiar with this concept, imagine a group of monkeys sitting in a circle and someone tosses a coconut in between.. That is wat we call a meeting. The manager is absolutely clueless about anything and the only guys who know something are the ones who think that they would rather be castrated than speak in a meeting. So, that usually leaves the half-baked(read me!) guys to talk during the meeting.The punishment within the punishment is given to those who are to prepare the MoM(minutes of meeting). They have to transform to a low self-esteem IT professional to a low self-esteem secretary and jot down all that is said in the meeting.How exciting! There is a way to avoid this though, a technique that I always employ. When it's my turn to draft the MoM, I make such a mess of by makin the manager the go-to guy for all the action points!! Trust me. DO this and u will never have to make the MoM ever again. 

To be continued....