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The Butterfly Diaries 17 - Let's Get It Started

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Jobs, as I understood them, were of two types – those where you had to do something very clever and those where you were responsible for something important. As I was getting started, I wondered which one this release management thingy was. So far, it had not looked like something clever. When I saw our office building made of stone, in medieval style, complete with a mahogany door and knocker, I wondered if I had come to work or for sightseeing. The workspace with a view of the river Isar further reinforced this doubt. “ You can sit here, ” said Miss Sincerity indicating a seat at the table, playing the perfect hostess at the office as well. I remembered how she used to ask my permission to go home every day when she had joined the project back in Bangalore. Here she seemed altogether a different person. Around lunchtime, she told me, “ I won’t be joining for lunch. There are hardly any vegetarian options in the office canteen. You go with Mr. Genius and Bahadur. ” Bahadur, I discover...
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The Butterfly Diaries 16 - Boulevard of Broken Dreams

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Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge was the first movie I watched with my mother when I returned to Bangalore two years earlier. Now as I was all set to leave for Europe, I remembered the scene in the movie where the heroine requests her father for a vacation in Europe before settling into a life as per his wishes. I too was flying away to Europe promising to return for a second shot at the MBA. The onsite assignment felt more like an extended vacation to recover from my broken MBA dreams than a career advancement. Of course, there was a chance to make money. The work I was supposed to do seemed simple enough from whatever I had learnt. My predecessor was the front-end developer who had taught me client-side programming. He would return once I took over. This was a time of various firsts. First from the family to go abroad. First time travelling by flight. First time going so far that I could not come home for a short break at will. The domestic flight itself was such a fascinating experience;...
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The Butterfly Diaries 15 - Release Roadblocks

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The whole point of the IT gold rush is about going onsite to the US and earning in dollars. And better late than never, better Euros than nothing, my opportunity was finally coming, and it looked like I was going to spurn it. But the few months of preparation had me excited about the MBA and I sought a release from the IT job. “ Why would you go and apply for a human resources course of all things? ” asked my colleague Miss Audacity when she learnt of my interview call. I couldn’t tell her that I believed a course in human resources was what came closest in the real world to my dream of becoming a psychohistorian from Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series. She would think I was mad. I, however, did mention it to my other colleague Mr. Quiet. Instead of laughing at me, he said, “ You are in the wrong field, boss. Forget this IT job as well as the MBA and become a writer. ” As I was trying to figure out if he had been pulling my leg, I heard my lead Mr. Earnest’s voice: “ When do you plan to ...
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The Butterfly Diaries 14 - Design Dilemmas

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When one designs a system, there are some patterns that are often seen to repeat themselves. And so it is when one designs one’s career. With mom breathing down my neck, I had to come up with a pattern that would win her design approval. The IT Gold Rush pattern was too plebeian for my mother’s taste, and it required me to be onsite by now. The American-educated specialist pattern required me to admit the last two years were a mistake and get back to my core subjects. That left the Indian-educated generalist as the default choice.  There was also the foreign-educated generalist pattern that Mr. Zest had opted for. But our family finances did not allow me that choice. Talking of Mr.Zest, it had been sad indeed to say goodbye to the one person remaining from my earliest days in the company. With my new expertise in client-side technology and the premium module, my focus shifted from bug fixes to enhancements. Starting with testing, I had worked my way upstream to finally reach design...
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The Butterfly Diaries 13 - Quality Quandries

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When I was young, dad would start teaching me only on the night before the exam given his tight schedule. But instead of focusing on stuff that would help with the exam the next day, he would always start with the fundamentals. No matter how little time we had, that was the only way he could do things. That was how it was with this gentleman Mr. Systematic as well. But luckily, time was something we had on our side, despite him having to start all over again with me due to Mr. Ambitious resigning. By the time he was done, I was fully confident about handling the role of configuration controller. Not that it was rocket science. It was just the role of an archivist – maintaining project artifacts. As he said, “ The real devil lies in the detail. From the folder structure to the document naming convention, everything should follow a well thought out strategy. ” But this served as a doorway to other opportunities. The first was related to increasing the project’s capability maturity – the ...
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The Butterfly Diaries 12 - Maintenance Maladies

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My mother used to say I needed correcting many times before I did what I was told. Programs are no different. And there always remains some room for improvement, even in the simple ‘ hello world ’ program. Say, the font. So, it did not surprise me when our project did not deliver software to the client’s full satisfaction even in February. But the boss lady was honest and persuasive, and she convinced the client that this was the best they could get, and the rest would evolve through a five-year maintenance and enhancement contract. And surprisingly they signed up for it. And before we knew it, we had moved from development into maintenance. And I was part of a bug fix team led by Mr. Dependable. The other members were Mr. Ambitious and two new freshers – Mr. Noisy and Mr. Quiet. Suddenly I found myself the seniormost developer on the team, lording it over the youngsters. But my good friend Mr. Noisy begged to differ. “ Having been on the project longer does not make you special. Give ...
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The Butterfly Diaries 11 - Production Problems

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It was time for the batting side to bowl. And bouncer after bouncer, the client-side programmers bowled at me, making my code resemble our old moth-eaten rajai when mom pulled it out of the loft. I hung on to the crease, taking on one delivery at a time and finally managed to take the code through the final over. But the match was not yet over. The real test came when everyone’s code was integrated and loaded into the client environment. The moment that happened all kinds of new bugs began to crawl out of the woodwork. It was another round of slogging to get it all to work together outside the simulation environment. Then finally the D-Day came, when the final working application was to be demonstrated to the client by our onsite team. Within ten minutes, we began to get frantic calls. The application had crashed, bringing up what we called the tube light message – a message box stretching from one end of the screen to the other like a tube light, filled with one long line ...
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