It was a normal Monday in an IT company. Actually, there are no normal Mondays in an IT company, Mondays are a time while half the company is on sick leave and other half hates themselves for not having enough leaves to be on sick leave. People are hung over, frustrated, sleepy, looking for other jobs and basically just tired of it all. And when people are like that, something’s gotta give.
09:00 AM:
It was our monthly meeting when I, as the lead of testing team, placed the figures in front of everyone in our project for Bharat Textiles. We had found 198 bugs in our last testing cycle, which was a very high number. I said the quality of the development was very bad and we were no longer ISO 9000 compliant. The lead of the development team took offense at this. He got up from his seat in the meeting room, caught my collar and screamed “Agar project se itni problem hai to Lahore foods ke project mae chale jao! Tum log Anti-project ho!”.
I was dumb founded. Why would he say something like that? Finding a bug is the first step in solving it, there is nothing wrong in saying there is a problem in the project. All projects do. But my bigger issue was that if I have a problem with the project why am I not being suggested the Coca Cola project or British Telecom project? Where there is an onsite, the project is run well, everybody gets to leave office on time and most importantly, you get to talk to white women.
10:00 AM:
This disease was spreading faster than Coronavirus. Two of my team members were stopped from entering the ODC…… Before I go any further, I think I should explain what an ODC is. An ODC or Offshore Development Centre is virtual office of another company, which has outsourced its software development offshore to an IT company that has a deep talent pool, and lower cost of operations. Or in other words, where you pass off your shit work to cheap labour but also want to retain control over the data. So a ODC is access controlled, only people who are working in that project can enter. Two of my team members were stopped from entering the ODC and asked to show their ID cards for granting access, but instead of showing their ID they started sloganeering “Hum Kaagaz Nahi Dikhayenge, Security-Guard Aake Jayenge, Hum Kaagaz Nahi Dikhayenge”. I rushed in to see what the problem is and the revolutionaries asked me instead where my degree is. I said I don’t have it with me right now, but it was definitely verified at the time of my joining. At which they laughed and said “In this project where the team leads cannot produce degree you are asking me to produce an ID card to prove I am a team member?” After which they pushed past me and went inside.
11:00 AM:
The situation almost came to blows. It was the time of our daily stand up call and one person was sitting down for it in the meeting room. Our business analyst was enraged to see this. He confronted him immediately and told him that if he cannot stand for 15 minutes for the stand up call then how can he care about the project. The other person replied that he was just tired and what difference does it make if he did not stand. This enraged our business analyst, he pounded the table with his fist and growled “This is the problem with you people, you do not care about the project at all. Are you a spy from Karachi foods project here to delete all our data? Our soldiers are standing in -40ยบ C in Siachen and you cannot stand for 15 minutes?”. He stormed out of the meeting room while our PM (Project Manager) stood mute but taking notes. Our business analyst could have made his point much stronger only if he was not frequently late to work, or littering the cubicle, or cheating on his time sheet filling extra hours, or being a letch with the women in the project. But of course, just standing for the stand up call made him a stand-up employee. However, I was more worried about the PM taking notes at the Siachen comment.
12:00 AM:
I had just returned from my coffee break when I saw an email waiting for me from the client. Apparently our last testing cycle wasn’t very good and a lot of bugs were not caught. I rubbed my forehead and sighed, and started walking to the desk of the person responsible. I asked him why the quality of his work was so bad? Instead of answering me, he asked me a question “What about the day when the development team did not finish their work on time? What about the Friday when you reached office late? What did you do when Rajesh died from a heart attack and did not finish his assigned work? Did you ask any questions when Kashmiri Pandits were driven out of Kashmir by JKLF?” None of these reasons was an excuse for his bad work but he thought he had answered me sufficiently, so he turned his chair before I could say that I was 5 years old at the time of Kashmiri Pandits’ exodus.
1:00 PM:
“Finally, lunch time” I thought to myself and pictured a plate of steaming mutton biryani and a glass of chilled Coca-Cola. So what if I will die at 45 with this diet, I told myself, death cannot be worse than this life in this project. As I moved towards the exit of the ODC I saw a small crowd had gathered and no one was getting out. Our PM was standing there with a dour face and a sour expression. “Mitron”, he said in his loud and booming voice, “Our soldiers are fighting in Siachen, do you think they are getting lunch breaks of 30 minutes every day? If they can do without it, so can you. You must forego your lunch and keep working. Bharat Textiles mata kee jai!” With this, he corralled us back into our cubicles and left to meet another project’s PM. People were murmuring and there was already a blame-game started about who was responsible for this.
2:00 PM:
The email that will light this powder keg came in. Our Deputy PM sent an email that Mechanical Engineers will inducted in the project with just 15 days of training instead of the usual 1 month training. Being a mechanical engineer myself, I did not think much about it and I welcomed the 2nd point in the email that the PM wants to create of list of all project members. It would be good to have a list of people, I thought, every time we had to send an email for filling time sheets or inviting for someone’s farewell we had to go cubicle to cubicle asking emails of everyone. But a loud cry came from my neighbouring cubicle where two guys who were Computer Engineers, said that it was discrimination against them. Our Deputy PM who was also a Mechanical engineer, rushed into that cubicle to calm them down. He said it was not discriminatory; it was just to help Mechanical engineers. Computer engineers had 150 other projects to go to but Mechanical engineers had only 1. Before they could say anything else, he added that if they did not support this they were Anti-project. One girl who was a Civil engineer stood up to ask that what about Civil engineers, they were also a minority in all projects, but she was asked to shut up, her ID card was checked again and she was asked to submit her code for review immediately.
3:00 PM:
The situation was worsening by the minute, people were quickly taking sides, all civil discourse had stopped and the people from JavaScript Network Uniformator (JNU) were creating a ruckus about everything. In addition, to make matters worse a girl from the HR department entered the ODC to support the JavaScript Network Uniformator (JNU) gang. Since she was an HR, the normal rules did not apply to her and anyway she needed to fulfil her KPIs by successfully intervening in eight issues a quarter. She came in very combative and first, took a photo with the JavaScript Network Uniformator (JNU) gang. Then wrote an email to the PM that how he was supposed to run a software project even though she was no way qualified about it. Lastly, she wrote about this situation in her post on Linkedin title ‘How the PM is driving down Employee Value Proposition in Millennials who are undertaking Digital Transformation for 4th Generation Companies’ and then left after instigating both sides.
4:00 PM:
Since we were locked in and I was getting a migraine due to hypoglycaemia I thought to go to get a coffee. Two girls who were Computer engineers had blocked the coffee machine. They were on dharna and they wanted the plan of having a list of project members dropped. They said it was a ruse by the project management to discriminate against the Computer engineers and they were not sure how the management would use this data. These were the same girls who shared their fingerprint with Xiaomi, their location with Google, their relatives and baby’s photos with Instagram, their home address with Facebook and the inside of their bathroom with Tik Tok. One of the girls had shared her entire travel history, her parent’s passport numbers and her last 6 month’s bank statement with the UK government when applying for a tourist visa, just to get a photo with red telephone booth. However, she didn’t want to want to share her data with her own project. However, it was not possible to get through them, so defeated I came back to my desk,
5:00 PM:
I was hungry, having a splitting headache and my cubicle was littered with wrappers and Tirupati laddu crumbs. Email forwards and Skype messages were flying in with fake news from both sides. If that wasn’t enough, my computer got super slow again, each click was taking minutes to work and applications were taking ages to load. Frustrated I got up to ask for local IT support. The technician came to my desk and after poking around my computer for 2 minutes, he said the network is jammed. High data volume on the network is causing these latency issues. I asked so what can be done and he shrugged and replied “Nothing. Ye aas paas ke project se ghuspaithiye aa gaye jo pura network barbaad kar rahe hai”. I was surprised at that answer. I asked him but I am having the same problem since a month, the last week you said I just needed to reboot and wait, the week before that you said it was because of neighbouring projects using our bandwidth and the week before that it was because of raahu kaal. How are you suddenly blaming it on ghuspaithiye . He called me an Anti-Project and left.
6:00 PM:
At last this hellish day was at an end, it was time for me to go. There was a lot of commotion, the Mechanical Enginers and Computer engineers were at each other’s throats. The development team was blaming testing team for everything and vice versa. With a lot of effort I made way to the exit. But the exit door was again blocked by the PM. “Mitron”, he said “where are you going? The soldiers in Siachen do not leave their posts at 6. Why should you? You should continue your work. The previous PMs ran the project badly for 60 quarters, it will take 120 quarters for me to correct it by making you working longer hours with lesser pay. Anybody who has anything to say at this is an Anti-Project. Bharat Textiles mata kee jai!”. At this point I shouted “Project ke gaddaro ko… Goli maaro saalon ko!” and strangled the PM with my mouse cable. I am sure revisionists 50 version releases down the line will call me a project-bhakt and a true Mechanical Engineer for murdering someone.
