The Tragedy of being 26+ MBA in an Indian IT company

I read some guy named Frankie’s (Siddesh Agashe) blog about TheTragedy of being 25+ in an Indian BSchool. I found it funny like many others; it has become quite a rage in fact. Though I couldn’t picture myself in the category he talked about I knew a lot of guys like that. I myself was in the awkward no-man zone in between the cool kids and seen-it-know-it-alls. I was 23 when I joined the B School but with no work ex (Due to my taking a year off once after school and one after engineering for…. Aah never mind). So I was not fun enough to have fun with cool kids and the work-ex people never came to me for advice or career or any other intellectual discussions. But then it had it pros too, I was not labled Uncle or Bade Bhaiya and I wasn’t counted in non serious, you-don’t-deserve-to-be-in-a-B-School crowd, in fact people used to criticize college’s policy to take non work-ex right on my face, when I used to go “Hey!” they used to say “Abey matlab tu nahi yaar”. So I wasn’t worried about receding hairline but a bulging waistline nevertheless, I wasn’t considering this an extension of my DU days but hadn’t worked either. So all in all a straddle position between these groups, so I didn’t give this post much thought just smiled though it and got it over with. 

THEN IT HIT ME LIKE A TON OF BRICKS!

I am that guy, only not in a BSchool but in an IT company and then I realized the tragedy of being a 26+ MBA passout in an IT company!

I’m guessing like most people when I came into an IT company I had the following dreams –

•  Fancy title like Consultant or Business Analyst. High quality work
• Not starting the day with 14 gaalis and boss waving the paper with target written on in my face. And have to nothing to look forward to except Sun, Sweat and Dirt.
• A/C Office, sophisticated people to talk to, Glitzy campuses, Metropolitan cities
• Not being at the bottom of the food chain
• And most importantly – Girls!

But as they say, be careful what you wish for.

Now that I am here, this is no different than being 25+ in an Indian B School. In fact it is like walking into Amity or Lovely Professional University, only 5 years too late and already having a masters degree.  And then –

• All the girls you like will be already be 4 years younger to you and walking with 2 guys her age, at best they will ignore you or give you the ‘why is that old creep looking at me?’ look.
• All the girls your age would already be either married or engaged. They will happily wear their Chudiyans, Manglasutra and Sindoor which is their way of saying “back the f*** off from me”.
• You will laugh at mails which say that there is some dancing competition/Antakshri/Mimicry competition happening. But when your manager asks so have you been taking part in any activities or any initiatives you will cut a sorry figure.
• You will look down upon the software engineers, saying “in saalon kee to zindagi code likhte likhte nikal jayegi, accha hua main bach gaya”. Then you will be given even a worse job where terms like UTA, PTT, MLAP will keep hitting you and finally you will have to run to some software engineer for help.
• When you meet another IT guy he will ask what do you do, you will smirk and say “Oh I’m a SAP consultant” or “Oh I’m an Business Analyst for Banking & Capital Markets” when he will ask you whether you use Secure socket Layer in R/3 structure with ECC 6 version for SAP or do you recommend a database transaction mechanism which guarantees ACID properties in order to ensure data integrity despite concurrent user accesses (concurrency control) for banks, you will pull the face like Pamela Anderson asked you for Teerth Yatra  .
• You will pull out your fake accent when the Technology leads calls you and say “Hi this is Ankit, glad to be talking to you Narayan” mentally picturing a dark, dumb, merely an engineer with bad ‘communication skills’.  Further you will try to dazzle him with how you calculated the Security Market Line, Treynor ratio and Alpha in your MBA and then go mute when he asks if you have worked in a JAVA environment or you do know how to migrate objects in SAP using BAP or IDOCs.

Now that I have written I think I am already going into depression. I need a drink, or a girl, or at least a project.