Is this IT?

This is the Pilot post in a series of articles detailing my experiences in the Information Technology Industry.

Until such a time as it is picked up for publishing by one of those career counseling supplements you see so often in newspapers, this and following posts on the same will be freely available for distribution.

Do you remember a time when computers used to fun? (I’m not talking about fun which vanishes once parental control software is activated. Naughty, naughty)

Well I do.

I remember dedicating hours, after school and on weekends, to save humanity by assassinating Adolf Hitler in Wolfenstein 3D. Of course it helped that I could imagine the Nazi supreme, who I was constantly trying to blow up, to be an equally evil madman- my geography sir. Only differences were that the latter didn’t sport a toothbrush moustache and got strangely upset when I tried to redefine the map of Europe.

I also remember trying to scrap up enough money to visit the local Internet parlor, where I’d sign in to yahoo messenger to chat up college chicks in America while pretending to be a rich 25-year-old industrialist from India. Before you judge me you have to realize, like I did unfortunately much later on, that they probably weren’t college chicks either – probably 15-year-old juvenile boys (like me) or 50-year-old closeted gay men. All in all, no harm done. No harm that I was legally accountable for anyway.

In the meantime I went through the motions during computer lab classes where they’d teach us state of the art programming languages like LOGO and BASIC. I could never get my head around the statement “c = c+1”. How was this mathematically possible? All those years spent skipping cartoons to learn addition and this is what they finally come up with? I refused to believe and wouldn’t use it just on principle. I didn’t exactly cover myself in glory in the following exams. Needless to say, I wasn’t going to be the next Bill Gates.

I should have known that this was a sign of things to come.

Later on in high school I opted for biology instead of computers. I figured that, since I’d rather learn about the reproductive system than find the sum of all odd integers starting from one to a specified non-negative number ‘N’, this was the right thing to do. Though it might shock you to hear this, I’m no expert on reproduction and even less so when it comes to drawing it. Through the next 2 years of high school I had to resort to bribery to get my sister to sketch my lab records for me. Med school was definitely out of the question. Paying her and tuition simultaneously was not something I could afford.

Through a series of unfortunate events, I found myself enrolled in the computer science program of a “prestigious” engineering college in Bangalore after graduating high school. Little did I know that Count Olaf (the CSE HOD) was lurking around the corner. But that’s a story for another day.

But why you ask. Why would a person, who believes Paint Brush is the best thing Microsoft ever came out with, want to become a programmer? Why would a person who thinks first of Xena - the Warrior Princess when anybody mentions Amazon.com want to spend the rest of his life in front of a PC? Why would a person, who grins like an idiot when somebody says ‘unzip it and use’, want to take up IT as a profession?

There are a number of reasons including complete ignorance concerning professional health hazards like carpal tunnel syndrome caused due to incessant typing, strained eyes caused due to focusing on a computer screen for prolonged periods of time, ear bleeding caused due to attending manager meetings etc.

But mainly there were 2 factors influencing my decision.

The first one was pressure, neither peer nor parental, but from all sorts of other sources. From the standard- aunts, uncles, professors to the peculiar- nosy neighbors, milkmaids, man who owned the lemon shop close to high school etc. Rich advice coming from people whose level of computer expertise ranged from having seen a computer once from far to having attempted to double-click a mouse (no mean feat where I come from).

The other was money. It was no secret that a degree in computer engineering meant a well-paying job waiting for you in one of the innumerous IT companies residing in Bangalore.

In my mind it looked like this – sitting on a smooth leather chair in a posh cabin on the 20th floor of a skyscraper overlooking the skyline of the city whilst my pretty personal secretary, nay my gorgeous “executive assistant”, takes notes for me. She may or may not be sitting on my lap. I couldn’t possibly get two smooth leather chairs for my cabin, joining as I was in an entry level position.

Cut forward 5 years and what it is actually- sitting on an uncomfortable nylon chair in a cramped cubicle shared with three middle-aged men on the 2nd floor of a building in a state of disrepair( the building not me, alright me too) with my line of vision ending at the entrance to the men’s restroom. The only sign of a woman is the office supplies manager who snarls at me when I knock on her door to ask for an envelope. Jokes on her, I take two while she isn’t looking.

But back in college, I did not know all that.

Through a mixture of luck, pluck and a personal penchant for unscrupulousness I manage to survive through 4 years of engineering all the while barely escaping the diabolical schemes of Count Olaf. On a side note, I gain entry into a multinational IT corporation.

That’s when all the non-fun began.


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