How toxic the a work project can be!

 I wanted to write about how toxic a work project can be. I have been encountering worse projects in India and my previous project was one. Sadly, for the last 5+ years in IT, all my projects which I work on office have been utter gutter rubbish. 

Though I get paid on time for the work I do, I have to admit, the work culture has been worse. The only thing kind to me has been the fact that - I have work, I am not jobless or on the streets. 

But on the contrary, the same work can cause you health hazards in ways where you end up in medical care instead of on the streets, such is the irony.

I wish I could cry my heart out here in this post of my work place project - I eventually got thrown out of it, despite putting in such a hard hard effort, where in I remember- I did not even get time to turn my neck whilst working. Imagine having such a stiff neck at the end of the day.

Some of the stupidity and absurdity of my previous project was - 

1. It has been running for more than 10 years now and there is not one version of the software in production. Imagine all the work for 10 years still no signs of it making money.

2. The project release got postponed by another 6 months. I have seen project releases getting delayed by a month max, but taking extension 6 months on a project which has been in development for 10 years- sounds reasonable enough.

3. The team comprised of 12 developers and 5 managers all of whom were non technical. Imagine me being technical being thrown out of the team while retaining a manager who doesn't know one line of code nor any functionality! Absurdity knows no limits.

4. Two tier architecture - The project was a huge one and the architecture leveraged was a 2 tier one - there was a client application and a database server. Much of the business logic was coded into the database as stored procedures and functions. All of the concept of threading and logging were totally abandoned for good - One needs to have brains to use technology, in-fact average Indian IT brain does not recognize threading, logging, scalability as a software design paradigm.

5. Poor requirements writing - The way the requirements were written were so so poor. Imagine having  1000 page word document horribly written and developer needs to go through the same to figure out behaviors. Do you know how much time it takes to scroll through a 1000 page word document.

6. Zero unit tests - Absolutely no unit tests for the project, it was total mayhem when things went wrong.

7. Process - The process followed was a comedy show in itself. Since the absence of unit tests, developer had to manually test the application- attach video evidence of his testing of all the scenarios which would take one day then another developer tests the functionality before handing it to an actual tester.

8. After work hours WORK - Often I ended up working over time- also it was mandated to work over weekends, management would end up calling or messaging on mobile asking to work on weekends. Imagine getting a message from the director asking you to work over weekend.

9. 230 open bugs in the application - Towards the end of the year, the amount of bugs in the project were reported to be 230. Often management was only interested in fixing the bugs, but nowhere interested in finding the root cause of the issue, which was poor architecture, no unit tests. And without any surprise the 230 open bugs increased to 500 in a short time. 

10. Multiple meetings in a day - Scrum meeting used to take 1+ hour call, plus having 5 managers in the team necessitated call with onsite guys too. Since the managers have no clue on what is happening in the project- they randomly add us into each and every call - thus wasting more time.

Cheers to a release which shall fix 500 bugs in one go.

I am glad I am out of the project, I wish to study, prepare and head out of this organization too. Very sad to let myself know that, I haven't yet found my footing in any organization even after so many years, this is the reality of IT industry.

If budget exists, project doesn't, if project exists, budget doesn't. If both exist, our incompetent IT engineers screw up royally the well deserved project.

Cheers, 

 PS - I got a bit of nerve to write this post - from the book which I am currently reading - "A man called Ove" by Fredrich Bachman.

2024 - Another year goes by.

 Another year comes to an end. Thanks to god for literally everything. There have been days when I have felt very uncomfortable and days when I have felt comfortable especially in the last 1-2 months since I moved out of my previous toxic project.

I do not write much these days due to the lack of time, also can I say that - I fail to absent myself from everyday activities - the absenteeism which can promote quiet and the writing much needed, is kind of unavailable or hard to find for me. 

 But I worked hard in 2024, so hard that, there were days when I could not move my neck around whilst working on my computer. It was that bad. It was all due to the toxic project or team which I worked on.

Since I have not revealed the organization or team where I work, I can now safely write in abstract about the team which I used to work in the past. It gave me a year and half salary but had completely missing what is known as personal time and professionalism.

I shall write about this in another post, but for now, I am thankful to god, he let me tour Tirupati Lord Venkateshwara Temple 2 times this year - in back to back months. This blessing was such immensely great that, I have to thank god for many many more years to come.

In the month of May, I did the Goa, Kolhapur, Saundatti trip, I will write about that one too once I find time, but then later months, work took too much of time and then I was thrown out of the project which I felt as a huge relief and here I am a little bit relaxed finding time to write and read and come to terms with growing older.

Cheers,

20 years back and now.

The year was 2002. I had started with my engineering. I believe this was a golden period of learning as well as living. I remember going to a gym and there was a song which I used to listen while exercising. Mind you this song was one amongst many. 

The song was by the boy band "Blue" and song being "One Love". The reason why I mention this song alone is because one of these days - whilst I am still exercising in the gym - I get to hear this song, yes the same song. 

It not only did bring me back loads of memories, the old times, but also brought about the events which happened things which have gone by - this being another gym. Such is life, a whole lot has changed in the last twenty years yet some things remain the same - just like the same set of songs which we used to exercise back then and now and also the same set of exercises which we do back then and now. (Chest, Biceps, triceps, shoulder, back and thighs exercise). 

Cheers,

Election results

 It was 4th June when the results of the election would be declared. I had an eventful trip to Tirupati with relatives and I was waiting for a majority for Narendra Modi and his team.

We were supposed to start to Bangalore around 9-30 am. In the meanwhile - early leads was being telecasted. Right from the word go - there was something upsetting.

BJP was not getting leads in many of the seats. And the trend continued through the day. The whole of 4th June I was very very upset. Even on 5th I was really upset. 

I was expecting a full majority for the BJP - but sadly it did not happen and it let a big sadness within me which persists even today. People like Modiji and Yogi Adityanath were left high and dry by people for whom they toiled. 

But never mind - God had other plans - BJP now turned towards a coalition government. 

Cheers, Hoping for a longer BJP tenure at the center and state.

Past few days - thanking God

The past few days or months have been thoroughly busy, both work life and personal life. By God's grace things have been smooth and pleasant. 

I thought of coming back to write a blog - thanking God for his blessings when I could accomplish a milestone.

My parents had a desire to invite our aunt and uncle to a trip to Tirupati. My parents had thought about making arrangements. So the trip went smooth by God's grace. I went along with my father and my cousin and his parents.

It was definitely a personal milestone. The day was memorable and went so so well, I can only bow my head thanking God - Lord Venkateshwara. 

So I thought why not make an entry here - thanking God.

Cheers,

2024 - hope to write more

 2023 year passed by pretty quick. As much as I would have liked to write - I got entangled with work and so many other things that I could not make time to write a blog. I thought of writing our trip experiences in the blog. But then- with God's grace I completed another such longer trip this time, with some travel into Goa as well. And again its been months since the last trip.

I am yet to write about the Ayudha Pooja at gym last year. I got pretty busy at work leaving with little time to write. Plus I did not wish to post from my office laptop, since a VPN will always be running, I kept on delaying the writing. 

Today I found sometime to setup my old laptop and write - this introductory post. Hopefully I can write more. All in all, life and God both have been kind. I am currently happy with the workplace with lots of relaxed atmosphere - but hectic workload. I suppose, I enjoy being in the thick of action, just that - it adds to stress - every now and then I stretch over to the weekends.

Starting from 12th January to 26th January- I worked non stop for days to complete some part of a work assignment owing to some escalation of sorts. 

But feels good to be back writing what I can!

Cheers,