Myth 4: I am the 4th I-do-IT

There are 10 kind of people in this world. One kind who appreciates PJ’s, and the other who do not understand binary. Well, if you are through with the first line now and having a skewed smile on.. you r probably good to go. And if you are again going up to re-read the first line, no issues… u’ll catch up soon.

All right, this blog is about “the IT Guy next door”, the one who you see every day from your balcony rushing for work in the morning, most probably empty stomach-ed and definitely empty headed. Okay, If you r also an IT guy and reading this with vengeance, I apologise for Prototyping. Just think of this as an exception logic or a negative Test Case, and you will start feeling better. you might be lucky enough a chap who leaves a 3BHK worth 40 Lakhs with a stomach full of “Maachh Bhaat” cooked by Mom , “parathas” packed in the lunch box by wifey dear while ‘Raju the chauffer’ drives your Honda City to your Office. This blog is definitely not about u, it’s about the thousands surviving away from home sweet home in an aim to “make a career out of IT (or at least make out with an IT girl) ” waiting in a bus stand in the scorching heat with a prized fashion accessory round his neck.
So what makes the regular IT guy so special? Well, for starters he ventures into an industry with no freaking idea whatsoever it is. Again, am sorry if you kicked ass at coding “Towers of Hanoi” or “Fibonacci Series” in school/college, remember I am writing about the regular guy who relied upon ‘Xerox machines’ or the microscopic letters written behind ‘Sai Baba’s photo’ during Computer exams. My knowledge of Computers were limited to “Roadrash and desibaba.com” during school and these were the precise reasons I coaxed Baba to get me a Computer back then. So, it’s completely understandable if a student of Medical science having 5 yrs of intense study and training, rip opens up a heart during surgery, or if a Chartered Accountant audits a MNC. But what on earth is the regular Mechanical/Bio Tech Engineer guy who screwed with nut- bolts or was busy preparing Methanol and smoking grass all 4 yrs of college, doing in an IT Company? Well the answer is, neither did he have anywhere else to go, nor did the company who hired him had much option. It’s a symbiotic relation in which you are ready to flush out whatever you learned (in case you did learn something – In my case it was a win win situation) in College, while the company is ready to hire u, because it needs to design softwares maybe for some Pathology Lab in Oklahoma, and he does not have enough guys to do the dim-witted labor.

So, you start with plenty of dreams in your mind to change the world, ok if not the world , then at least the Pathology lab in Oklahoma. And you start imbibing the archetypal trends set by your seniors and team mates very soon in your everyday life. You reach office and fashionably swipe your card while the glass door opens with a beep (as if you r entering a NASA Laboratory with loads of sensitive data – I mean how can “Jennifer S. Hughes, 570-32-3479, 28 Zimmerman Lane, Los Angeles, CA 90017, suffering from Piles” be classified as sensitive data? – It can be termed unhygienic data but not sensitive for chrissake.) and the time of your entry is recorded. You make sure to spend 9 hrs every day in Office at least before swiping out, else it might impact your Companies revenue. So you feel good and kinda important (ur fooling around of 30 mins can bring down a Fortune 50 on its knees, ain’t that great?) and you don’t really mind being tagged as “Billable Labour” in your timesheets, do u? It’s all about professionalism @EOD, isn’t it? You love abbreviating everything (EOD, PFA, WFH etc) in an attempt to look uber-cool. You swear by jargons like “deep diving” , “fine tuning” , “gap analysis” just to give a feel that you are solving something really big and important.

The Bio Clock of your life changes according to your Client’s time zone. So, while you used to go to bed around 11pm previously, you might just wake up at that time now to greet your Client “Good morning…”, just to make him feel good. You are a great team-man if you r working round the clock. You put extra hours in office just out of habit, coz there’s practically nothing to do going back to your boring double sharing basis room. Plus you get free access to the internet and Coffee machines. So you save some bucks on your breakfast and snacks. Yes, a cup of coffee and a cigarette makes the breakfast of a regular IT guy. If you, by chance, still have a social circle and friends, you research about proxies to get access to chat sites and torment your friends tellin’ em how your life sucks.

Just like a coolie, you ask a colleague on introduction, ”Which platform r you working on?” And like a beggar you r always looking for change. The hottest thing you can do in a weekend is attend some walkin drive for XYZ company. But hey, you are not alone in this food chain. You might just sneak past your manager in the weekend drive, both mutually pretending not seeing each other. If you have a girlfriend in another city, you religiously follow the 3 routine calls per day schedule (the 5 mins wake-up call which ends with “I am getting late for work” , the 10 mins lunch call which ends with “I have a meeting” and the 20 mins Good night call which ends with some mushy sounds.. ).

You are robbed by auto wallahs (they just charge double coz of your expensive id-tag round the neck), brokers (they inquire whether you r a student or working, and if you proudly say “I work for Microsoft” with a fake accent, your rent goes up 50% straightaway) and vegetable vendors (They levy an IT tax of at least 30% whenever you r shopping with the tag on). They all will burst into laughter, if they happen to see your ridiculous payslip btw. If they have any goodness left in their heart, they might as well give you some of your money back.

You love partying.. Even if partying means gulping down a beer with your fat and balding roomie in your room every alternate nights, and each demonstrating how their companies and their mangers suck more than the others. That’s your ideal party. You are a movie buff.. Even if it means downloading and watching the pirated version, on Saturdays, the very next day the movie released. The only thing that excites you and you die for is probably the Office quarter or annual parties in which you get to see your otherwise geeky female colleague dressed in some eye soothing outfits, and yes, finally she has waxed her arms…. Plus you get free booze n unlimited starters. You smoke Marlboro and Dunhill in the presence of your colleagues and seniors, just to make yourself look sophisticated, while you puff away maybe Chhota Gold Flake in your room.

Your biggest nightmare is the rumors of increase in the “notice period duration”. The most motivating word to you is “CTC” and that’s nothing to do with Calcutta’s ultra slow heritage transport system. The parameters in which you judge other people are 5.5L or 6.5L, H1 or L1, i10 or i20. Let’s say you discovered a really really hot girl in some random chat session (chances are that she might be a 40 something gay named Rameshwaram Pandey, but that’s a different story) on a night when you really were feeling lonely. So after the initial what do you do and stuffs, you end up asking “So, What domain are you working now?” the moment you discover she (or he, whatever) is also an IT person like you, when all you wanted was to start with “So, what are you wearing now?”.

So that’s how your days and months and years goes on, by meeting or mostly stretching deadlines, submitting timesheets every week , fidgeting between Word and Excel, updating the experience in your CV by 0.1 of an year every few days, signing up in yet another Job Portal. You are always updated with the requirements and Packages offered in the Company opposite to your building. And just like the packages offered, the chicks in the opposite building too come in better packages. As I always say, the grass on the other side, always gives a better kick.
And finally when you have decided that enough is enough, and you have clicked on the send button of “the mail” which was lying in your Drafts for months, you feel really ecstatic.

It’s time for “Change” and “Change has arrived”. Boy, u just made Obama proud. Way to go boy…!