YEAH!!! I AM A SOFTWARE ENGINEER !!!

Ok... so the date today is June 15th ... exactly one year since I left my home and set out for my first job. I had finally managed to do away with four years of engineering. Sometimes I am appalled when I think back about the impression I had about 'ENGINEERS' when I was 13 years old .... Used to think of ultra-sonic planes, wright brothers, you know how the 'ENGINEERS' create the stuff that moves the world. And today i am one and life is well , a little different from what I thought it would be...
A decade after that first teenage year, in the fourth year of college when i got this job, I was surprised at how fate had brought me here. I mean, I have never been that brilliant, I have never had the brains of Einstein as far as I know myself, I have been quite an average student throughout, I really didn't think I possessed much to deserve a job that I thought it is till i actually started it. All I could do is thank the guy who recruited me ... I don't know what exactly he thought I possess to fit into their criteria of selection process, I didn't even exactly know what I am being selected for. I was just too happy that I had not passed out of college unemployed !!!

Now suddenly I was part of that flamboyant software industry so in vogue where software engineers code their life out, program their days and nights, keep flying to and fro from the silicon valley and are paid in figures hard for me to imagine. The first few days in my software company were so COOL... you know how it feels to see these gizmos around you, and how your attendance is no more marked by the "ROLL no. 35 ... present sir" ritual, instead you have these cards with your own identity on it that you flash on some kinda machine and are marked present automatically. WOW !!! And how important it is for every employee to have his own internet connection, Oh! sorry, secure internet connection so that they are able to browse the internet for the latest dvelopments in the technologies, updation of their skills, journals and blah blah blah... And yes, colorful gibberish yahoo mails are replaced by the classy dull Microsoft outlook which is the prime mode of communication with the guy sitting in the next cubicle.

Well, it didn't take long for the rainbow in the sky to fade away into the lull grim darkness which soon followed. Few more months down the line, the span of time equal to a semester in college was enough to unveil the curtains and expose the hollowness that lay beneath those transient flamboyant frills of this industry.

Welcome to the world of software engineers where ................

1. The day starts with the flashing machine which is nothing more than a watchman on your 8 hr presence.

2. The MS outlook is the central repository for the most watched, most forwarded and most enjoyed mails. The ratio of mails from our boss to the mails not from the boss is something like 1:999.

3. You may or may not have work to do but it is important that you make it look like that you have deadlines to face and tasks to accomplish. Charlatans win !!!

4. Many a times your boss might scold you for using yahoo messenger on your systems but if one fine day you just happen to pay a sudden visit to him you might just discover the familiar icon of the messenger on the boss Pc.

5. Your parents might think their brilliant silicon kid is slogging his a** off, only if they knew forwarding mails is a tough job.

6. Your think you are making loadsa money . And then one fine day you suddenly discover the amount the customer paid your bosses for you and you suddenly feel under paid.

7. When they say you are a "resource", they are not being rude by treating you like a machine they switch on and off as and when they want to .... they are just being respectful by treating you like a worthy brainy treasure their company has.

8. You are "Flexibile" if you are able to obediently take orders.

9. The one who does the maximum work, gets the maximum work.

10. Never finish the work before time or else you'll be loaded with more.

11. Of all the new softwares, the advanced technologies, the sophisticated tools, the one which is a pre-requiste for you to climb the corporate ladder is - MS Excel.

12. You might not even know the syntax of the for loop in your OOP language but if you use the terms like " project going live", "onsite trip", "customer visit", "development box", "production box", "con call" blah blah blah .... you are an smart efficient software engineer"

13. When the company gives you a laptop and a cellphone, please don't mistake it for an incentive, its only a means to get their work done even while you are trying to catch up on your sleep on a week end.

14. Back-Ache is software engineer's pride, an epaulette he wears on his back instead of his shoulder.

15. No one works for the company, or for the love of software... bigger the bucks, bigger the passion.

I have just completed my first year here and Can't help but laugh sardonically at the way world envies the life of software engineers :)
Sometimes we keep wanting certain things in life, keep pining for them and then finally finally attain them ... and then one sudden moment lightening strikes and we ask ourself
"Is this what I set out for ?"