The Mythical Reality

Had Written this article way back in 1999

THE MYTHICAL REALITY

This article is a work of my imagination. Any resemblance to anybody living or dead or any organization running or closed down is purely coincidental. This Article is dedicated to “The Software Engineer”.

I did my Engineering in Computer Science a few years ago. As we approached the culmination of our engineering studies all of us succumbed to the hype created by the media about the IT revolution. Every newspaper and tabloid spoke about IT as the panacea for every problem. The Chief Ministers of various states of India were competing against one another in attracting investment from American IT firms and establishing Software Development Infrastructures, or Software Parks. [I hate this term! The serenity of the word, park, is lost by the word, Software, adjacent to it.] And since I hailed from a state whose Chief Minister was portrayed by the media as a “tech-savvy CEO”, I was considered lucky by many friends in my class. IT and software jobs were the topics of discussion in class rooms, staff rooms, bath rooms, sports rooms, libraries, hotels, bars, parks etc. I even came across a few romantic couples scattered across the campus discussing about TCS Written tests or Infosys Campus Interviews, between themselves. I really thought that IT had replaced romance.

It was the dream of most of the students of the “prestigious” Computer Science Dept [Comp Sci or Komski] to land jobs in the top IT firms of India like Wipro, Infosys, Satyam, TCS, to name a few. The students of other departments like Mechanical, Civil and Electrical etc felt their lives were wasted because they do not belong to the coveted Komski department. They looked at the guys from Komski as “gods own children”. They behaved like losers and most of them wanted to hang themselves to the lampposts on the college campus with placards around their necks reading ‘Iam a Loser’. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and other college dropouts became our heroes, idols and for a few, even gods. The pictures of Narayan Murthy and Sabeer Bhatiya replaced posters of Madonna and Kate Winslet. Speaking about Internet, e-mail and browsing was orgasmic. The number of e-mail ids a guy had was directly proportional to the number of his girl friends. Every classmate of mine came up with some new terminology and claimed it the “next big thing” everyday.

I am a naïve mortal. And even I got influenced by all the IT hype around me. Even I aimed at getting my hands on a job for a company of repute after my Engineering. The photographs of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Scot McNealy replaced the photographs of Gandhi, Lenin, Che Guvera and Madonna in my room in the hostel.

That was but a few years ago. Today as I relax in my empire, my kingdom, my cubicle I cannot stop from smiling as I think in retrospect. IT as it looked then and IT as it is in reality. Winston Churchill described the Soviet Russia as a “A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma”. With all due respect to Mr. Churchill, I think it was an overstatement, as Mr. Churchill was still unexposed to the Software Industry.

In the Indian Society, a Software Engineer occupies a status, which was hitherto unimaginable. Perhaps the only country where most of the women want their sons or daughters to be a Software Engineer. Particularly in the state of AP, going to America [or “states” as USA is referred to] is equal to winning the US presidential election or an Olympic Gold Medal. In the state of AP if a boy doesn’t go to America after his engineering studies then his capability is questioned. His manhood and his existence are at stake. Relatives look at him as a loser and ask their children not to follow his footsteps. Even if the boy wants to take up Civil Services Examinations, he is asked to take up those examinations in USA. That’s the power of the word “America” in the state of AP in particular. The state I hail from.

However after the slump in the US Economy the ideology has changed. Now a steady job has become a priority and not going to America. And, Indian Software engineers both men and women have started to get marriage proposals. And Software Engineers are seen like mortals and not the invincible masters of the universe.


Welcome to the Real World
When a person just out of Engineering College enters the software industry then following are a few syndromes they suffer with: Total Shock, Disblief, Sleepy, Hungry, Insane, Why-exactly-am-I-here Syndrome, Did-I-study-Neural-Networks-to-do-HTML-syndrome, What-to write-in-a-time-sheet syndrome etc. and I was no exception.