It would be amazing to see an IT workplace that has almost no sign of envy, jealousy or no resemblance to ’Game Of Thrones’ plot. Imagine a day where every one in your office greets you with a honest smile with no signs of stress at workplace, not because of lack of goals or work ; but because the awesome people in the office make it worthwhile to stay & work.
While the industry accepts what Moore’s law had predicted , there are no conclusive studies to see if people who are using these CPU’s are becoming more mean or lonely every year. Stress management at workplace has evolved to be a separate industry in itself and building quality IT workforce is becoming more costly every year.
Agreed that its impossible to create an ‘always happy’ workplace , but there are always astounding personalities that light up the darkest of such places. This is a diary log of one such amazing human being, an ‘exuberant sardar‘.
I will be ever grateful to my first company which gave me an amazing entry into the fast lane during some tough recession times. As expected a metro life and enough gala time in a fast growing company has its own carrot vs donkey situation. As it turns out, the natural progression was to look for green grass across the ocean.
Being ‘Single & Joyful’, thriving happily in a harsh humid Chennai weather, zipping away on my Bajaj Pulsar 150 across the stretch of the town like a free spirit I spent 4 joyful years.
As much I was unwilling to leave, the search for onsite role was in full swing by then. While the company pushes you to get a work visa, the choice to travel was quite similar to an arranged Indian match making. The candidate assumes the role of the fateful bride that is expected to brighten the lives of the company & onsite account managers.
Securing a lead position for a big account had its own drill. As the tradition was already set, a group of self proclaimed intellectuals held the keys to the ’Bifröst’. To get an entry, one had to demonstrate the nerve of ‘Loki’ & guts of ‘Thor’ . Once you establish the necessary qualifiers, they will turn the key and teleport you to the land of opportunities.
The primary skill set for any onshore lead is the ability to setup a quick ‘dog & pony show’ for almost anyone anywhere . Being able to prepare intellectually intimidating presentations was a plus, I was told that being unequivocal and categorical about people helped character building. As inevitable, things worked out & I set forth my journey. The departure from Chennai was eventful, I would be eternally thankful to almost a dozen good friends who came to see me off, especially the many young ladies who were there for the emotional support or may-be to doubly ensure that I left for sure. Anyway the first travel experience was phenomenal, I missed my connecting flight and ironically spent the night at DEL airport chatting with an old man on why the ‘brain-drain’ is causing a ‘cultural-zombie’ state for this generation.
Entry into a new country was life changing, there was a 50X multiplier to expenses and 3$ for a black coffee was exorbitant amount for a South Indian guy like me. Coffee known as ‘Kaapi’ in south India comes in various forms, the Chennai filter Kaapi is my favorite. The black coffee in my hometown in Kerala is a poor man’s drink, one could walk into any house in my village and ask for some hot water and this is what is offered – ‘for free’. The coffee tasted better because it was flavored with palm jaggery & spices.
The pre-uber-era commute in a foreign country was certainly a nightmare, that’s when our own people in the name of helping show weird step-brotherly treatment. Back home; helping was a very natural thing, for the years I remember I could give or take a lift from anyplace and from anyone. In-fact traveling on a bike without a pillion rider was pretty much a wastage of fuel. Although a bike always gives better mileage when the pillion rider is a friend who also is a girl, but that’s my own unconfirmed observation.
Here in the land of opportunity, It was quite uncomfortable to see all the folks carrying so much weight on their shoulders. In office everyone had something or the other painful work experience to talk about. It appeared that no one was really happy, life was more or less a predetermined routine. Most systems had war rooms & issues, every single IT application was always in the operation room expecting a delivery or surviving a stroke. First week it was too much action to handle. The next 3 months, I was working almost 16 hours everyday to get up to speed with what was going on. My boss will pick me in his own convenient time, he will drop me and on the way he will dump more of his own work on my head. He was a smart & hardworking guy, not so much a good manager. The dynamics of the team was very political & I was at the center of the war between onshore vs. offshore. It was the same old debate, the chicken or the egg.
I was asked to give a tough time to offshore as there was ego clashes everywhere. Writing strong emails & pointing out mistakes was customary. It was not a common pattern, it was a trickle effect of the sad state of leadership transition. The previous client engagement manager was a super nice person and I would have preferred him to be sticking around, but I had no say. There were no folks in the office who had not been troubled by the so called new client engagement manager, the lady was a sad porcupine who wanted to climb up the corporate ladder with her tiny hands and was using every possible way to ensure her success over others. Keeping teams conflicted was one strategy that worked like a charm.
The only relief was the excellent client team that I was part of, it was almost the yin & yang pattern of this whole arrangement that kept me going for two years. It was not bad, it was just tough to deal with dictatorship.
The Fun Mascot
For an enlightened person, friend and foe are the same. Once upon a time, not so long ago there was such a person. He was a happy sardar, been in the office for over many years and literally knew every single person in each cubicle in every corner of the building that could hold about 1000 odd people big & small. It was joyful to to spot this person in office. He was naturally cheerful and a bubbly character, surprisingly the old age had only got him better and more peaceful within himself. He used to greet ladies with hands folded , for men he had hands welcoming & stretched out. In a corporate world where success was measured by ones ability to verbally decapitate their competitors and peers, he was one person who was the embodiment of the fact that being humble is one’s greatest strength.
He would address every single person with the prefix ‘Gentlemen’. His logic probably was that the ladies are always gentle, the ‘men’ however needed to be reminded quite often. I often wondered if it was his ‘async-await’ logic to fetch the person’s context as he simply knew too many people.
His workplace was the most iconic and happening place in the whole wing, he would have a cupboard full of various snacks and sweets that was open for anyone. He would leave a few jar’s of fresh snacks for anyone who wanted to stop by. Meeting with him left a good feel always, he never encouraged rumor or bad-mouthing and looked at every situation as a bunch of input parameters to a program that handles people.
When a new person came to this office, it was his task to get him introduced with everyone in the office and he would go around appreciating a guy whom he has never met or worked with. He would always receive big boxes of sweets from India and he would go around the office distributing it to anyone and everyone. If on a certain day I was feeling sad, I would simply go and meet him. Surprisingly he had access to some of the great food places in the area and once he took me to a chai place where they served hot tea in a strange looking round bottom glass flask with hot samosas. It was certainly the best ‘chai’ I had during those cold years.
There is a famous verse from the movie song ‘Arth’ which goes like this
“Why is it that you are smiling so much, what is the sadness that you are trying to hide “
Some days I feel that there was something sad about him that he did not disclose, yet he cared less about himself and more about others.
It is so true that, an ability of a multi dimensional being is to be able to cheerfully thrive in a world that is unjust & unkind.
For most of us a simple plot of happiness with age would be a diminishing graph, it’s the same with friends. While many suggest that the real problem is in our expectations from others & reducing it can be a solution to all of our problems, I disagree with that thought pattern. When people reduce expectations, they end up shooting someone because its ok to let someone go if you have nothing to do with them.
Due to the limited nature of human acceptance & crooked ways of education , all organizations will stay political. An example of how we have skewed our experiences is the industry famous Porters five forces model, which when applied to co-workers can turn situations into a psychological war-zone.
Often the teams which are progressing, they often find an acceptable ‘zero-sum game’. In Sigmund Freud analogy, office people are like hedgehogs in winter : they need to be close to stay warm, but if they get too close they can sting & poke each other. The result is average performance , sometimes leading to ‘Operation Successful : Patient Dead’ situation.
Leaders should focus on their ability discourage politics , for that they need to exhibit exuberance and first work on their own self. The change is around the corner when companies will prefer emotional intelligence over verbal or technology skills. That day the glorious sardar will be promoted without the need to try hard.
References
- Workplace stress. (n.d.). The American Institute of Stress. Retrieved from http://www.stress.org/workplace-stress/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porter%27s_five_forces_analysis
- https://www.simplypsychology.org/Sigmund-Freud.html
