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| Friday, March 17, 2006 |
| Evolution I |
 Damn! I was late for that meeting as usual but this time a record 20 minutes. When I entered, I expected puzzling faces. Instead I was greeted with sheepish smiles by some and "Oh yeah" looks by others. It was some Project Process Planning and Babbling meeting. I didn't realise it was a 'process' thing till I got in. They had this tricky acronym which sounded like the next generation hardware technology. "Oh Shit!" I might have done better by staying back at my desk and reading random blogs. Somehow I have developed this phobia to 'process'. My close to three years experience, flirting in around 3+ companies had never given a positive feel about process. And this meeting was no different. All those under "homo sapiens" classification, dazed around and met each other with empty glances. Those who started mutating where the ones who asked questions and were being "interactive". (Raising interesting concerns like "The comments about the function parameters shouldn't be left as such. I believe enclosing it inside a box of /*************** will help us.").
It really doesn't take a bright mind to guess I'm trying to mimic Scott Adams. Well, actually I'm not mimicking. I rather borrowed couple of sardonic phrases from him. The intention is not to project how funny things are. Rather I wanted to explore what this fuss is all about. I believe this process and concepts should have originated for a good reason but grossly misunderstood and misused. At least the people at Carnegie Mellon should have been sane enough. (I spelled it right at the first attempt !!! :D )
Now, after losing much hair and doing great w.r.to tummies, I guess some of us would have already started mutating. Ramkumar pointed out couple of days back. Sometimes we show signs of this "behave like big boys" syndrome. We do lot of discussions about technical ladder, management ladder. I think that day is not far when one or many of us will mutate.
There are two types of people I have come across in companies. Group One are the smart ones who pick up things like process, graphs, line of code, productivity pretty early in their career. They seem to know how not to strain much of themselves, working things out. Rather they are good in knowing what to project to their managers and how to grow up the management ladder. They are even called "Assets" of a company!!! Group Two are slow and dumb ones. They are usually workaholics. They try to stay aloof of all the graph sheets and empty talks but believe coding harder is the way to go. Quite a lot of people console themselves "I take the fun of working. It's better stay out of pay hikes and promotions instead of jumping into the 'politics' ditch." These people start whining after 5 years or so. Stop shaving and minding to dress. "This is more than enough for this company." And they explode one day, threaten the manager with resignation letter and happily start filling excel sheets either in the same company or somewhere outside. I'm not taking sides with any of these. In fact I personally can empathize with Group Two and sometimes think I shouldn't end up there.
"I always feel there is something wrong with this system." (Sounds like Neo? ;D) Something that causes people to evolve in the wrong directions. Some undictated rule prevails which splits technical skills from management skills. Will the techies make bad managers? Is it a prerequisite for someone to grow up in 'mangement ladder', that they should shred all the tech skills? Why the management always try to measure people I'm trying to understand why all these imbalances came in. And of course, how to do more than just surviving in a company? How to grow but stay human? :) I'm planning to bring up various dimensions of this and we'll do brain storming on this.
Is this blog a sign of me getting mutated!!! Let me grab a tea and think over it. |
posted by Sunil @ 4:13 AM   |
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| 2 Comments: |
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machi,
Though i haven't understood what process is, i have figured out how it works. I wud explain it with analogy.
Mgmt - Parents
Workers - Children
Process - virtue
Everybody knows if each and everyone follows the rules, it would be easy for everyone. But no one does it. Process is similar thing. If we really understand what is the benefit and if we follow it our work would be pretty much easy. But, it isn't that way.
Consider your parents saying sathyameva jayathe and say in bus they lie to the conductor that u r 3 yrs old and the ticket is not required for it. u ask y. they say its o.k to lie. contradicting enuf huh?? when u r playing with everybody and have broken the window of someone's home. u go n tell to ur mom asking what to do. she says accept the fact and lets pay for it.
but if u and ur brother r playing and no one has noticed that u have broken the window, mom says leave the matter to rest.
Same way they tell v follow this @#$#$@# process model. req, anal, des, cod, test. this is how it goes. when u have completed coding, they change the req. u ask let us do it next phase. they give u business reasons n say lets break the process for this. and ur respect to proj. is put in recycle bin.
The most worst phrase in the world is "IT DEPENDS". meaning i might change the stance whenever i want.
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Ram - u left something very important
Client = GOD
Even though we always feel the OTHER way ;)
I really cud not get the reason behind Sunil’s post. Well - if I am right, he is trying to find reason behind management and the whole corporate shit shat!!! He's brought in policies as example - "why should everyone follow policies". Does it even make sense? Ram says policies are like the rules parents or teachers taught us, but seldom followed only if it is harmless for the self, unless of course we are @ public display (aka audits)
That reminds me of something I very recently (infact a day or 2 before) figured out. In this whole process of evolution or maturing or whatever - we go through a phase in our professional career where we begin to ask questions. I think everyone here must have had this doubt at some point during the last 30 odd months "Why should things be this way. Cant they be better if the rules are this way!?!?" We always want to re-write the rules.
I have had this doubt many times and have even had numerous discussions with my manager trying to reason him out (he's got 5yrs of more exp than me BTW) that things will work better this way.
He showed me exactly what the extra years of exp can do - he listened to me patiently and explained in simple terms why the present setup (his setup basically) works and why mine will not work in the present scenario. Surprisingly - my ideas were parallel to his "after 6 months" plan sheet!!!
I had then received one of the important lessons in management - you've always got to get things working!!! Whatever might be the shortcomings with the work group? With the kind of vision we have (we've hardly seen 3 yrs of corporate life and probably a lot of books) we always tend to visualize the ideal situation and almost always our solutions are for the ideal world. I then realized that policies are meant to get work done and not to appease the workers. They ensure that people work!!!
But if policies make ppl work - why the hell do we have managers!?!? To make people work comfortably and work better. There are no RULES in companies - only policies and they are at the mercy of the manager. You, as a manager can implement all of them or none. There lies the human aspect sunil wants to know.
It is really inhuman to grow into a managerial role and lose the human aspect of it. You are already a failure at it!!!
I feel the real reason is behing the human being himself. He begins to think himself as the management guy and loses track of his techie self. We have numerous examples where a person tries his hand an mgmt and comes back to being the techie. Some people dont even wanna try :)
I beleive the principle "to each his own" applies very well here. Being a techie and being a manager are 2 really different things. It is being what makes you feel comfortable that matters - you naturally concentrate more on the subject that interests you and hence do better on that front. Losing track of the other self is just a side effect :)
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machi,
Though i haven't understood what process is, i have figured out how it works. I wud explain it with analogy.
Mgmt - Parents
Workers - Children
Process - virtue
Everybody knows if each and everyone follows the rules, it would be easy for everyone. But no one does it. Process is similar thing. If we really understand what is the benefit and if we follow it our work would be pretty much easy. But, it isn't that way.
Consider your parents saying sathyameva jayathe and say in bus they lie to the conductor that u r 3 yrs old and the ticket is not required for it. u ask y. they say its o.k to lie. contradicting enuf huh?? when u r playing with everybody and have broken the window of someone's home. u go n tell to ur mom asking what to do. she says accept the fact and lets pay for it.
but if u and ur brother r playing and no one has noticed that u have broken the window, mom says leave the matter to rest.
Same way they tell v follow this @#$#$@# process model. req, anal, des, cod, test. this is how it goes. when u have completed coding, they change the req. u ask let us do it next phase. they give u business reasons n say lets break the process for this. and ur respect to proj. is put in recycle bin.
The most worst phrase in the world is "IT DEPENDS". meaning i might change the stance whenever i want.