A long long time ago

Once upon a time in a land not so unfamiliar, there was a 19 year old computer engineering student who had no clue where his life was headed. He just happened to attend a meeting for volunteers for an upcoming event by a society. The organizers were asking for volunteers and he was wondering whether he should have gone to have lunch instead. After much hesitation, he raised his hand. The rest, as they say, is history. If you haven't heard this story, please wait for my autobiography to come out.

Most people have trouble believing the fact that I was the President of ISTE (Indian Society for Technical Education) in my college.

A lot of batchmates from my school are now my friends on Facebook. It's a different matter that the only time we write anything on each other's wall is to write birthday greetings. I talked to some of them and their initial reaction was "Are you the same person? The Anurag in our class was very quite and reserved. He never talked unless spoken to. And you... you are just the opposite" (quoted verbatim without permission).

So, what could have brought about this change? Just an astute observation: chicks dig confident guys. Being a person who likes to see things from the sidelines, I decided it was time to take matter into my own hands. Yes, it was hard. Whenever I was stuck in a rut, I would ask myself: What would Shahrukh Khan do?

Yeah. The last paragraph is not true. The actual event that changed my life happened just before the beginning of my third year of college. I had just completed summer training and was raring to get back to college as the average, ordinary joe. And then, $#!T happened...

For the sake of continuity, I've put a link to the earth-shattering event here.

And what is the puspose of this post. Simply put, I had forgotten why I behave the way I do. As doubts crept in, I had started to question my ethics (or whatever's left of them). After reading that entry, everything became clear.

Driven by Values

Update: Anurag is currently working in an international call center in Gurgaon. It is an inbound process (that means customers call him and not vice versa)

Powered by Intellect, Driven by Values - The motto had sealed where I wanted to go after college. But then, there was a gap of six months between the day that I left college and the day that I would join my dream company. So here I am, biding my time at a call center.

The BPO is technical support for an anti-virus company based in USA. The job profile - Technical Sales. Unsuspecting customers call in for three main reasons:

• Their software isn't activated.
• They want to get rid of the software.
• They want to know more about our products after hearing our advertisements on radio and television.

Did I mention it was a 'sales' job? we have to convince our patrons that their system needs more than just some software to optimize performance. What they need are Microsoft certified technicians who would take care of their system while they have peace of mind. And they need not look elsewhere because we provide technical support for their system dirt cheap. It was an exciting profile. As a matter of fact, I was able to crack my first sale on my very first call.

Now comes the grey area - We are fraudsters. The software when installed for the first time brings in a few viruses with it. So, viruses are found on the system even if there weren't any before our software was installed. and our software makes sure the user's system slows down to a crawl. The customer is left with no option except to get a Microsoft Certified technician to work on it. If we are convincing enough, they subscribe to our service and a technician rids their system of all problems. To add insult to injury, there's hardly any technician in our process who is Microsoft Certified.

Our trainer Ashish (amazing guy, really) told us this was our way of getting back at the US. In US, even a person who can't afford to have three square meals a day will have atleast one computer at his home. And there's hardly anyone who uses it for anything other than surfing the net, playing games or checking mails. So, we are simply teaching them a lesson by taking their money and solving minor issues.

It's really a fun job, hearing customers scream 'Oh My God' the moment I open the System Configuration Utility (Run: msconfig) and show them weird looking startup items. My training lasted all of 12 days before I started the OJT (On the Job Training). In the words of our trainer, this was because the floor was BLEEDING. There weren't enough sales people to pick up all the calls we were getting. Life was fun until...

One fine day (or night, depending upon the time-zone you are in) I got a call from a customer who had just purchased our product. He was having trouble removing viruses from his system. Piece of cake! This was the very last call in my shift. I thought I might as well take a remote session of his computer and show him exactly show it is done. The customer said I would have to wait some time before he would be able to do the needful for me to take remote assistance.

It was only when I tried to show the customer how the software worked that I realized he was completely blind - with Windows Vista OS on his machine. He was using a text-to-speech converter on his system and our software wasn't compatible with it. My heart went out to him, frightened at what damage our software may cause on his computer. I let him know it was better if he would ask for a refund and remove our software from his system.

It is one thing to fool a lazy bum who knows nothing except drinking beer or visit pornographic sites and another to take money from a physically challenged person who had not given up despite his disability. For the first time, I realized what we'd been doing was wrong. A fool and his money are soon parted, but you should not be the one responsible for the partition.

There had been another customer who said that we had installed our software on his system without his permission. He was quite irate and wanted the software uninstalled immediately. I tried to convince him that we had over 15 million customers worldwide and we did not indulge in such back-handed tactics. He said that if I actually believed in what I said I must be the only man with scruples in the software industry. he told me I could mention any of the big names in computers and he would tell me atleast a dozen malpractices they had participated in. We all remember Microsoft and Anti-trust, don't we?

I'll be leaving the company after two months (maybe earlier, only time will tell). I just hope Infosys is really driven by values. I can't have it any other way.

The Great Indian Bureaucracy

It’s almost incredible how we blame everything on the government. Somehow, every evil that resides in the heart of our country is because of the dirty politicians. Or is it?

Since time immemorial, we have found ways to put everything on the shoulders of the few in power. But what we have failed to realize is that maybe the Devil has been painted blacker than He actually is. The biggest problem ailing our country is not politics but the bureaucracy. The Devil is not black. He is red and taped to a file near you.

How many of us shudder at the thought of going to a government office? In other words, how many of us have delved into our phone-books for a name that will help us avoid a trip to the nearest bureaucratic headquarters? Remember the time when you bribed an official so that your file would be taken care of earlier than others? Or the time when you got an agent to get a registered driver's license so that you would not have to wait for endless hours in a serpentine queue? Maybe you’ll remember the latest incident when you jumped a red light and had to part ways with a five hundred rupee note that now rests in the shirt pocket of an alert traffic official.

But are they really to blame? If you have ever visited the inside of a government office you would feel surprised that they actually manage to get some work done. Files, folders and scraps of paper stacked together provide habitat to thousands of endangered species of insects. Cupboards provide shelter to adult pigeons and their families. It’s amazing the employees are actually able to locate certain files while misplacing thousands of others. No wonder they require certain incentive for working on any file, unsympathetically called "Bribe". This incentive is the only reason government officials disregard any concerns for their own safety and work for the uplift of the community.

Politicians hardly have any say in the matter. Quite a few of them are only concerned with filling their own pockets and so they let sleeping dogs lie. Some others, filled with a misplaced sense of patriotism and altruism, try to bring about “monumental" changes. Another minuscule number of politicians, satisfied that they have taken enough from the community, decide to give something back to the country. They propose reforms and changes, blissfully unaware that by the time their ideas begin to take a definite shape five years would have passed and their legacy would be buried in an inconspicuous file in a desolate government office. Many long-term thinkers realize the irony in working five years without any hope of re-election and then being blamed for inefficiency. So they peacefully pass their term in office, promising everything but achieving nothing. This saves them the trouble of unappreciated effort.

Bureaucrats are the real power-brokers in India. People at the centre change every five years, sometimes within 13 days, but bureaucrats persist. They do not pledge allegiance to a particular party but to the nation. But they are too pre-occupied with the malfunctioning red light atop their SUVs or getting their wards out of jail for shooting people in broad daylight. As a consequence, try as they might, they just can't spare any thought for the common man.

Frankly, I have grown too tired (and poor) by bribing every peon/clerk/registrar/policeman/misc I encounter. I humbly request the powers that be to have some pity on my plight and exempt me from paying this VAT called bribe. I would be greatly obliged. Please find a note of 500 rupees attached for all the trouble caused to you.

Yours truly

A Common Man

Weathered

I gave my last exam on June the 12th. This piece of worthless information is exactly what it proclaims to be - worthless. It’s almost two months and I'm still here. Sitting in the comforts of my home, doing absolutely nothing constructive and idling away my time.

I'm partially employed. I was placed in Infosys (my dream company! BTW, I don't find many companies in my dreams) on February 12th, 2008. I have been given a prospective joining date of February 8th, 2010 (which happens to be the birthday of someone in my family). Anyhow, the time seems to move with a very slow pace. Even pace seems to be the wrong word. Pace is supposed to denote Motion...but time goes by so slowly that it seems to be standing still.

I tried finding part-time jobs to utilize the 6 months. Unfortunately, the recession bug has opened up a new chapter in unemployment. There are plenty of jobs in BPOs and Call-centers. And the employers want qualified graduate candidates. My case is different, though. Since I did graduation in CSE (i.e. Engineering) I'm ineligible for the posts. They are willing to hire people less qualified/skilled than me who the recruiters believe will stay for a longer period than me. In other words, I'm over-qualified for the BPO industry!

This is awesome! For the first time in my life, I'm too good for something. I should feel proud. Being over-qualified should mean that I've been able to achieve more than the average working class hero. It also means that a fresher who joined the industry right after giving his +2 exams is working. And I'm not!

It’s kind of a bittersweet phase I'm going through right now. I just wanted to do something before joining Infy. I guess I would have to look for other options.

Yashaswi, my pen-pal from Hyderabad gave me a list of careers I could pursue. Most notable among them were:

• Paranormal Investigator
  
• Vampire slayer
  
• Radio Jockey
  
• A Mercenary
  
• Hired Assassin
  

Nitin Khanna suggested doing some technical course like SCJP/MCSE

Personally, I wanted to roam around India like Bear Grylls (Man vs. Wild on Discovery Channel) or even try Free-Running.

Well, it’s not yet August so I have plenty of time to find something that suits me.

If you have any other creative ideas, do let me know.


PS. Why did I put up this post on my blog anyway? I plead Temporary Insanity.