The Soft(ware) World

Have you just finished your graduation?? Have you been recruited by one of the top software companies?? Are you feeling thrilled about it?? Well, don't. Not until you go through the entire “software world” experience anyway. Because chances are, you will find things a lot different from the way you imagined it to be. I am not going to say it is a bad experience, but I am just going to give you a few ideas on how life is in a software company.

Well let’s say I was recruited by one of the top software companies in the country. It’s a cool company, doing really well, making a lot of profits and hiring every other graduate. Pretty much like most other companies. I had about five weeks of training, which was a lot of fun even though the trainers imparted about 0% knowledge. (They gave us these feedback sheets where we were supposed to rank our knowledge base before and after training. That was a laugh because there was no difference) Anyway after training I was posted to a city which was not exactly my first choice of location (it was there in my first six though) Most companies put their employees "on bench" immediately after training. For the uninitiated, "bench" is basically the period when you do not have a project. In some cases, you will not even be allocated a system when you are on bench. In those times, you would probably be wandering around cubicles or to the library and generally disturbing those who are working on projects. If you are lucky enough to be allocated a system you can log into Messenger and then spend all your time disturbing others who are working on projects. Luckily enough, I was not on bench for long. In two weeks (bench periods can stretch on for months) I was working on a project. Now when you are on project, there are a number of things that can go wrong. Firstly, there is the question of a project leader. If you have a team lead who is lazy, cranky and irritated all the time, chances are you will be doing all the work, slogging your butt off and getting no credit at the end of the day. But again, I was lucky. I got a PL who was quite understanding. He believed a lot in team spirit and was always keen on sharing the blame and the credit. That’s nice when you make the mistakes and others do the hard work and everyone shares everything. Secondly, there is the issue of on site coordinators. In most cases, on site folks are busy getting jacked by the client and the only way they can get it out of their system is by yelling at you. But the Gods were on my side. I had a nice on site coordinator who would send across pictures of his vacation and ask us if we had all had breakfast, lunch and dinner… you get the drift.

Then there are company policies. These are seriously funny. Even the simplest things will be coated in the floweriest language where you don't understand a word. You can sign about a hundred documents and they might all be your death sentence; you will never know. You will have to sit for hours in sessions where the HR will show you slide upon slide on company policies and employee rights. Half of them never make sense and the rest are not applicable to you.

Next there's the question of salary. On paper, when the company recruits you, there is a very fancy figure and you think it’s not bad at all. But then you find out that 40% goes in tax and 30% in insurance and 10% in allowances (lets not even talk about PF and the rest). Result? You are left with a pittance. When you go to the HR for clarification, he will show you another presentation. Slide upon slide of how 5.3456213% has to go for medical allowance and 2.347891% for the non existent children as children’s allowance or something.

There are a lot more things I can go on about, but this is an essay and not a book. I shall stop here hoping I have entertained you for some time. If at the end of this article, you feel that you should never join a software company, please don't take such a drastic measure. Regardless of the fact that every alternate person is a software engineer, there is also the fact that these companies give great work exposure. You also have loads of fun since most of your friends will be working with you. Plus, some projects are actually interesting. So just have a good time and ignore everything said above. But after becoming a software engineer don’t make me say I told you so.

Cheers.