THE SILICON VALLEY

CHAPTER TEN

THE SOFT: WEAR & TEAR

I turned twenty one. Yes, in this city, Bangalore. I finished my education. Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering; it was in one of the top mediocre colleges in India. I had made two friends who meant more than this world during college. Varun passed away leaving behind a vacuum which no one could ever fill. Ashwin left the city leaving behind a host of memories. A simple teenage boy to a 21-year-old independent man - this journey had been enduring, fun and bloody tough. I had walked into this city nine years back and now when I looked at myself, thoughts flooded my mind. I had walked out of the IIT entrance exam. My parents shifted to Mumbai. I came back to Bangalore to pursue my Mechanical Engineering at the Silicon Valley College of Engineering. I joined the hostel. I hit a senior. I meet Varun and Ashwin. We become best friends. We start smoking cigarettes. Engineering turned out to be crap. Hostel opened up new adventure avenues in our lives. We started smoking grass. Life got challenging. Varun fell in love with an older girl, Aparna. Aparna got married. Ashwin got caught in malpractice. Ashwin and Varun fell into deeper trouble. Ashwin and Varun started doing drugs. Ashwin reached a rehab. Ashwin quit engineering. Varun and I got jobs in the famous software MNC’s. Mine was an American and his was an Indian. Varun decided to not let go. Varun died due to an overdose. Ashwin was guilty. Ashwin left the city. I tried to move on and make Varun a sweet memory.

The American MNC did not help much. I was in the Silicon Valley of India, the technology innovation hub of India, but it felt like shit to be working here. I felt like an educated slave. I wanted to script write for movies. I was ambitious in life. I wanted to be rich. I wanted to be famous. I was still working at the American MNC. I had just celebrated my first anniversary of working with the American MNC two days back. I was growing old. I was 21. I did not have time. I was living in Whitefield, Bangalore - the overcrowded software slave house of Bangalore that is spoken about throughout the world today. It is one of the fastest growing countries in the world (so they say). I disagree. We are looking at an India in which engineers are manufactured and outsourced to the rich MNC’s to do work that could be termed as sophisticated slavery. I am a Mechanical Engineer and I work at an American MNC which is least bothered about my career. All they care about is my productivity and the cheapest price I am willing to sell myself to them on a yearly basis to do monotonous work. I don’t understand why an innovative engineer from India sells out to a software MNC so easily. Actually I probably understand. I sold myself too and I continue to do so. Every year more than a million engineers pass out of colleges from India out of which less than half end up with a job opportunity. Is that all we want? The youth of India is being pushed to a garbage bin from where MNC’s outsource talent for work that doesn’t require it. What about arts? What about music? What about innovation? Do we see the youth of India contributing towards these aspects? Today Bangalore is called the silicon valley of India due to various reasons. We have the highest population of educated skilled software slaves in India. Why do companies like Apple, Microsoft, Google and Facebook only evolve from the USA and not India? Why should we be known as the cheap services labour to the world? Is this because every young Indian has to end up finishing Engineering, get a job at an MNC, work for ten years, go to USA, earn in dollars, save a lot of money, find a bride in India, get married, produce kids, send them to school, again engineering and again the MNC and again… My sister had passed out from IIT Mumbai a couple of years back. IIT Mumbai is one of the premier institutes across the globe. She works for an MNC. I grew up in an atmosphere where engineering or medicine was the only way to land a secure job. Is a secure job the only way towards a successful and a satisfactory life? Why is India not able to produce a Steve Jobs or a Bill Gates who dropped out of college and still managed to do whatever they did? Why is formal principled education our forte? Why not the unconventional innovative and creative education? Why does every educated young Indian have to think only about a job? Why does he not give any leverage to his passion or his gut? Why is the Silicon Valley of USA so different from the Silicon Valley of India? When will a normal engineer from the Silicon Valley of India believe he can change the world? Why are we not ready to take that plunge to create something extraordinary? Is it too risky? Risk is fun, right? I want to script write for movies. Why do I care about technology? Will there ever be a Google from India? A Facebook? A Microsoft? Apple?

[My laptop beeps]

It was my instant messenger. The sound I hated the most. It suddenly woke me up from the flash of memories from my past. It was the same frustrating morning of boarding a Volvo and travelling with a bunch of ‘The bright youngsters of India’ to the American MNC. Escaping my manager’s eagle vision and getting to my cubicle in the office was my primary goal in the day.

‘I need to have a chat with you; please come to the meeting room in five minutes,’ read my instant messenger with the message from my newly appointed manager.

I had been working in the American MNC for a year now. I was allocated the e-commerce project. All I had to do like every other Indian resource of a huge ass American MNC established in India, was to work like an aimless donkey which lacked creativity and brayed according to their whims and fancies. My initial project manager was sweet; she was cute as well. It’s just that she was nine years older than me, but inviting because she was unmarried. Although nothing worked out between the two of us, she was promoted to be the delivery manager of the project which resulted in a thirty five year old faggot becoming my new project manager who started hating me from the day he took over. To give a small insight into what my work had been since the past one year: Google, Youtube, Facebook and Blogger. I really did not have any other work. I was a resource which was present in the MNC so that the client could be billed. I felt useless but I did not have an option since I had to pay my bills. The new manager did not like the fact that I did not do any work. My team consisted of sixteen unmarried girls, two married, one cute boy (me) and an old faggot (Manager: Vishnu Ramalingam).

[Meeting Room]

‘So, Armaan I have been hearing a lot of news about your gimmicks in the project,’ Vishnu, my manager, said giving me the most detectivish look in the world possible.

I really did not know how to respond to such an allegation. Gimmicks! Really?

‘Can I know what your problem is? Because from the metrics I have received from your previous project manager, I hardly see any productivity coming from your side in the project,’ Vishnu said and made a strange face.

“Productivity”, “Resources”, “Not-Acceptable” , “Work from home”, “Guidelines” , “Policies” , “Dress code” , “Appraisal” , “yearly bonus” , “Take home salary” , “Project Manager” , “Tech Lead” , “On-site opportunity” , “Mails” , “Instant Messenger” , “Think Pad” , “ID card” , “Client” , “Ticket”, “Change Request”. These phrases and words had become part of my life at the American MNC. I chose to ignore these terms from the very beginning of my GREAT career. I guess the part that pissed off my Manager Vishnu was that I ignored these terms for the past one year which was quite surprisingly overlooked by my previous manager. Vishnu looked like a fat elephant resting on short legs. I possibly could not take him seriously after looking at him. I somehow controlled my laughter and decided to give him an honest answer which was precisely what he was looking for.

‘I do not like working in this project,’ I said looking at him straight in the eye. He looked shocked. I guess he was not expecting such an extreme reaction to his question.

‘Can you explain?’ Vishnu asked leaning forward and slowly turning red.

I joined this American MNC a year ago. I have a Mechanical Engineering Degree from Silicon Valley College of Engineering. The MNC decided to use me as the grand old Indian software donkey which is the case with every IT professional working in the famous software services companies from the “Indian Silicon Valley: BANGALORE”.’

I always wondered whether the inventions of these software services companies helped India or did they actually prove to be a house for humans turned machines which lacked creativity. There were two ways to look at these software services companies. They brought economy to India, they brought jobs to India and the graduates who passed out of the countless engineering colleges of India now had something they could bank upon and pay for their family’s needs and rise in society. They would have otherwise landed up at various offices with a file in their hand for a couple of years and would have started a small business using their creative minds because they could not find a job. The other way to look at these companies would be: They decided to take up all the coolie work from the western countries or, in other words, the developed nations, and left the engineers’ work to them. They would then agree to be paid really modestly for this coolie work. In India, engineering has been divided into REAL engineering and FAKE engineering. According to this REAL and FAKE theory, REAL engineering colleges were, are and will only be the IIT’s and the NIT’s of India. Only these REAL engineers from these REAL engineering colleges will secure a degree in their respective streams and will actually end up in REAL jobs at REAL companies. The FAKE engineering colleges on the other hand, consisted of the top three colleges of each of the developed cities of India. There were surely NON-EXISTENT engineering colleges as well, which would not be eligible to be included in this discussion. So the FAKE engineering colleges were made for all the students who were convinced by siblings, friends, family, the average marks in exams and the low scores in entrance exams that the FAKE engineering college would help them to prosper in life. The FAKE engineering colleges did not fail entirely but calling this a success story is uncalled for. The FAKE engineering colleges would then mould an aimless student and at the end, give a product. The product would be a graduate who did not care about what knowledge he had gained. He would also not bother about what that degree meant; it would be more of a CV requirement. The graduate would then realize after fighting the battle of engineering for four tough years that he had been completely turned into a puppet which would function exactly according to these services companies set up at the Silicon Valley of India. Mechanical, Electrical, Civil or Biotechnology Engineering, it did not matter to these companies. Computer Science Engineering did matter but the computer science graduates did not have much interest in these companies unless they were from the NON-EXISTENT colleges. These services companies would recruit all these FAKE engineers and supposedly turn them into REAL engineers by giving each one of them a laptop, a bag pack and a lovely salary package of 3 lakh Indian Rupees per annum which would be 6,000 American Dollars per year. Are you freaking kidding me? Let’s assume we are really passionate about the innovative work these services companies make us do. Graduates are recruited and trained in many computer languages after which they are randomly allocated to a project in which the language they had been trained for is not required. The graduate has now been successfully turned into a resource who can be billed for by the services company. These companies bill the clients for say 100 Dollars an hour for each resource and how much is the resource being paid? 1 Dollar an hour. The quality of work involves maintenance and support rather than developing any kind of products. So I guess I have answered the question Vishnu put across in my head, but it would be tough to explain this to Vishnu since he was already a BIG RESOURCE in the American MNC.

‘I have nothing to do in this project; there is no innovation or any kind of challenge that I face in this project. I don’t look forward to coming to office. This work depresses me,’ I said and let out my frustration banging the table in front of Vishnu.

‘Armaan, this is the problem with you youngsters; you want to become CEO’s in two days,’ he said and smirked.

No, I did not want to become the CEO of the American MNC. I would in fact, feel worse if I was the head of a company which ruined so many bright minds. I just wanted a job which gave me satisfaction and motivation to come back the next day. Actually I guess I did not even want a job. I did not know what I wanted. All I knew was this American MNC was and would always be a shithole.

‘No Vishnu, I do not feel like working here. I would want a release from this project so that I can go ahead and prove myself in another project,’ I said.

‘Prove yourself in another project,’ he said and laughed his guts out. It annoyed me but I kind of eased myself back to normalcy. Even I felt like laughing when I thought about it. I wanted to script write for movies after a mechanical engineering degree but I could not do so because of my mediocre nature. I could never walk up to my dad and tell him that I wanted to get into the film industry. Now, somehow the thought of writing for movies was slowly fading. I guess this is what the services companies do to you. Kill your creativity, make you lazy and start making you dependent on the salary they pay you. I surely did not want to prove anything to the American MNC or myself. I did not want to stay in this project and neither did I want to continue in the company. However, I was helpless; I could not resign.

My parents felt that there was nothing better than working for the American MNC since it was a status symbol for me and my family. I just could not convince my parents that joining an MNC was the worst possible mistake I had ever made.

‘Why can’t I prove myself in another project, Vishnu? At least I would not be sitting idle like this in front of a computer screen all day. That is what I have been doing for the past one year,’ I said.

‘Armaan, these are the initial years of your life in the IT industry. Remember that if you want to succeed in this industry, you should endure and learn to have patience. Even I have faced these problems in the initial years of my life. In India, there are no software companies which contribute to innovation. We are known for services, so there are hardly any projects where you will get a chance to do your so-called challenging work. Even if there is any challenging work, you would be handling it after you have an experience of at least fifteen years in the industry,’ Vishnu said and rested his case.

‘Okay,’ I said and shook my head.

‘I want to see productivity from now on, Armaan,’ Vishnu said and left the meeting room.

I felt sorry for people like Vishnu. They had accepted that their life had a standard format. He had joined the American MNC fifteen years back as a graduate hire just like me. He had then worked in Bangalore for five years after which he went to the USA to work on-site for another five years. After that he came back and by then he had crawled up to the position of Tech Lead. After fifteen years of toil he was finally awarded the position of Project Manager. His roles included sending out mails to the project members about following the dress code, conducting meetings, arranging calls and basically being a watchman for the project. Is this where I wanted to be fifteen years from now? HELL NO!