There was time when I was an intern in a company back in 2002, we were coding for ABB PLC and all those stuff. The power used to go off in office and we go to the backyard of the company where there was a small garden and chill out, ask about one another, make jokes and have fun. Sometimes we go to a tea shop and have a sip and snacks. None thought any thing bad about us. The bosses knew to manage a tech team.

Today when we have power cuts, I get only negative feelings and remember a company I consulted. I was consulting for a company for Ruby on Rails, apparently they had messed up with such a beautiful framework and made it difficult to code. That’s excusable, but their micro services were poorly documented. That too was excusable if people were given proper time to fix documentation and code, but the boss seems to be an asshole. He wanted us to clock 12+ hours for his personal profits, and wanted us to code off tickets in a jiffy.

Me being a senior, and that guy having no idea how to develop a software, and wouldn’t listen to me, he expected me to code like devil, despite all those shortcomings, code I did, understanding their system I did, but if you change the framework so much, it’s not easy to understand unless you have proper documentation. They had unrealistic date estimate and I slipped often.

It’s DMK rule now in Tamilnadu, and in DMK rule power cuts do happen, and it did happen. This made me slip more, when ever there was power cut I promptly informed my boss, but that guy seems to be an asshole.

It was covid peak season then, we allowed none in our home, but that guy insisted that I installed power backup for eight hours in my home, of course he won’t give any financial assistance for that, but he wanted it. He kept insisting that even though I kept saying there were old people in my home who are potential targets for Covid. In short that guy wasn’t bothered about me, my well being, my family’s well being, all he wanted was me to slave for him continuously for over 12 hours a day. It was hell.

Prior to me joining he seems to have created more hell for his employees. Since he always suspected them, he made employees turn on their Zoom cameras from 2PM to 4PM and they have be be present on Zoom and code at the same time. I was shocked to hear this from my colleague. Another girl told me that he limited her lunch time to 30 minutes, I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t work under such a boss. That company had a bad HR too, one guy wanted to leave and the H.R abused him saying: ‘you are not working well here, how do you think you will work well in another company?’. To be frank that guy who left seemed to be the brightest person to me, he was not a yes boss person, may be that was his mistake.

Working there spoiled my health so much that I had to quit. They promised me to send a reliving letter in email and they haven’t done it for six months and I simply don’t like to ask them. I honestly feel these type of sadist bosses can never be fixed, only their death can give relief to the I.T industry.

Sometimes it does pains, you do work with all your heart even though you get abused a bit, you love to code, so you do and the abuse builds up to such an extent its unbearable. When ever there is power cut I get reminded of this company and this boss, and the memory is not sweet.

How to manage software

There is a very simple strategy to mitigate misestimation of software tickets, and it’s super simple, its called noestimate. That is you simply won’t estimate ticket.

You would show a ticket to a member in a team and will tell them to progress on it, you will track the progress and communicate with client. But even with decades of software experience people fall into the trap thinking that brain work is like repetitive brawn work and try to estimate.

They say I.T industry has got very bright people, but I am sure thats a myth, its got many people who do not know how to run project, and people who don’t know how to manage discrepancies and delays, all they do is to put pressure on people who really work. Those ind of are still stuck in the era of industrial age and never taken time to think about age of thought and knowledge. I feel nothing could be done about those brains that can’t think about how other brains think.