Dignity in software industry?
'you are not an engineer' , these were the words that rang through my mind all the time in the past few days as I tried to see the truth and false in this statement. To think more and more about it made me more inefficient as I was unable to concentrate on my job. I studied engineering under a very crap college called Panimalar Engineering. It has excellent infrastructure, but had very crap rules. Girls and boys weren't allowed to talk. There were almost no freedom to take voluntary breaks and so on. Yet I withstood it because to learn how electronic stuff worked. It was a mystery to me.
I passed out, without cheating, and I loved the subject. To face such acquisition, that too from a person I respected shocked me. It made me wonder if there is any dignity for any one working in the software industry? Or are we coders mere coolies in this multi billion trade?
I worked in another company that produces learning stuff. There I was summoned into a room by one of its directors and I was told that I hadn't done any work for a month. It stunned me. I was in that company for just three months and this guys accuses me of me doing nothing for one third of my time? In another two days I left. After a week, I got call from my colleague who said the same director accused him of not working for one and a half years. That was his entire tenure in the company and I heard similar stories. That guy was in almost tears when he narrated. He had just got an home, need to pay the loans, his kid was starting to goto school and all of a sudden he felt economic insecurity.
When I was in an industrial automation company, one of its co-founder told me and my team that we knew nothing about computers. We burst into laughter knowing that it was he who knew nothing, and in coming months he made sure that our team was disbanded, a "yes boss" person was promoted just to humiliate me.
These are just my first hand stories. there are plenty of others who have faced humiliation and are still coding so that they can make ends meet. Its time for you to think about entering software industry. Software is pure, coding is great to do, but when its industrialized, money is got in, people who crave to it start to bend for it and you loose the purity, its then where sewer starts to leak into the Ganga. Just like that stinking river is our software industry now, mostly controlled by hungry foxes and jackals.
You don't need to be in an industry to code. If you truly love coding, you can start writing any software along with your friends and can share it with the world to appreciate the art. Such free and unshackled code we see now, are overtaking those done in the dungeons created by others.