This is not my typical technical article, just a little restrospective of an experience at work.
I was working with a new member in the team, to provide him the KT on one of our applications. I asked him to pull our source code from git, and he told me that he has never heard of git before. I showed him a few basic git commands and asked him to to set up the code locally. Once he got stuck after a point, he asked for my help. I asked him where he had checked out the source code and he pointed me to his desktop. I found a highly cluttered and unorganized desktop, and the source code of our project was right in the middle of that mess.
That immediately turned me off.
Soon I realized that he had no prior experience with many of the tools and software that we use largely at work. I got pissed some more.
After a while, I went to my supervisor and asked him who had interviewed this candidate for our project. He told me that he had no idea who interviewed him and he was just assigned to our project to be added anywhere we see fit. I was appalled since he was an obvious misfit and had no basic knowledge of things we use on a daily basis. Is it a fair expectation and good use of my time to start training him on basics, which could have been easily filtered during the interview.
Patience is not my strong suite, but I have to play best with the cards that I have been dealt with. But may a times I keep questioning myself "What am I doing? Is this what I wanted to do?" The answer is yes, this is where I exactly wanted to be when I was a starry eyed kid who wanted to be a computer engineer. I chose this. But then I believed I would be probably changing the world with my work.
Like all people born in the 80s, I grew up seeing my parents working the same job day in and day out till they retired. They treated their jobs as jobs, worked like clock work, it wasn't meant to be satisfying, they didn't wish to change the world. They had secure jobs, smaller needs, secure retirements thanks to pensions, and ran through life on auto pilot. Now that they have retired, they spend time adding to the TRP of random TV serials, gossiping about neighbors and relatives, visiting sacred pilgrims and the worst sending useless forwards on WhatsApp and Facebook.
Agreed that this generation has got into easy jobs, I earn more in a day than what my father earned in a month, I bought a car and a house at an age that my parents couldn't even dream of buying when they were at the same age. But our needs have also consistently increased. We don't have secure jobs, no assurance of a pension in our sunset years, the added temptation of the phone on sale on Amazon or order the over-priced pizza for dinner, and a peer pressure to prove that we are better off than what our friends show off on Facebook and Instagram. While I do want to go on a foreign holiday like my friends on Facebook (even if they probably took a personal loan for it), I still lose my hair over my retirement savings plan.
But that is not a bigger problem for us today. The problem at hand is we crave job satisfaction. Many of us entered the workforce with starry eyes with the hope that we were here to make a difference or change the world, we have realized over the years that the most jobs are just soul suckers. Even if I cant make the world turn around with my work, I at least hoped to make a dent or leave a mark somewhere. If you don't own your own startup by the time you reach forties, you feel like a loser, if you do not look forward to your day at work every morning and rather are dragging your feet to work every day, its depressing. You try to shake things up, change things, inspire others while trying to stay self-motivated, or best keep job-hopping for every couple of years seeking gratification, and eventually give in to "leading lives of quiet desperation".
So now what!!! An early retirement. But retire to what!!!
I wouldn't know what to do with myself if I had no work for a week, what do I do post retirement. Scrolling through social media all day...how long can you do that!!! Watch TV serials all day...I don't think so. Spend time with kids...if they have time for you (if you manage to have one that is). Holidaying...needs money. Spend time gossiping with random people..Argh!!!
And what about the financial security. Without that pension, we are on our own. So we keep working, to be able to buy that fancy phone, or post pictures of our good times at a foreign holiday on Instagram, to add to our retirement savings if God forbid we live to see our 90s.
So it's important that we accept that while jobs are not necessarily meant to suck, they aren't going to provide any life changing experience either. Lower your expectations and you probably will not feel like you are dragging your heels through the day.
With that thought in mind, I will step into office tomorrow and continue my KT as planned. I probably won't be able to get the best of my expectations from the new guy, but I will try to make him the best version of himself.
I was working with a new member in the team, to provide him the KT on one of our applications. I asked him to pull our source code from git, and he told me that he has never heard of git before. I showed him a few basic git commands and asked him to to set up the code locally. Once he got stuck after a point, he asked for my help. I asked him where he had checked out the source code and he pointed me to his desktop. I found a highly cluttered and unorganized desktop, and the source code of our project was right in the middle of that mess.
That immediately turned me off.
Soon I realized that he had no prior experience with many of the tools and software that we use largely at work. I got pissed some more.
After a while, I went to my supervisor and asked him who had interviewed this candidate for our project. He told me that he had no idea who interviewed him and he was just assigned to our project to be added anywhere we see fit. I was appalled since he was an obvious misfit and had no basic knowledge of things we use on a daily basis. Is it a fair expectation and good use of my time to start training him on basics, which could have been easily filtered during the interview.
Patience is not my strong suite, but I have to play best with the cards that I have been dealt with. But may a times I keep questioning myself "What am I doing? Is this what I wanted to do?" The answer is yes, this is where I exactly wanted to be when I was a starry eyed kid who wanted to be a computer engineer. I chose this. But then I believed I would be probably changing the world with my work.
Like all people born in the 80s, I grew up seeing my parents working the same job day in and day out till they retired. They treated their jobs as jobs, worked like clock work, it wasn't meant to be satisfying, they didn't wish to change the world. They had secure jobs, smaller needs, secure retirements thanks to pensions, and ran through life on auto pilot. Now that they have retired, they spend time adding to the TRP of random TV serials, gossiping about neighbors and relatives, visiting sacred pilgrims and the worst sending useless forwards on WhatsApp and Facebook.
Agreed that this generation has got into easy jobs, I earn more in a day than what my father earned in a month, I bought a car and a house at an age that my parents couldn't even dream of buying when they were at the same age. But our needs have also consistently increased. We don't have secure jobs, no assurance of a pension in our sunset years, the added temptation of the phone on sale on Amazon or order the over-priced pizza for dinner, and a peer pressure to prove that we are better off than what our friends show off on Facebook and Instagram. While I do want to go on a foreign holiday like my friends on Facebook (even if they probably took a personal loan for it), I still lose my hair over my retirement savings plan.
But that is not a bigger problem for us today. The problem at hand is we crave job satisfaction. Many of us entered the workforce with starry eyes with the hope that we were here to make a difference or change the world, we have realized over the years that the most jobs are just soul suckers. Even if I cant make the world turn around with my work, I at least hoped to make a dent or leave a mark somewhere. If you don't own your own startup by the time you reach forties, you feel like a loser, if you do not look forward to your day at work every morning and rather are dragging your feet to work every day, its depressing. You try to shake things up, change things, inspire others while trying to stay self-motivated, or best keep job-hopping for every couple of years seeking gratification, and eventually give in to "leading lives of quiet desperation".
So now what!!! An early retirement. But retire to what!!!
I wouldn't know what to do with myself if I had no work for a week, what do I do post retirement. Scrolling through social media all day...how long can you do that!!! Watch TV serials all day...I don't think so. Spend time with kids...if they have time for you (if you manage to have one that is). Holidaying...needs money. Spend time gossiping with random people..Argh!!!
And what about the financial security. Without that pension, we are on our own. So we keep working, to be able to buy that fancy phone, or post pictures of our good times at a foreign holiday on Instagram, to add to our retirement savings if God forbid we live to see our 90s.
So it's important that we accept that while jobs are not necessarily meant to suck, they aren't going to provide any life changing experience either. Lower your expectations and you probably will not feel like you are dragging your heels through the day.
With that thought in mind, I will step into office tomorrow and continue my KT as planned. I probably won't be able to get the best of my expectations from the new guy, but I will try to make him the best version of himself.
