The Great Indian Managers Dilemma – Part Three

Hey Folks, Welcome to another post of The Great Indian Managers Dilemma.

I must confess that my prototype of the Great Indian Manager is a Male. This is my tribute to the greatest manager, live or dead, and a great friend. At times he a greater friend and a great manager. Any guesses ? Chalo, I will make it easy for you. It is Silla. Some believe it is also because of Micheal Scott @ The office. Let me tell you that they are wrong.

In this post we will be talking about how to forge stuff from your Passport to documents. We can also discuss in detail about the kind of raw materials one requires to achieve the same. We will also discuss how to make paper rockets if you are not interested.

Oops this is about The great Indian manager. Sorry Friends, All of those who know me will know that i am totally incapable. And paper rockets and forging are the last things u would expect me to speak about. My sincere apologies. And we must restrain ourselves from doing things like paper rockets and forging. Paper rockets can only blind your fellow colleagues at times where as forging documents can put you in a more troublesome situation. So follow my advice and be good boys and girls.

In this post we actually will talk about Silla in his early days. He has just joined work and is needing an excuse to display his bravado among the girls in the batch. And we all know how desperate a male Engineering Student from a reputed college can be.

The desperation of Silla can be summed up by the fact that he ragged freshly joined adhoc-lecturers assuming that they are juniors. On knowing the truth, he was quick to retort “I just asked them their names. I am offended they didn’t say their names.”

Silla at office was quite opposite to what he was at college. But then there is a limit to what one can evolve. The basic good nature of a man remains. As for Silla, i needn’t explain.

Silla in his short stint as a freshman at work has done a lot of strange things. This is what a few of his colleagues had to say about him.

The fresher guy — “Silla is the epitome of everything wrong. He, one day, claimed that he could do three somersaults together in a dive. And he showed pics of Alexandre Despatie clamimg it to be him. What a loser.”

Silla on himself — “Three somersaults. I did them. Actually it was three and a half.”

The fresher girl — “During the initial days of my work here. I think someone used to stalk me. I told this to Silla and no one stalked me there after.”

Silla on himself — “Between you and me, I was the stalker.”

The reporting manager — “Silla always thought i was the manager meant for generating some sort of reports. It took me some time to convince him that i am his reporting manager. “

Silla on himself — “The manager told u that. So much for the laundry”

But no denying the fact that Silla was a funny guy. Following is the update of his status report meant to be mailed everyday.

Monday — I have a girl friend.

Tuesday — We broke off. Anyone interested please call my no or mail me.

Wednesday — Sorry I am not ready yet. All your mails will be considered in due time. And please attach a pic of yours.

Thursday and Friday — Out of office (Silla claims to be in office but then the manager assumed that this is a better status message than other lousy ones. )

The Great Indian Managers Dilemma – Part 2

There is this widespread (mis)conception about a programmers life being dull. Well this is an unfair assumption, i must say, as we manage to have enough fun to keep our life rolling. You don’t buy it. Then let me explain.

There is this funny habit which a few have of pouncing on those people who leave their desktops unguarded. And believe me every project will have a guy who will be ready to make full use of every such opportunity. So its normal if we get mails from some ids offering treats or asking us to grab sweets from their desk. So there is only a 50/50 change of it ending up being true.

A similar incident happen with Vaidehi K. When the pressure to perform the work in the given time period and the fact that the she has to make to a wedding which has already commenced then even Gods of coding are prone to such errors. So if an human leaves her desktop unlocked, we can blame her. Nor can we blame the Mr ‘opportunist’ smart guy who mailed from her id to the Manager. The subject of the message runs somewhat like this.

Hi XXXX,

I would request you to grant me 30 days leave so that i can travel to Siberia to watch some male flamingos dance.

Thanks and Regards
V.K.

If it has been sent to an ornithologist he would have mailed back with detailed trivia about the gregarious wading birds of the family Phoenicopteridae of tropical regions, having reddish or pinkish plumage, long legs, a long flexible neck, and a bill turned downward at the tip. An adventurer would have responded by suggesting V.K to go trekking to Popigai crater or to go steam boating on the Ob river. But our manager mails backs telling V.K that its ethically and ergonomically impossible to grant leave of that magnitude. But he agrees to grant her 1/2 day of leave sometime in the future when she can get some Nat Geo movies of her interest and watch them.

At this point i find it suitable to welcome you all to another edition of The Great Indian Managers Dilemma.

I will be talking about the skills of the manager in getting work done. Before i delve into the intricate details of the tools the manager possesses or plunge into the deep institution that is management, I must ask you to just go around to the vending machine and have a cup of coffee. Meantime i will have mine too and think of what to write.

Hey Fellas, How is the coffee ? What ? Don’t you worry, mine is worser!

So one of those things which a manager inherits by default is his incredible ability to forget stuff and a much more fantastic ability to cover up by forgiving us for the forgetting act of his. A manager by his power of authority has the right to forget the stuff u tell him or mail him. He lives in his world of virtual reality where he assumes everything is under control. He is hardly bothered by the code-breaks and technical issues which gives constant nightmares to the developers. He is highly optimistic about the way he is handling everything.

Our DP narrated this incident which happened to him long time back when he used to write java files. With utmost respect DP takes the name of the manager. With DP, one can always expect that level of reverence. Such a nice guy was our DP. But the reverence has reasons of its own.

In those days when DP used to code, He was put into a project which was managed by one of the greatest managers to have walked on mother Earth. Yes, the name is Silla. DP used to sit in the cabin next to the Managers’. And he by chance had the unique ability to overhear a few of the conversations the Great Silla had.

Conv 1 :
Silla to client: Oh! If thats what you want, I will make sure we roll in all the changes and deliver it as fast as we can. Say, some three months. Well its a work which estimates to some 4 months for the offshore team. But we will work day and night to finish.

Conv2 :
Silla to all developers: Hey Guys, Can anyone explain how does kaleidoscopes work?
(The developers give a lot of ideas. But Silla is never satisfied. But finally he decides to break the confusion around. He gives a textbook answer and there with a mighty smile on his face, speaks about how kaleidoscopes interests him and made him a better man.) So guys, the client is hard on us. He wants us to finish the work in 2 months. Even my constant attempts to get him cognizant about the troubles we will face turned into deaf years. So i will need you all to finish the stuff for me within 1.5 months. And you have to do this with diminished resources as i think its not required to have so many people working on the same team.(DP was one of the those who got to worked in the dimnished team. Even though DP learned to code, he forget all about life. Sources reveal that the project never got released. Silla has sensed the inevitable long before and had moved out gracefully.)

Another place, Another firm, Another set of people and the same old Silla: Hey Guys, Can anyone explain how does kaleidoscopes work?

Thus is the story of the great Silla, who dealt with all the problems thrown at him with artistic excellence and emerged victorious.

The Great Indian Managers Dilemma – Part 1

I am forced to write this as the last post with the same heading did make no sense. It can be thought as an attempt gone totally wrong. No grievence.

As said before the Great Indian Manager or in short G.I.M has real ambitions. These ambitions are mostly quixotic but are worth the pain. The ideologies of G.I.M. are perfect but hardly followed for the same reason. In their stead is followed the ideologies of the real manager which are as cliched as the word cliche is.

One of the greatest dilemmas faced by the managers is how to handle the leaves of the employees. The real manager gives leaves, but only reluctantly. He goes through the process of persuasion and later negotiation and ends up doing a favour by giving leaves as happened with DP. Good old Divyanandan Pavanasam wanted ten days of leave for attending his sister’s marriage, the smart manager that he had his leaves got reduced to a meagre two days. The manager made DP believe that these two days with a lot of imaginary holidays which the manager created for the sole purpose of putting dust in the eyes of D.P. DP fell for it and took the leaves with a lot of hope.

As always all the hopes were invain as he ended up getting only in time for the wedding. The manger also got DP to get to be available on the phone. DP was constantly pestered by constant phone calls from office for these two days that he started working from the wedding hall.

D.P. made it a point from then on that when he becomes a manager that he will give only two days of leave when the reason for leave is marriage, even if the marriage is of the person is question. The G.I.M does nothing of that sort. He hates negotiation and persuasion most of all the traits of the real manager.

to continue…