Working as a Tech lead in Java, I wonder what really changed my life.
In college, after the years of ‘white hawk’, the rock band never took off;
I was attracted to computer graphics, which I thought would be my future.
A perfect blend of technology and art.
It was an escape from evenings of the empty hostel where all folks will be playing cricket,
which I don’t know or care; the graphics course was a good time pass.
I found Photoshop the best thing humankind ever invented.
The wonder, technology can bring to art.
I never thought software would be my future.
The four years of engineering, at least first three years, I thought they taught all the wrong subjects there.
I was never enlightened by pure science but with applied science or rather technology things were different.
This is something I realized years later, when I was sitting with my friend watching the Nasa’s mission to mars from morning to night.
I never liked mathematics in engineering college. I hated things I can’t never visualize or hear, which left out the major chunk of mathematics taught except a few chapters of geometry and trigonometry.
The only computer language I kind of know apart from 8085
programming, was Pascal not even C.
As a matter of fact I still don’t know C.
I attended the campus recruitment of US Technology by mistake.
I didn’t have anything to do since most my friends attending that.
Talking about friends, I had a few, which I kind of put in compartments. Classmates, Booze buddies, guitarists and the guys I thought will make a cool guy in college.
Life hasn’t changed much; I still can’t get all my friends for one party.
I have separate get-togethers.
I cleared this aptitude test.
Either this was flaw in the test or just pure destiny.
After the college I found myself in the training camp this company.
The classes were a real bore. I never liked or understood most of it.
I had a different plan; get into the graphics or multimedia division of the company where I thought I could bridge my art and technology interests.
The evil of IT in India was the addiction that creates, not necessarily in the technology but in the lifestyle with splendid money it offers.
It just took me sometime to realize its not that easy to shift the focus of the career.
Soon after joining the company I got the offer from the animation company, which conducted some aptitude test in college.
It was very strange to do pros and cons of shifting the job to computer graphics, which I loved and dreamed as my future.
I couldn’t figure out what to do. Best thing I could think of was to talk to the HR manager. After 6 years in IT that will be last option I will have. Jesus Christ!! Talk to HR!! Screwed up guys.
Anyway he kind of convinced me not to waste the effort I put in engineering by shifting to art where I have to compete with guys spend their time in fine arts college.
Further enquiry with guys worked in the animation company reveled my dream of working in animation software rather than actually drawing the cartoons was far off.
I have to start as an in-between-artist. Where my responsibility will be to hand draw fill-in-frames in the cartoon.
It doesn’t make sense I thought. Or may be something similar, ‘make sense’ was not in my dictionary then.
Being a startup company US Technology had I something I loved.. rather I miss now.
The energy.. you can feel it everywhere. Weird interiors, people, culture.. it never seemed like a workplace..
just an extended stay in college. We were the real bullies in the techno park campus.
Only exception was the dress code. Which the management was very particular..
After all they want us to be good consultants rather than techies.
Average employee age was around 24. 90% freshers!! we worked very hard rather than smart.
I will never delete a week’s work at 3 am and start over again now, but I have done that there.
The parties where splendid and I had my best time there in US Technology in the tenure of four years.
Nowhere I think a bunch of newbies can go to VP technology’s apartment and party all night.
He has to later leave that apartment because other families living there in the complex complained about the noise and endless parties.
Thinking about the technology stack, I didn’t have a clue which technology to choose nor my training results give me a upper hand to choose where I want to be.
I landed in JAVA again by destiny or getaRandomJoe() call.
After 6 years and more than 10 projects and 2 products in Java, its my bread and butter.
I don’t know or I’m not confident in anything better than that. Neither guitar nor fine arts..
Recently I attend a ‘. Net’ training, I started hating Microsoft for steeling and being kind of evil.
Its true I’m wring this in Microsoft FrontPage. I admit it.
I try to be honest after all that’s what rock is all about.
I respect Microsoft for their marketing strength and all the hard work they have put in to be the most commonly used OS and office product.
But either the .net or the trainer lacked the aesthetics of OOPS.
This dude writes a class with all static methods and tries to convince everybody it’s a singleton.
After a lot of resistance from the crowd, he states singleton is all about not allowing to create an instance.
I hate these guys. I want to kick 'em in nuts.
I challenge what these guys can do without visual studio?
Has ever any .net sucker done some development without visual studio?
Most of the magic they show in .net can be done with netbeans also.
The beauty of the language is how you can organize and use it, not in the tool or 'people ready' bullshit..
they say sun have a cow that don’t give any milk so they hate Microsoft.
I don’t know much about enterprise success or I’m too amateur to comment on this.
What sun lacked and what Microsoft gained. Big deal!!
I’m happy Google is doing a good business and still hates Microsoft. Guess I’m not evil ;)
Acquisitions and Technology shifts are hard for me;
even though changing the equilibrium is exciting.
Don’t know what's there in store for me... so far it’s been a good rollercoaster ride.
Talk to you soon
