Typical Software Engineer

Since a decade "IT" has hyped our life to a great extent. A Software Engineer is treated somewhat different everywhere. If a software engineer goes to a shop to buy something he will end up spending in 100s or 500s, because the shopwala will put nice topi on this so called intelligent software engineer. One more reason for spending so much is that he has money only in denominations of 100s and 500s that is what ATM gives out. Forget about the normal shops, these guys always shop in Food World, FabMall, Big Bazaar, Spencers and always pay by those so many Credit Cards which are Free for Life time .

Everyone tends to speak with you in English and even software engineers talk only in English (Nan magane Kannada Baruttala). Always acting very formal wearing formals with thousands of "Sorry"s "thank you"s. Damn! even vocabulary is built up with Jargon and the following phrases keeps on repeating even for the day-today most common activities; no issues, scope is not there, that is not my requirement, this is not a value add to me, great job, we should incorporate that, end of the day what matters is, basically, bottleneck, milestone, that is generally my process, I am currently in meeting, hectic and busy man! Now how would it be if you talk all these hi-fi words with a Doodwala. This itself will raise a typical guy's collar.

Go to any restaurants in the afternoon, it will be filled with these people who will roaming around with their respective company tag (ID) still hanging on their neck. Sodhexo coupon, ticket would serve the meal as well as save the tax. If they are around in a posh restaurant then definitely some 'Team Lunch' or 'Lunch with Customer' would be happening and all the orders would be placed based on the criteria that the dish should sound different and cost the most (chance hai loot le). Then the talk would be I tried that dish in that star hotel, it was awesome, have to tasted this dish over there, then one guy would tell the Team Lead, Hey! next time we will go there.

The cost of living has in one way increased due to the software engineers I guess. If you go to look for a rent for a house, my God! if the owner comes to know that you a software engineer in so and so company his rent rate will increase by 2-3 slabs. No doubt he would be saying my son is working in IBM and my daughter is studying in Berkeley University(Inside you will be feeling damn! my GRE score was not good). Even the smallest house are 2 bedrooms now and even if they are 20 km away from the city they cost more than 8k to 15k per month. The auto-riskhaw people now don't give change of Rs.6 suppose the meter reads 64. Mobile market with hundreds of corporate plans. All baayis have become good cooks in these engineers' house.

When a bunch of software engineers meet the scenario is very interesting. Everyone act as if they are venture capitalist and have invested their own money in their own companies. My company is a MNC, 50 billion dollar company. Each one is judged by mobile model they are carrying and the car they are driving. Typically they will talk my company provides this benefit, my company covers this much, my company has food from this caterer, my company is sending me here. There will be bunch of discussions on the company benefits and policies and few here and there would be cursing their own company saying my company doesn't provide us anything except work! Some guy would start "when I was in US, I saw that... I did this,... I did that...." Then comes the salary discussion, hike discussion, manager discussion bla bla bla.

You should see a software engineer position in a matrimonial market. Uufh! profiles would be so and so company, so and so salary, US returned or Germany returned or Australia returned. What will the guys from other profession do. Most of girls soon after their marriage you will find them in orkut with status saying married, San Jose, United States. The IT has influenced in almost every field of today's life, say it a retail market, say it transportation sector, say it real estate business, say it commercial business, say it entertainment, just no end to it. No doubt it has created a lot of opportunities and has raised our economy to one of the strongest economies in the world.

Whatever be it, a typical software engineer is so much typical in so many sense. Now don't run back on me with a hockey stick to hit me(a typical software engineer will not have one though), the above listings are just my views on the other side of the typical software engineer, because I happen to be one among them........................... ;)

PS: In some of my future post I will try to compose about a typical day in office.