How can one write of friends’ traumatic experiences in trying to escape a world of little minds... ….. ...of the chances of life and its very randomness.... ...........................how most events can be twisted out of its context often times.....of how some power groups' images of the world dominate ....at the expense of marginalization of the truth and reality.......of the need to understand power structures ......and analyze how it got there......of the need of some to revise history to further their or their own group's objectives......the cycle of life ........and the need to come to terms that for every rise there is a fall...…... ?
Has it become a modern necessity to learn to play role games.....whether in secret....or not ....to access corporate networks…....to develop power structures behind closed doors ….and behind glass ceilings….
How does one write about factual experiences ….? Can one ever fantasize about the truth...?
In hindsight, in this new digital global village, there is a need to know and learn how one can assert one's own freedom of thought and expression............. and the need to stamp one's own indviduality...before one becomes eaten up as fodder in modern social structures /groups and get colored out as waste product......
Who Stole our Parachutes?
WE
finally reached the land of our dreams after many years of hardships …..…Numerous
little experiences fill our mind ….. interesting enough for oneself…but in that
ocean of human experiences…not very relevant….
……
and
……… graduate work….Graduate work tended to be boring, tedious and daily living
on minimal comforts…..
……
At last, after spending more than 5 years of
graduate work, we started applying to small companies. We then got an offer from a small company
called ‘S… systems’. It was the winter of ’92. ‘S… systems’ was a small start
up company. The environment was fun and the working conditions excellent,
though the pay was nothing to be excited about. However, as it was our first
major job in the computer field; we were very excited and happy with the work.
Our colleagues were also great and fun to be with and we were having a
fine time.
WE then got an offer from a top rated mutual fund
company that was supposed to be the very best in the country.... WE joined the
Company. The project that we were going to work on involved distributed systems
and the ultimate objective of the project was to make the whole company
paperless. It was to be the beginning
of an experience. Our manager was great and understanding. We hit off very
well. Our project leader was a great guy too. The aim of the project was to
develop the company's systems and work fllows required for the next 10 years...
One of our career highlights at the company was the
opportunity to give a presentations...... on..... design and prog..R2D2...ming to our peers
and to senior managers of the technical staff. It was generally well received
and was to be a very satisfying moment in our career. WE were able to work on
some state-of-the-art distributed .....libraries and code some
prototype agents that would be the building blocks for the routing of the
application’s workflow ...... However, after about 6 months work on the
project, the project was put on
deep freeze.....
Are the labors of all types of people rewarded or is
some made out to be more equal than others?
The concept of such systems fascinated us. WE had a lot of experience about
inefficiency of paper at the organizations we were involved in since very
young…..So, we started writing our thoughts down which we later titled it as a
proposal. Thus, wewere basically just organizing our thoughts down in paper ……
The paper
essentially revolved around the possible use of the PDF file format as the
basis of a file format that would be
portable across different operating systems and applications and thus become the
basis of portable document applications and digital document management.
It also involved 3 other ideas - use of a workflow routing tool,
clustered imaging and workflow servers and remote procedure calls for accessing
data in legacy applications.
We were still working on it when we took it over to
our project leader’s computer to print it out. We printed it but accidentally
left a copy of the document on the project leader’s computer without closing
the document / exiting the word processor application.
Does the color of your parachute matter?
A couple of days later our project leader called us
to a meeting with him. He briefly asked us what we were really trying to get at
in the paper that we had written. So, We explained what we thought were the
essential ideas behind our article. After discussing it, he then suddenly
handed over to us a paper stating in it what he felt were issues concerning our
performance. He stated in it that he had doubts about our knowledge and
understanding and also stated something about we not understanding company
objectives. This surprised us and eventually we had to give an explanation of
what happened to our manager.
This made things even worse as word got around. For, unknown to us, a big consulting group
had already been hired to implement a totally new system. And, unfortunately,
we had staked a claim in our proposal that our proposal could be implemented
better than existing proposals. ......... So,
changes were put in motion by some people to protect their own interests at the
cost of ours..…. ,,,,,,,,,,.
Thus, was caused apprehension .....among management and in the existing world of how things were seen or meant to be.... Unfortunately for us, we had no control of the events that occurred and those going to
occur……
A new manager was appointed but we ended up getting
a bad review. The points raised in their review, we thought, were ridiculous
and it seemed that instead of getting recognition, we were severely
reprimanded.
By the end of that year, we got a second review
(within a span of 3 months). It was another bad review. For some reason, it
seemed, management was keen on giving us another bad review in spite of we
documenting all our work.
It was only much later that we found out that, unknown to us, a major consulting company ( which had a presence in this very same organization ) started using this idea and went about implementing solutions for their clients all over the US and world over ..........as a a basis for document management.....within a couple of months..................
Race, Religion or skin color – Do they ever really
matter?
Realizing our career was going nowhere; we started
applying for new jobs. We joined our
new employer, who was one of the top companies in the financial sector, in the spring of that year. We executed our
tasks very well. We designed and coded inter-process mechanisms and
imaging applications. We also wrote a good technical specification document for
the project (based on our work at the previous company) that was also
appreciated by everybody in the project.
After the project we were working on got eventually
(sadly) cancelled, we were re-assigned to work on a team with M… as our new
manager. Our new manager M… kept us out of key decisions and also took a lot of
credit for whatever work we did
Our hiring manager Mxxxx soon suddenly left. There
were a lot of changes suddenly within the company. The senior vice president
was fired.....(the rumors we heard for the firing was too incredulous to be true....!) and the whole progR2D2ming department suddenly seemed like a sinking
ship.
We soon got another new manager. He was very rude and crude in his dealings
with us .....and was always putting a lot of pressure on us unnecessarily to get things done very quickly and
with unrealistic targets....and on projects we had no technical experience before....He also bragged about his managerial abilities ....including working as a bouncer in a bar.... However, We meekly went about doing our
very best, often staying late to complete the work required. Our review period
came and went. So after another 2 months, We wrote up a progress document
documenting all the progR2D2ming we had done over the past year and asked for
our review. But unknown to us, a lot of things had changed by then. What we
received was a bad review.
Why do some problems defy solutions?
After about a month, we got a call for an interview
with one the biggest Telco Companies in the world. Based on our technical
skills; the hiring manager hired us on the spot. She wanted us to help out in
the project from the technical operations angle; even though till that time we
had worked mostly on software development. We felt pleasantly surprised at the
confidence reposed on us.
We fervently hoped that this job would be our final
destination. We were getting really tired of being on the move and decided that
we would give our very best in this
attempt.
The project we were brought on was a challenging and
ambitious project. It was the largest project in the company and one of the
largest of its kind. We would voluntarily arrive at work at 7.00 am and leave
work at around 7.00 p.m. in the evening. We focused only on our work and
nothing else......
After 3 months, our supervisor's manager (the one
who hired us); got promoted to director and went to another group. We continued
putting in long hours of work and getting our self up to date in our knowledge fo the process and systems.....
The project was going through some tough times. A
new management had taken over the project.
At about this time, our supervisor's manager asked us to do some work
for him. We did the work over a couple of months and got a certificate for
'Exceptional contribution award' and also a cash award of $100. We also got a
merit increase and a bonus for the year.
We felt things were going great for us. However, in the last
week of March of that year, a meeting was called where it was announced that
there would be a reorganization of our group.
A meeting was held between us, DS, PJ and R. They explained the situation was necessary because of the company’s
new needs....(ahem!!).. We explained that we were willing to work the new arrangement of 3.5
days per week doing 12 hr shifts. We stated clearly that we had no problems
working on the present day or night shift arrangement though we still could not
expressly understand the need for our role in it. We also expressed our lack of
training for the new position. The meeting on the whole was very cordial....and kept confidential..
Destruction of some for the gain of a powerful few?
On Wednesday April 16, We went to work again at 6
a.m. At around 3.00 p.m.; J…. told us
that the file system on a server was filling up and that we had to make sure
that the disk space was prevented from getting full. We promptly went about
compressing the log files and other files as recommended by our colleague. It
soon appeared that the problem was part of a larger problem and we started
getting calls on our phone from different groups within the company that there
was a slowness in performance and that some applications were having problems.
This occupied our time completely up till 5.30 p.m.
At around this time; JB came and told us that he would like to have a word with
us. He asked us to meet him in the director’s office. We met with JB and with
our group manager in the director’s office. JB went about saying that the
company had lost a lot of money because of the outage and that it was our fault, as we had not watched the monitor.
We explained that we had indeed watched the monitor
and that we had done all that was possible within our means to solve the
problem in addition to our regular tasks. The meeting ended abruptly when we
asked that our viewpoint on what actually happened be elevated to the attention of the director.
Why do a few deify
their own problems and yet hardly understand the needs of others?
On Friday, that week, when we checked our calendar;
we realized that we were scheduled to go on training the next week. So we sent an email
to our boss confirming that we would be on training as arranged for the next week.
We took the train to N… .k. From there we rented the car as previously
arranged and drove to the hotel. There, We checked in for the night. The next
morning we drove to the training campus. At around 11.00 am; We got a call from
our manager PJ asking that we come back immediately. We told him that we had
got permissions from all people concerned, including the director for this
training. He told us that he was just following orders. We told him that
logistically speaking it was impossible for us to reach our office by that
evening. In the end after much discussion, he agreed that as it was impossible
for us to reach the company by the end of the working day, we would leave in
the evening and come in early next morning to work.
We reached back about 2.00 in the morning......So, we were extremely tired the next morning April 22.....
We went to the meeting that had been called for at 9.00 am. A human resources
representative and our group manager met us. The HR lady asked us to recount
our version of things that had happened when the servers had slowed down and
the application’s performance had ground to a halt.
We told them that we had watched the console
carefully and that we had done the best job we
could. After hearing our explanation; they asked us to leave the room. When we came back, our group manager told us that they indeed had no permission to meet
with us that Wednesday evening. However, they had decided to make a more
serious choice: that we were being let
go. The HR person tried to impress on
us that we were being let go on the
basis of performance and not for any other reason.
Oh, the hardships and the abuses we had to endure!
And why are the historical events of a few canonized and iconized whereas the crying needs of the present not even paid attention to?
We were
given the option to sign a separation agreement in which we would be given an amount of 1.5 months of
our monthly pay in return for our signing a separation agreement that would
clear the company and its employees of any wrong doing. We were given 3 weeks to sign the agreement in
which we would give up all of our
rights to bring any legal action against the company and its employees. However, before we could leave the room, we
were expressly asked to sign a copy stating that we had received a copy and understood the terms
of the release and that it was legal and binding. Also, within 3 weeks, we
had to think it over regarding collecting the money but also had the
opportunity to consult an attorney.
We were
devastated. We had often put in 65 -70 hrs of work on some
weeks for the company. Our life was
shattered. We did not know any lawyers
and being a computer person, was totally unaware of how the legal system
operated. What were we to do? And we had to survive with what savings we had before we could land ourselves with another job. Being strangers in a new
land, we did not know how we were even going to survive….
If an African American or a Native American were to
undergo unpleasant experiences today, how should they be viewed?... Independent of their experiences in the
past....or..hope in the future? Do people really take the time to understand or care?
Do we have to see the present in terms of the
past?....and how much should we learn from our past experiences
After 3
weeks, we signed the separation
agreement, as we needed the money.....and as what other advice we got was totally unprofessional....
So, we went about trying to make use of
the separation package in which they would provide us professional outplacement
help. Eventually, however it took us 3 months to find a job....in which we had to exist without money or jobs... We then got an offer from a good consulting
company. (on the day before the 4th of July weekend.)
Our consulting company contracted us to work for the other big telecommunications
company in the area. We had been told that we would be working as part of the
development team doing some cutting edge progR2D2ming work. However, after one
week after starting work at the new telecommunications company; we found our self being given the additional
responsibility of doing system administration work. We accepted it without any
complaint and proceeded to work to the satisfaction of our managers concerned.
However eight months later, the manager in charge of
production moved out… to yet another department….
We had by
now asked our consulting company a raise to enable us to meet the additional
expenses…..including the 4 hour daily commute..... A month later however our consulting company’s account manager left;
but before leaving he told us that
everything had been taken care of and that we
should receive our revised paychecks with the raises shortly. However,
even four months after we signed the
agreement; the raises never did come through....(;..
In April of that year, our hiring manager to whom
we were now reporting to; came and told
us that our services were no longer
needed for the project.... as there was a reorganization as directed from above.....And so we went
back to the consulting company.
On June that same year; we left the consulting firm and proceeded to join another consulting
company. We are told that we will be
doing progR2D2ming on-site for the foreign operations of a large US govt. agency.
As usual, we
are told that we will be doing
new developmental work but end up doing support work and eventually we are shipped out to doing Y2K work. In the
meantime, a security background check is
done on us by the Govt. security
agency but ends up revealing no security issues.....
Of what use is it to glorify or prostitute dead
artists’ virtues or works or art when there is so much opportunity to appreciate and be kind to
people while they are still alive?
After a year,
we resign from our company to escape to
a new land....
One can write about the next 7 years …..about the facts or just fantasy….If one were to continue to write about facts…it would become…just another ….. crown …………..of anguish…..
This is when we sought refuge…. refuge from the trauma that we had known and experienced with numbing effect….....we want so desperately to shield ourselves from any such future experiences…….
We wonder aloud whether our terrifying experiences really matter or not to our world around us ....to a system oblivious and unconcerned about people like us…...a world where we had suffered irreparable loss in terms of our friends, our families, our reputation, and our self-esteem……..
How can we ever empower ourselves back to the kinder, gentler world that we had once known but now only dream of…
For indeed ….hell had frozen over and spilled on to us….. and we remain die cast in the SSS*(selfish, spurious, servile)people's M&M spell on society……We are too terrified to remember all the things that we actually saw and happened .....and unashamedly join with those who have trampled over others and still cling to power..... in denying it ever happened...
…..... what lies next?
And so our journey continues……. We have lost many things ....not least the years we have lost in time and money..... how can we ever regain any of it in any sense of the world? Do we console us that at least we are fodder for the coun-selling profession...?!
As refugees…,,,,,, We hesitate to beg………..but are not afraid to ask…… Is this…..modern justice of the new world order?