chasing your dreams ...

I had a good learning experience recently ...

I have been working in my company for the last 5 months . I joined as a college recruit , with little or no knowledge about the company ( not that it mattered much at that time ) . Later on entering the company , I was chosen from among the freshers to be in one of the most happening projects in the company called "iobi" , ( something like a yahoo messenger , but with much more functionality , imagine getting your phonecalls on your office monitor and then forwarding it to your home phone or vice versa, handling ur mails and voice mails and all that stuff thru one application on ur desktop ! ) . Well , it was amazing the way this product was projected to us as freshers , special care was taken to make it appear special and it did !
At this point I was chosen as a recruit for this project which incidentally required c++ training experience ... the irony of the situation was that most of the people there were compsci people ... I was one of the small no. of tronix junta ... i was chosen and put into a project for undisclosed reasons over the programming bonds from iits and iiits !

Anyway , it was an unique and novel situation to be in for me . Getting placed in this company was mainly due to my ignorance or computer science subjects ... and getting through the 2 hr interviews ( 1 tech -> hr :)) was a breeze . And then again , singled out for my ignorance of the computer science ( i did ask a question to the head of this project at his presentation to the freshers " what hopes does an enc guy have at ur project " ) ...and for asking the right question .
Coming through all this , the expectations from the people at the project actually was and is pretty high .

Initially , getting to just be with my project partners ( totally 8 in no.including me ) was something not so easy , but slowly , things got better . We got to know each other better and even the boss who was himself a student a year back at ISB and he , us .

Some of my preconcieved notions about working in a software company came crashing down literally ! The idea that individual labour brings about more productivity cannot true in a software company . However brilliant you are , if u just take the trouble to or let down ur ego for a second , you can hit upon a better solution that can make life much better for you and the company and everybody else as a consequence !! I always thought that problem should always be taken head on and being at it for long periods of time will eventually break it down . But often I realised that the reverse is true , instead of the problem , you can end up broken down ! Thats when someone called a "boss" comes into picture . Though , ideally , say according to a person like Ayn Rand , or IR Rao for that matter , you should be mature enough to know that already and its natural and all, this is exactly what the boss figure kind should be equipped to handle !
If hes heading a group of programmers , he should have been or should still be a programmer himself/herself and empathise with the employee and offer help , suggestions , criticism wherever required . Nothing can be more disconcerting than to be under the thought that ur boss doesn't care about you , in turn u dont care about the job , and ultimately u screw up ur career , not his !

I was at some point of time last week , literally bored with the work I was given , it was like asking 7 night mare bots to play against one hurt me plenty !! Thats when I said it out loud to him . He took me in to the conference room and we had a 1:1 talk on what my misgivings were . I got a good lecture about" following one's passions " . If you want to do something especially more than you are , you should be that much more enthu in achieving it . Sitting at a place and complaining that its not coming will get nobody nowhere . Well , I got the message very clearly and as a reward for being open mouthed , I did get some work in my favourite area : graphics .

Chasing my dreams in this field or any other is something which I have never done fully at any time . My sketching skills are still sketchy , poetry is highly dependant on my mood ... programming not worth mentioning , but at the source of the problem lies something , believing that things will happen on their own . It does to some extent , I understood ... but to take it that far where u want to go , there is no substitute for hard work . And thats why ...this is one dream I am prepared to catch , the prize to be paid for this I dont know , but I will make it worth it .....

"man is the fountainhead of creation " - ayn rand