Of Fingers and Pointing!

Disclaimer: The post below is 'bout things which happen in my office and is not intended to portray yours truly as an avid gossip monger. So if you get any such thoughts please 'delete' them from your memory. This post is also not intended to hurt the sentiments of any software professional in general. :)

Hello guys! It’s been a long time since I posted anything here. Well, I have been getting work on and off and I am going to be shifted to another team soon which is a bit of a bother 'cos I was just settling down with the present team. For a long time I didn't know what to write 'bout. My mind drew a blank I tried to think of writing 'bout something. Then I looked at my work-life and said Hey! There is so much going on here waiting to be written 'bout. Hence this post.

One and a half months have passed since I became a corporate ass and more than once I have seen how the other corporate asses who work with me behave. Well, I am not trying to make derogatory remarks here 'bout my colleagues but whatever I saw, I thought it ridiculously funny.

Well, there have been umpteen weekly status meetings which have been happening right from the day I joined my team till last Friday. The fact that these meetings are all 'bout a bunch of software professionals right from the Project Manager to the Developers sitting around a table and cribbing 'bout the lack of coordination between the offshore and the onsite teams apart from a million other things and at the end of it all everyone being satisfied that they have made their points however unproductive they may have been, is just another matter altogether. Though the points made may not be entirely unproductive (this is my be-fair-to-all part of my persona talking), there is nothing much done 'bout it after the meeting.

Anywez, I m digressing. Well, these meetings are very funny. Everybody who has responsibility is on the defensive mode right from the word 'GO'. What happened last week was one of the module leads had promised to finish off his module by that Friday, the day the meeting was held. This had come as a surprise and a good news to our PM who had later informed 'bout this good news to his superiors. And imagine his surprise when the module lead told the entire crowd that there would be a delay of 'bout a week or so! The PM was very much shocked; you can empathize with him I guess...I mean he had told his superiors 'bout the promised delivery. But the calm fella that he is, he asked what had happened. There the finger pointing started.

His team had apparently not given him an honest projection 'bout their work deadlines, and when asked at the meeting pointed finger at some of the team, who not having an option had to stutter out lame explanations which ofcourse nobody bought. Seizing the opportunity our team lead started pointing finger at the onsite coordinator who was apparently not 'coordinating' stuff as much as the offshore team would have liked her to do.

And not just during meetings...the team I am in has two modules with leads for both. While both of them are smart, they are at extreme ends when it comes to dealing with the team lead. The team lead in the first place talks a lot, and is kinda aggressive to which my module lead just nods his head; but this is not tolerated much by the other module lead who expects people to be rather precise and to the point. And they both usually end up disagreeing and blaming each other, when the PM finally comes to the scene and makes peace. Though all this happens very discreetly and most people do not notice much (it is either that or they are just pretending, as is the case most of the times!!!) it happens.

Sometimes I feel like I am in the middle of an Ally McBeal episode!!!

Life's been good so far. Getting shifted to another team by this Monday most probably. Hope they don’t shift me from this one!