“What kind of job you guys do?”

(A short story translated from Tamil - source anon.)

My retired father, a Chartered Accountant  was inquisitive about my IT job.

“You IT guys get paid very well, and have an air about you! What kind of job you guys do?”

Good question!!

I attempted to explain him in the way he could understand.

“The westerners want all their jobs to be done faster; and they want to get it done by being at their home. He is prepared to spend any amount of money for that.” 

“Yeah!  The one with teeth can eat nuts”

“Banks and other companies in US and UK are prepared to pay us very well and call us to help them. These are called our Clients”

“Hmm!”

“To smell and catch these clients we have kept our Cats at those countries. These are called “Sales Consultants or Pre-sales consultants” . These guys go and convince the clients to give the project to us. But, the one who pays has myriad queries.- “Can you do that? Or can you do this? Etc…” The job of a  sales consultant is to answer “Yes we can” for   whatever they ask.”

“What kind of qualifications these cats have?”

“Oh they are all MBAs or MS from good institutes!”

“To repeat  “Yes, we can” why do you need an MBA?”

“?!!?”

“So when you go and convince the client, you immediately get the assignment!”

“No way!..Cats like these are there in all the SWITCH companies. They bargain on the number of days we can complete the project. Instead of 500 days we promise to  finish in 50 days or 60 days. Who ever promise the least number of days will get the project”.

“Hey! Hold on!! How can you finish a project needing 500 days in 50 days? Even if you put more people and work 24x7 you can’t do that!”

“Yessss! This is where you should understand our intelligence! When we promise 50 days he gives us the project. But neither the client nor we know what the client wants. Still we deliver something by the 50^th day. Now the client would crib, “This is not what I wanted; I need these kind of outputs”.

“Then…?” My dad got curious.

“Like in a Bond movie our cats purr… and we would say, “We have to raise a CR for this”.

“CR?”

“Yeah! Change Request!! “We have done our job for the money you paid us. If you need anything more, you have to pay us more!” .. Like this we stretch the project from 50 to 500”.

“Will he accept this?”.. My dad typically got restless.

“He has to! You can’t get up half way thru’ a hair cut, right? ”

“Okay!”..”What do you do as soon as you get a project?”

“First we form a team. There will be a project manager. He will be leading the team that works on the project. He is responsible for the success or failure of the project”

“So he knows all of what you guys do?”

“No! He doesn’t have a clue of what we do!”

“Then what is his job?” My dad got confused.

“What ever mistakes we do, we shove it to him. His job is to get worried  about this, gets tired and gets tensed further. This is his job”.

“Poor chap!”

“But he is a very nice guy. What ever is our problem we can approach him!”

“So he will solve all the issues?”

“No. He won’t solve any of the issues. He will keep repeating, “I appreciate your concern!”, “ I empathise with you!!”, “ I sympathise with you!!” etc.  That’s his job”.

“Just like I do with you mom!” my dad quipped.

“He has lot of guys like Tech Lead, Module Lead, Developer, Tester, etc., to assist him.”

“With this kind of a team, with members doing their jobs well, I am sure the project will be done well”.

“Provided they do their job.. That’s where the hitch is. They won’t. The last guys I listed, the Developer and Tester are the only guys who do the job. These developers are the guys with laptops, whom you bump into in every airport.”

“You listed a guy called tester! What’s his job?”

“His job is to find fault with what the developer has done?”

“Good job! To find fault in another guy’s job and get paid for that!! At least will these guys do their job and complete the project on time?”

“How can that be? If we complete any project on time, that guilt will kill us! It’s better to commit suicide than finish the assignment on time”.

“Will the client accept this? Won’t he ask for explanation?”

“Of course he will! Till now we tripped each other. Now we join together to pull the rug under his feet”.

“How?”

“We confuse him..” “The PC you gave was dirty! You sneezed during that meeting! I don’t like you hair style!”  “He gets fed up and having gone into the project so far ahead, he’ll allow us to charge him more. Other wise his performance will be shown in poor light”.

“So  you’ll complete the project some how and get out of the client premises”.

“If we do like that, there will be more unemployment in our country.”

“Then!” my father couldn’t understand.

“When the project is about to get over, we pretend as if we have developed some alien that can’t be handled by lesser mortals at the client’s office.”

“Oh!”

“Like a kid going to school on the first day, he would start crying..”Don’t leave us alone.. Please leave a couple of your team members to handle this” This is called Maintenance and Support”. Thus the project becomes a continuous project like your CA course. Now the client realises that the project is not a one-off development, but more like getting married for life”.

“……” “Dad! Are you okay?... Let me call the ambulance”.