Imagine a project of building a skyscraper having 100 floors (highly unlikely as we don’t have so much patience to build 100 floors), we want to save all that money that goes for the compensation of dumb design engineers, architects and interior designers. So that we can use that money to hire more laborers who know to build walls. The laborers themselves will figure out with their experience how to build the building. After all those cheap laborers might have built so many buildings till now.

We like improvisation, we don’t plan our cities, we don’t plan disaster management, we don’t plan for critical risks. We (referring to Indian project managers) like using the word “proactive” a lot of times in a desperate attempt to motivate the employees and sometimes as an excuse to giving a bad appraisal to a hard working employee, also to suppress the voice of employees. But we are not proactive, we hate pro-activity.

Instead, we follow the nature’s law of reaction, Newton’s third law. We react to things as and when they come. “Chalega… Dekhlenge….” (translates roughly to “it runs…we shall see later”) is the perfect representation of our typical attitude. Where CAT exam fails online, where Bhopal tragedy happens unforeseen, where Maoists kill hundreds of policemen without any intelligence information, negligence , laziness and arrogance is not something new.

If someone insists us to plan a task or himself spends time in design, we call him a dreamer and a loser. Winner according to us is the one who works day in and day out, slogs at offices for 14 hours a day, sweats at work without having any idea of what he/she is doing, without any care for the quality of the product being built, completely ignoring the risks and repercussions.

May it be software, or politics, or municipal corporation, or public security, or public convenience or even a patient struggling for life! There is no interest shown by the authorities in planning.

Hey wait, having said all that, there is dreaming for sure. A lot of dreaming. Politicians loftily speak about making India one of the developed nations in the next 10 years (speak about realistic goal setting!), Realtors boast of their hastily built commercial projects as “state of art” building, not to forget the wonderful Sanskrit names they choose, IIT-ans claim that their startup will soon downsize Google, engineers claim that their plagiarized projects to become the next big thing in the world, sports coaches claim that India will get the most number of Gold medals in coming Olympics.

We want to go to Swarga(heaven in Sanskrit), but we don’t want to die!!!!

We want results, but we wont focus on high level management and execution!

Comments?

I can relate to this. You?

You have to follow few simple steps to get an onsite chance in IT industry. In every project meeting, pretend as if you know everything that’s going on in project.  Though, technically you know nothing.

Just be your Project Manager’s pet. Take him out on parties, wish him Birthday even if it’s not his Birthday. The only key here is to have one skill — how to overshadow others, how to claim others work as yours.

The Project Manager or Senior Project Manager won’t know anything that’s going on in the project as he himself is concerned  about his appraisal rating. And his rating is dependent on the length of time he spends with the Delivery Manager. In every project party he’ll accompany the Delivery Manager and talk cute stuff to his kids, buy them Ice creams and stuff.

Project Manager himself is not sound technically to understand something. In a meeting, you can even say that we can use STRUTS framework in a .NET project, and he’ll clap for you and nominate you for an Award.

The best thing to do here is come and fly Kites, make Rangolis on reception floors. Write out slogans on how to save the planet and trees, go out and help the poor people.

Just do all these things for exactly 3 months, and I bet that you’ll be on a project with Swiss client and in the fourth month you’ll be visiting the client location that will be Vienna or Austria or may be Amsterdam.

I couldn’t stop laughing after reading this comment. Comment your views.

Here is the video

Have you rejected any job for such weird reasons. Do comment below.

This incident happened a few years ago when I was studying second to last year of my undergraduate college. I had attended a mass recruitment drive by an InfoTech Company called HCL Technologies. That company also owned a desktop computer manufacturing company called HCL Computers.

On the day of the interview, I was feeling exhausted, perhaps owing to the reason that this interview was scheduled right after my semester exams. My exams usually lasted for 15 to 20 days, which meant a fortnight of sleepless nights and burning of the midnight oil.

I wearily walked into the college campus where the placement drive was conducted, wrote a screening test with a few hundreds of students that hailed from different colleges in the city that I studied. After a long wait of an hour, the results of the test were announced. I was happy to know that I cleared the test. We were instructed not to leave the place and to wait for our turn for the personal interview that was to start right after the announcement of the results.

I had to skip my lunch and had to wait indefinitely for my turn until it was 8:30 PM in the night! By this time I was dog-tired and ready to drop. “Sridhar”, they called my name. I pulled up all my strength from within to look enthusiastic (while I was enervated) and walked into the interview room. Interviewer shot me dead with some really tough puzzles and questions. By the end of the interview I almost understood that I lost this job, but still wanted to leave an impression and fight till the end.

“Do you have any questions?”, the recruiting manager asked.
“Yes”, I reflexively answered.

In fact, I had no question in my mind to ask and was not in a position to think. I struggled to find a question that sounded smart, I thought in my mind, “When is the next bus to get to my house?”… No…This is not a question…. An intelligent question was what I needed to ask… Looked around and found a HCL desktop computer lying on a table behind the interviewer. I shot my question across, “Why do people prefer to buy other brands desktop computers over HCL?” …. Oops, I put my foot in my mouth. I have no idea why I had asked such a dumb question. “I do not know! Is there anything you would like to know?”, the recruiter bounced my question. I thanked the interviewer and left the room without uttering a word.

Needless to say, I was not selected for that job. Here are top worst Job Interview Gaffes from Readers Digest.

Did you ever encounter such kind of embarrassing situation in an interview? Post your interview goof up in the comments.

Dear Candidate,
Further to our discussion, we are pleased to inform you that your profile has been short listed and your Technical round of Interview has been scheduled on Wednesday 12th August 09 @ 10.00 AM. Please make yourself available for the same.

Note:

1. Please carry a hard copy of your profile,
2. Copy of this mail Invitation,
3. Photo ID.
4. You have wear a Face Mask mandatorily.

Wearing a mask during an interview is advantageous to the candidate.

Advantage: The candidate can hide his/her nervousness on the face!