SPCTW - Save the Writers!

Guys and Gals!

I propose a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Technical Writers!!! The attack of the Fakes!!!

This is planned to be a rant post - I wanna know where are all the writers? In the current crop of TWs and IDs them people aren't techy - some of the geniuses probably can't configure a USB drive (sachchi!) and writing - wo kya hota hai? And they can't write!! Just today some creature called to check on a person who claimed to have been a TW in Ajeeb-O-Gareeb!!! This is AFTER the girl joins the place!!! People who hire such crap, deserve to be penalized - deduct i USD for each error that the writer makes!!! Wow!

What are the ingredients that we need to add to a human and do "mumbo jumbo chingling wingling hoosh woossshhhh" and sprinkle some (un)holy water to result in a GOOD technical writer?

Aptitude - but how do you check for that?
Attitude - aah! the proverbial double-edged sword!
Ownership - I am currently in a place where the stuff is all historical kachra (garbage!!) and we do maintaining work 70% of the time and baaki time we create kachra for future generations! (Honestly tho I hope not!)
Clarity - But how the heck do you gauge that?!

My editors, readers, peers, reviewers all compliment me on my work - no I am showing off ( you know I prefer the school wala terms show-offing!) but I want to know what constitutes good work?! Why person A does a better job then B?

In office the non-techy-tech-writer dishes out clean crisp clear stuff that is really to the point and the engineer who I think cannot imagine a sentence without at least three clauses, one but, one therefore, and maybe a therein thrown in for good measure, can confuse you by giving you directions to YOUR OWN HOME!!!

Besides sounding like a professional-narcisstic (not in that way silly!) I really want to know.

We have this creature at work who is a candidate for a series-of-hateful-spiteful-mean-evil-posts. Ash too has a list of woes and we will do that later. Happy dear has never to my knowledge ever had trouble with people professionally (esp. the females ;-D) so I am quite certain he will be quite left out on that series!!!

I am tired of people thinking she knows FrameMaker, she knows RohoHelp, she knows Epic therefore she is GOOD TW!!! He worked in Bindview, he worked in Oracle therefore he is a good TW! Hello? I know Madonna, I know Loius Armstrong, I know Jackie Chan so does that make me a kung-fu-kicking-jazzy-pop-singing-TW? I am so PISSED!!! We need some GOOD TW PR else this profession is gonna lose to the attack of the FAKES!!! When RoboHelp dies what will happen to the brilliants?!

Back to our-resident-strange-persona at work - she has HOARDED TW books and if you were to see her works you would wonder if she ever opens them!!! Reminds me of Jughead (Archie comics) who slept with books under his pillow to prepare for the test ....

Help me and this domain pleeeeaaasssseee!!!

People join companies and leave managers!

After a lot of NAGGING Ash uploaded her post and wasn't it a wonderful read?! Well! I completely enjoyed it! Why? She writes very well and I WAS THERE!!!

I was there when Pappu cried, I was there when Ash turned all shades of red her skin and complexion would allow when she was in the freak-session with the auditor. I was there when the saving to CD happened! I was there when she was with "Boss ye to karna padega."

I was in another team but thanks to our lunch sessions, I knew all. I was working with Ms. Benevolent Autocrat. We both were moved into HP at the same time to SALVAGE that project! One of us had Diesel and another Euler. Can't remember which one - Ash, Bang, and me were like one person working round -the-clock and resolving stuff for Loo and AAG (Waise have you realized the irony here? Icky!!)

We moved out of NIIT to the semi-retired super-senile BORING world of product companies. We deal with the same small-town-boy-who-did-well-became -engineer-went-to-the-US types.
We were there and today I am glad I was, but at that time, we all were in the "ANYWHERE BUT HERE" mode. I have my sides of the episodes Ash mentioned. And I will have to write a series of posts!!!!

First things first - I have a serious problem with doing things that just need to be done, with complete, utter, and abject disdain for the reasons, the whys, the reasons ...

Even when praying to God, I can never understand the protocol part, excuse me this is GOD - the supreme power we are talking about, does He really need the gangajal, the rosary, the incense sticks, the covered head, the kneeling down?? No! WE DO! It's so that we are proud of ourselves and our commitment to being pious and following "official dictate". Bunch of balooney!!!

In the very same way, I have trouble with fudging things just to close / avoid NCs! Ash was furious and I was pitying her but was also thinking "Better her then me!" Sorry Ash!!!

Do these SEI CMM labels really matter? Do Edit and ID certifications make even an iota of difference? ISO auditors - I refrain from commenting on them!!!! I used to be called a "Rebel without a cause" in another life - but I have enough causes!!!

People need structure and a big place like NIIT could not survive without all these things, but people esp. managers made such a complete mockery of them thingies!

Be is SMR, PPDP, PTD, ... wonderful tools and great industry-wide standard stuff - but the tool is only as good as the hand that wields it! Same knife - butcher, housewife, serial killer, thief - different results!

I have had the best of managers and the worst of managers! Actually after coming out of NIIT to Ajeeb-O-Gareeb, even them bad NIIT ones seem quite good! WHY?? Because somewhere in the long and confusing chain of management, there were people who actually used the tools and heard the PM's spiels in the SMR / Lotus databases, thought things thru and lagoed major vaat! The GM in my new office has very little exp. with so-called R&D setups but will he admit it? Naaah! So now our entire reporting has changed to firangs - which is a VERY good thing! You learn so much from them - with the Indian blighters - they would put put up so many road-blocks JLT! Some of the products company managers need to learn THINGS from service company managers. REALLY!!! Them US managers are a SUPPORTING function the Indian chappies are a CONTROLLING function.

In NIIT you could talk about things that could go wrong - in fact it was promoted - it is called rick analysis. In Ajeeb-O-Gareeb, the manager is spewing out rubbish, I have this what-crap-are-you-talking-shut-up-NOW look and I proceed to tell Mr.Fragile-Ego-ZERO-competence-vindictive-as-hell-GM's-chamcha that I think he is talking CRAP and carry on with my reasons ... I am so glad I report to a HUMAN now and not that extreme example of semi-people!! Looks like one, talks like one, but is he REALLY one?!

People skills = 0/10, management skills = -3/10, give him the BEST project and he will have no trouble srewing it up!!! But babes, he is BOSS-PROOF!!!

My hubby is a manager in a voice-based BPO process and he always says "Managers don't work, they MANAGE." The way the ITES industry managers face flack is very different from the IT managers. Or maybe it's the wife vs subordinate thing happening in me!

Bottomline - use the best people, put them in a fire situation, they will salvage the projects, the management stuff will suffer! You can't take a cadaver and make it into a pretty ZOMBIE!!!
What Ash and I REALLLY get mad about is, we did more than anyone else could in those situations, we never were acknowledged or praised, we faced flack for faltu stuff! Our peers were being FIRED for strange reasons, two were given excellence awards - and the very next year went to the docks!

The ONLY person in our gang who got credit was reporting into another manager. Love the person and we can't ever begrudge her any of that. There were the other FAKES that we wouldn't even clap for in the FilmFare awards!!! So fake that I doubt if they are even biodegradeable!

It always reminds me of the Hindi movie scene - Man rushes in with patient who is bleeding and about to die if not given medical attention soon, the doc says "dekhiye ye police case hai" (This is a police case!) or "arre inka operation karna padega- pehle jaake 2 lakh Rs jama karwaiye" (the chappie will need an operation so please deposit 2 Ls")

All of you know what happens next - the doc is bashed up! I was always so tempted to do a Sunny Deol when after all is said and done - FUFie would preach CRAP!

Forget Solar Plexus and Ash's fancy haiiiiiyyyyyaaaahhhh kicks - I would shot - stab -punch -yell! Waise Ash did a complete thing on the last HP-PM we worked with! Hehhehehehehe!

I was still at home and I got at least 6 calls from the D 190 basement ki Ash has FINALLY FLIPPED it! When I reached office I see her in a don't-even-think-about-asking-me-what-happened-look! Weeellllll I do and I get her abridged version of things! Ufffff.............

The "boss-ye-to..." a.k.a the cooking-paranthas-in-kitchen-to-BTMZ-transformation babe! I kid thee not - she and another overgrown-Farex-baby shed them KILOS with such speed that VLCC should have signed them up as BRAND AMBASSADORS! Who knows shayad (maybe) that's where the magic happened?! But we are not interested in that part ..... They were going thru their share of personal hell - felt sorry for them - but it didn't justify what they did rather who they should have and never did!!! NIIT was a sweetheart with people in trouble - they gave them US transfers - a lot of space - but at what cost?! And ALL people?!

The other parts of Ash's post elicit LONGER responses that will be coming your soon soon soon!!!!

The chess-playing genius who wanted to break the CDROM tyranny! Hello what part of
READ*ONLY*MEMORY don't you understand??

He who would have rolling crushes on the females one after another ....

He who would appear on DD and PLAGUE all of us to watch DD-187 or some such obscure channel!

He who would S*I*G*H so loud in the office that a snoring DRAGON would die of an inferiority complex.

He who when asked "can u see that server on the network" would promptly stand up - cause a little quake by his fidgeting, nearly pour 6 1/2 cups of stale coffee on the keyboard, and lean, inch on his toes, and say "haaaaaannn bilkul wahi na jiske side mein orange wali files hain" (x-lation- yeah I can see it - the one that has orange files next to it!)

We all WENT MAD laughing only our PM kept a straight face - Mr.General Knowledge had some TERRABYTES of patience!!!!!

Uffff..... I used to go to work with him / return with him and I have spend such a lot of quality time with the character!!! I feel sorry for him too but comic relief ROCKS!

In the end - donno why NIIT went thru what it did - its bubble burst or maybe it didn't. I really thought I would retire from there. All white-haired and wobbly. But ..... Que Sera Sera ....

Same number of years in NIIT and this really-cushy-well-paying-easy-as-heck job but I still say "HAMARE NIIT mein ... " something about that place was (is) pure magic! And no it wasn't my first job!

I was a "poached person" from Aptech :-D

No place like that ... I am so sure of it .... we can go back but it's not the same - the people are different heck I AM A DIFFERENT ME now!!

I refuse to be doled out stationary and orange notebooks by Mr.Entertainment!!! I am used to working in this fancy-shmancy setup now. Thats nostalgia and this is my real world!

Bye for now,

R

On why I want to kick ass

I guess for me it’s most instinctive. Often I have to bite the deep-seated urge to kick somebody where it hurts most. Or just simply kick ass. My mom says it’s not my fault. She claims I have been kicking since a very early age – almost since I was an embryo. She was quite sure she was giving birth to a Pele but it turned out to be me. So I grew up kicking about a lot. It was a bit later that I learned some real cool techniques to kick creatively. Happened when in school I signed-up for some martial art classes which is when they taught me how to kick with technique and precision. Stand with your right side towards the victim, raise your right knee with your leg still folded, unfold your leg with your heel flying towards the victim’s face, aim at the victim’s nose and hit with all your might. This is the side kick. There were others. There was a front kick, a round kick, a straight kick, a reverse kick, and a flying kick. There was the solar-plexus kick and the face kick though most of the time we could only raise our foot high enough to kick below the belt. Some struggled to learn it right while others figured that the blood and sweat wasn’t worth the worth one got from a fair plexus or face kick. These hit below types are the types one gets to meet every other day more so in this wonderful corporate swamp. But to make a point - there are many ways to kick the unsuspecting and sometimes the well deserving.

Although I still itch to kick some real ass*****s in the face everyday, I don’t usually do it the way my coach taught me. After more than 3 decades since my first kick I believe my itch to kick is a bit more controlled. As in, I don’t give break into a Haaaiiiyaaa each time I encounter stupidity. And stupidity abounds. Take for example my old TL who sobbed with real tears just because just once during the entire project the team rebelled and refused to stay back late to ftp the final file leaving him forlorn, helpless, and weepy on his boss’s boss’s shoulder. Then there was this asinine auditor who wanted me to produce Minutes of the Kick-off Meeting of a project I didn’t kick-off. She went blue in the face yelling how I MUST produce Minutes of the Kick-off Meeting even if I hadn’t been there to kick it off and the people who had kicked off the project had either been kicked out of it or had quit NIIT after good sense kicked-in. They simply refused to provide minutes of how and when they kicked this project down the drain. While I really didn’t care about the kicked out team, I sure wanted to kick some real ass**** that day. But did I break into a Haaaiiiyaaa? Nah! Like a true-blue NIITian I kicked the ISO9001 processes to hell instead and wrote a fictitious Minutes of the Kick-off Meeting for a project I didn’t kick-off. I did the obvious thing of writing a one-pager full of bilge – fictitious strategies, fictitious estimates, fictitious attendees, fictitious date and time though it was aptly titled Minutes of the Kicked-off Meeting. Minor spelling oversight. But needless to say, it sure kicked one NC (Non Conformance) to hell and left one obtuse auditor feeling very pleased about ISO9001 procedures.

Add to this ever growing army of the daft was another pet manager whose standard all-purpose solution to all problems and all situations and all circumstances was a shrug followed by ‘Boss yeh to karna hee padhega’. The proverbial managerial I-don’t-care-how-you-do-it-just-go-do-it-and-see-you-at-the-annual-PPDP-time-where-I-shall-tell-you-how-you-should-have-done-it-and-why-you-deserve-to-be-screwed-up type. The incredible deaf ear and blinkered eye and sore brain that cannot think beyond the I ME MYSELF and kick the team to hell – they’ll survive the poor souls have no choice. There were also the sympathetic category of managers who would say nice things, sympathize, express worry about your workload then assign you two new projects with a I’m-so-sorry-but-you’re-the-only-one-I-can-trust rhetoric, and then offer you shelter in case of midnight emergencies should your parents throw you out of the house because you stayed in office to fight a meaningless mindless deadline drafted by one of these deaf ear and blinkered eye and sore brain creatures with the ‘Sorry Boss. Par yeh to karna hee padhegaa’ all-purpose solution.

Then there were these priceless boss favorites who confused themselves when they tried to work and save files on different machines. Poor souls who simply could not fathom the complex technological nature of networks, couldn’t understand whether the files that they saved on their system and opened on someone else’s system had been opened over the network or not. They asked innocent questions, such as “But if I work on Vikram’s machine will the files be saved on my machine?” “But the files are saved on my machine, how do I view them from Vikram’s machine?” “The files are on my machine but I was working on Vikram’s machine so when I save are the files on my machine?” “If I save files on Vikram’s machine, ya the files are on my machine, but I’m working on Vikram’s machine…” <> “… so do I need to redo the changes from Vikram’s machine to my machine?” Duh! When it came to technology, this guy sure didn’t have a leg to stand on.

But there was more. This same brilliant person one day very graciously offers to stay all night offering to make last minute fixes for a course. He was handed over a CD and told that the latest course files are on the CD and he should take the files from there and then make the changes and ensure he finishes it all as the course needs to be sent the following day. Simple enough. So he takes the CD, opens the latest files (from the CD), diligently makes each and every change, after every change he very dutifully saves the files. While saving, he also very meticulously dismisses all the innocuous little messages on the blue screen telling him innocuous meaningless details which he dismisses in a know-it-all-done-it-all-nothing-can-go-wrong-stupid-message style. So each time he saves, he gets this silly message, and each silly message is dismissed with the same patience and perseverance all through the long night. The following morning he proudly presents the night’s labor in the form of a CD to a surprised and temporarily delighted TL. TL inserts CD and opens files, finds them just as they were the previous night, untouched and clean with not the slightest hint of any change. When questioned our brilliant protagonist proudly proclaims he made all changes – each and every one of them. “But then where are the changes? Where did you save them?” asks a very confused and frustrated TL. “On the CD!” comes a matter-of-fact answer. “On the CD???? What CD???” “The CD that had the final files” says Mr. Brilliant. “On the CD??? Wait let me get this straight. You took the CD, opened the files and made the changes right?” “Right.” “And then you saved the changes, right?” “Right.” “So the changes are on the PC or the CD??? “CD” “So you made the changes and saved them to this CD??” TL waving the CD in Mr. Brilliant’s face. “Yes Yes I have made all the changes and then I saved all the files… I got this message… but I just clicked ok. The changes are all done!” “Did the message say something like – you cannot save changes to a CDROM…..”

Well well well - those were good old NIIT days which we still reminisce about. We still share our priceless experiences and laugh at what once was no laughing matter. But I figure that such people are rather ubiquitous. For I now have who I love to call a Six-Sigma-certified-bullshit-factory in my team. Her claim rather one of her claims to fame is that she believes from the depths of her being that she is the focal referral point when it comes to Framemaker tagging. A focal referral point who once italicized with the Right-click-Font-Italics instead of the using the predefined templatized Character tags. A focal referral point who extracts HTMLs to check her hypertext markers! A focal referral point who has no clue as to how to update templates and has actually spent past 2 years using old dated obsolete templates in her books – she still does. HA! A focal point she is undoubtedly. Maybe she may not have made it to being a focal point for Framemaker but when it comes to stupidity, there’s not a shred of doubt. The undoubted focal point of stupidity. It revolves around her like engrossed bees around a pot of golden molten honey. As you can see I have yet to distance my self from these current occurrences and view it with the judicious amount of humor such people require as I have come to view some of the people I’ve had the chance of working with in good old NIIT. I’m sure Rags and Happy have a lot more to say on this – they’ve had their fair share of bright-as-midnight kind of people to work with and must have often bitten the urge to just kick some wretched soul to the Great Wall of China. I personally prefer the Siberian desert for them.

NIIT - When Cupid Strikes!

Heads up - You know Blogs are context-specific and my blog's name says it all - but this post is even more so. But please read on, I wrote it na?!

I was just thinking just how many people owe their shaadis to NIIT and the killer time we had to keep there. It was so cool! Parents were used to your coming late, half the chummery (is that how it is spelled?) junta were bindaas folks. People would KILL for a chance to train at SEED the taandoori night (yummmmmmmmyyyyy) wasn't the only attraction. I am still in the Safdarjung Enclave wala SEED days. I liked the new one at Sainik Farms but THE real SEED was the REAL DEAL. The late walks and the mandatory visits to the ice-cream walas are stories that a lot of lil ones will hear from their parents (and wonder these old stooges did ROMANCE??? Yes they did!).

My first visit to the place was NIP (National Induction Program - explaining for the benefit of my nonNIITian blog pals who are brave enough to wade thru my posts :~D) there I made a lot of friends a lot of whom were GNIITians who were joining NIIT as full-time employees after the mandatory one year ragda (torture + ragging) of PPship (internship)!

So in addition to the lovely stationary, trademark black bag, info dumps, visit by the big-wigs (who can forget "Mr.Damn Good Looking" in a magenta (I kid thee not) shirt, multi-colored tie, salt-pepper hair .... swooooon), I got the inside deal. One day we had to stay late and I was coerced to stay the night at SEED and share the room with a REALLY in love girl. She had a HOT DATE with the "special one". This is all the pre-cellphone era; so imagine all the coordinating effort and the long queues at the phone :-)

I wanted to meet D who I hadn't seen for days cause he had already moved to GGN and I was still at GZB with mum!! So we had our version of meeting under the harsh fluorescent lights of the AIIMS bus stop. He dropped me back to SEED at 1 am and the guard gave me a look "Arre ab to shaadi shuda log bhi ye sab kar rahen hain!" Pretty embarrassing but super-fun!

There in SEED I met an interesting lady (Ash wipe that smirk off!!!!) who became my friend and I am struggling to sneak out of that one friendshipp since hmmm.... lets see....2002 :-) I have given enough hints but .... A*S*H SHUT UP!!!! Ash calls her Whiney I call her self-absorbed shallow creature - same person different reasons to detest!

Back to rishte hi rishte ... there were loads of them, some blessed by the God above and society: that SEED girl was married to another C125 character, Pappu and his wifey were the original Stride couple, followed by another Stride pair. The MS team had the Bong and Delhite pair! Sun team had it's own clandestine couple (they tried the classic "we are just good friends" routine but hah! ...ishk te mushk chupaye nahin chupte - translation - you can't hide love and the smell of musk!), Happy will tell you about his amar prem kahani (immortal love story!) And then there were the cross-team affairs. There were too many of those to remember or count! My favorite was Pooh and GN.

Can you guys tell - I have to translate a lot for some people who are bad at Hinglish but it's fine. I will do this to ensure avid readership :-)

My MOST favorite juicy hookup was "Mr. Frog eyes who needed to join AA" (who thought he was God's gift to womankind and he always reminded me of "Your perfume is nice but must you marinate in it?!!!") and Ms.Dreams!

That is another series of post and maybe Happy will oblige us and tell us about it ALL. Cause hey NETg ka eshtory tha....

Another one was Kash and the II floor trainer. He much older, married before, sarcy as HELL, and she an innocent sa pretty sardarni. Maybe this was the real Mills and Boon saga. She 24 and inncocent he 35 and jaded! We spent a lot of lunch hours talking about this one ;-)

Then there were the unofficially-official ones - starting at STRIDE. Peace-lover and his stinky poo babe ;-) She so had that place eating outta the palm of her hand!!! And most of us covering our noses to avoid barfing!

When STRIDE was given the VISTA Dev project we got a bunch of developers from Products, who used to laugh out loud, smile, chat, listen to songs, ... my jaw was on the floor considering Pappu and Kash had a FLOW TIME (disgusting name!!! ) Where we couldn't talk - just imagine my plight!!! We could ONLY use Lotus Notes to communicate!!!!

All these guys had serious girlfriends and the trend was the girls were a good 3-5 years older! "Mr. Teddy Bear in kurta with Ravan's laughter" + petite sardaarni, Tall-fair-cute Sandy + Ms.TL from products (I still remember her talons!). Most of these fizzled out but some made it to the altar and beyond. The southie-from-UAE and trainer; KB and much younger-baby-faced-BF.

I was the buddy who used to go and passive smoke with the guys and I got a lot of HINTS from some but a mangalsutra and an adoring hubby can be such a blessing :-)

The time I spent at KKJ was the MOST fun :-) That rooftop cafeteria has so many interesting tales to tell!!!

I played a match-maker for the Mani Mani case!! Them two owe me BIG-TIME!!! But what could I do - it was so OBVIOUS they were in love and perfect for each other and both were acting out some serious adolescent fantasies by trying to make the other one jealous! They had the same surname before marriage! If they had sent ads in papers, they would found each other!
Ash was quite an unsuspecting victim in this one :-) The Eiffel Tower keychain she got played a great role! She will kill me if I tell anymore :-)

In Okhla - the guards and the canteen walas were the first set of people to know that something was afoot and the management LADIES would ALWAYS know :-) Always made me wonder how could they? Spies all around! Then the casual flirting types who names you would know if you were there and I am NOT gonna name names!!! And no I don't mean the lech manager of D 185, or the RnD Head with his gaggle of geese!!!

What a wonderful place NIIT was - full of romance!! But I hear thanks to the switch in ratio things have changed!! Sad no office romances are fun at that age / stage / place. In Ajeeb-O-Gareeb also we have some things afoot - people here know who ALL I mean. But where ever you have people who spend so much time together sparks will fly and some catch fire :@) Or maybe its a generation thing. The new kids are all in call centers and thats where sparks fly and I hear from my sis, sis-in-law, and hubby (all in call centers!) that a lot of other stuff flies about :-P

On this lovey-dovey note I sign off!

More later - ciao!

Rags

English: Writing, Editing, and Technical Writing!

"I can talk English, I can walk English, and I can laugh English because English is a very phunny language. Bhairo becomes Byron because their minds are very narrow."


Amitabh Bachchan in Namak Halaal

Yeah! English is a very FUNNY language! For most of us Indians it is a second, or maybe third, or in really interesting cases fourth, fifth .... language! 26 alphabets out of which 5 are vowels and all of these rules are enough to drive you up the wall. "i" before "e" ... and then all those rule-breakers, homonyms, .... and to this add the editing for technical writing rules!!! Oh jeezzz?! What the heck is going on?!

In my team we are about 9 writers (the about is cause at times the writers don't write), one editor marked EMSs to EMSes another marked EMSes back to EMS and the writer was ready to freak!!! So there is this argument "What is the rule for making a plural of an abbreviation?" Who really cares? OSes or OSs? Potatoes Potaatoes -- let's call the whole thing off!!!

What an interesting life we lead? Writers (and I too am guilty of this one at times) sneak stuff in without checking and sit back, wait, and watch "Does the editor catch this?!" Now that I am an editor, I have to support my edits with reasons and rules. (Imagine ME marking things with "see CMS #6.16?!) How the mighty have fallen!!!

Uff!! I tell you languages are meant to let people communicate and the rules esp. The TW editing rules FORCE you to do such strange things!!! Not that other languages don't have trouble - the use of gender for inanimate things baffles non-Hindi folks no end. The bong-side of my family always jokes - Inspector AATA hai, constable AATA hai, lekin police AAATTTII hai!!! I thought about it a LOT and finally gave them a clue anything with an "eee" Ki matra is streeling! Nah! This rule is bogus - they proved it - SIRISH AATA hai, Madhu aati hai,....

Back to English now: all the rules that they have, Tech Writing editors bite, chew up, and then throw out! The rules that I learnt said that anything that ends with "x", "s", or "chi" gets "ex" to make it plural. You know bus-> buses, dress -> dresses, but SOS is SOSs (or SOSes or SOS's)!!! Laaaah!!!

I feel the rules or in cases such as our's the lack of them rules in technical writing add that mysterious dash of the unknown.

The amount of time TWs and editors spend on line width, character spacing, use of contractions, ... is not even funny! I mean how many people except nit-pickers pay attention to such things? But who am I to object? If it wasn't for such rules God alone knows what we would do?!

I wonder what makes some people so bad at writing and some so good? Does it have something to do with the type of fiction you read, your love for words, your need to fluff up your sentences to prove your one-up-(wo)man-ship?!

I am quite fascinated by linguistics, the way people read out guides (or don't RTFM?!), just curious... do they even care???? We focus on the viens on the leaves and the poor tree is lost!!!

Now I have a problem remembering mundane things like spellings and English rules - does that make me a bad writer? I don't think so . . .

Do we TWs make a big fuss about things that don't really matter and completely miss the point? See the leaves and lose the forest maybe?!

Write Justified?

Left Brain vs. Right Brain and the Whole Enchilada . . .

I’m back I’m back I’m back!!!!! (You wondering where I ever went?)

Okay first things first – in this post there is a lot of stuff I picked up from the dub- dub- dub (WWW as MS folks call it); so I need to give credit where it’s due. Consider it given and let's cut to the chase.

I am assuming that you know about the big brouhaha about how women are right-brain (or was it left?)-brained (hah! as if you can generalize?!), they are good with communication right from the age of two (and maybe in my case even earlier :-D according to mum, I spoke before I would walk – no surprise there I would think!). Women can’t read maps and men can’t shop all that faltu bakwaas… I know men who are more feminine then females (and I am not referring to Sylvie!) and women who are more manly then most men (No! Not Falguni Pathak!!!). Look around you and you will see what I mean.

I gather from Googlu (my current nick-name for the BESTEST thing that ever happened to search engines!):

LEFT BRAIN FUNCTIONS:

• uses logic
• detail oriented
• facts rule
• words and language
• present and past
• math and science
• can comprehend
• knowing
• acknowledges
• order/pattern perception
• knows object name
• reality based
• forms strategies
• practical
• safe
  

RIGHT BRAIN FUNCTIONS

• uses feeling
• "big picture" oriented
• imagination rules
• symbols and images
• present and future
• philosophy & religion
• can "get it" (i.e. meaning)
• believing
• appreciates
• spatial perception
• knows object function
• fantasy based
• presents possibilities
• impetuous
• risk taking
  

So this brings us to the theme of this post – why are so many technical writers women? Or should I change that to why do so many women become technical writers? We’ll also talk about the “bechaari nari in the TW mode.…” Is it something to do with which side of the brain works MORE?!!

When I started my career in STRIDE, there were only a handful of us womenfolk, although it was SOME handful it was one nonetheless. We had guys around us. Then things started to change – we went to CRCS in IIT Delhi and oh! there we were in such a minority! The R&D guys were such oglers and the IRIS aunties were a lot headed for the golden years. (Any NIITian of that era would recall the henna-haired typical 50-going on 25 punju aunty librarian!!!)

Then KK is about to start him own company (vidyatech) and people are asked to join him or ask for placement within the big bad world of LTB (or was it LSB in circa 1999? NIIT and it’s constant need to rename!) I was sold US projects because of hazaar reasons and I lapped em all up and went to Sun to (what else?) salvage FUF’s project. That’s when KSB was born (rather renamed) and we were hiring all Toms, Thelmas, Trivenis, Taras, and Tinkus!!! Please to be noting: the call center boom is still a twinkle in GE’s eye and the Silicon Valley is BOOOOOOOMMMMMMIIIINNNGGG! (I am starting to sound like a REAL OLD TIMER (ROT?).)

So we train them, boot camp them, Bloom Tax them, Info Map them, … basically frighten the living daylights out of them. Even till here we have a good male:female ratio. The construction and graphics team guys offset the low number of writers.

There are definitely more female PMs then guys… the Factory Head and above levels are still all-male bastions. (Interesting here happens a switch female bosses start displaying obvious preference for guys! Has to happen. How else can I explain Sameer screwing up and PRD quitting?!)

Now I finally get to the Product world’s TW domain where the gals are like eye-candy / damsels in distress / alpha females (meaning they are more male then real males)! You think it’s cause the development team has more guys and the HR is trying to balance the great gender divide?

At work there are these females who really should quit and leave their places for more deserving candidates! One claims chronic maukataerian illnesses (maybe it’s true but who cares?) and the other is such a Starlet! The managers here actually hired women who were data-entry ops! Maybe I should leave and let them continue having all this fun!!! Please find me a fun job!

Now the moment you have so many females in the same place you have the classic "familiarity breeds contempt” and there are saas-bahu sagas and there is bitching and chronic ill-will towards one another.

Dolly has an age complex (she thinks she is too old so has to look and behave YOUNG! As in Dolly Parton young!!!), Polly has an age complex (she thinks she looks too young so has to look and behave MATURE! Takes a lot of crap from people just cause she thinks she has to), Molly has a I-am-not-techy-enuff complex, and I am beyond complexes! There has to be a new term for people like me, actually there is: AQUARIAN!!!!

One development manager actually has taken to calling us the “Kitty Party” not flattering AT ALL but in a very twisted way TRUE too!!! BTW none of the developers would dare to say this to our face(s?)!!!

So all the females are trying to out-do each other, not working on enhancing themselves but trying to pull down the one ahead. Disgusting u think? But that’s how we females are!!!! I won’t pretend to be the martyr (so what if that’s my birthday?) but this sucks big time and I wish I could knock some sense into this. So my solution would be to get some more guys into this profession, then the gals will be focused on them (cause it’s obvious the work isn’t keeping them busy enough!!!) and all will be well in R-World :~D !!!

Am I left brained or right brained or no brained?!!! And before you answer this, consider yourself?!

So, if NIIT was cat’s whiskers, why are there so many exNIITians?

Or why Rags became an escapist?!

PETER PRINCIPLE and NIIT of Yore

You haven’t heard of the Peter Principle have ya? You will be surprised when you learn more, you actually know this one, and to top it all, you are SUFFERING the consequences of this PP! (Errr maybe YOU are also the cause for someone being miserable beyond belief?! Think about it dude /dudette!)

I won’t tell you too much on this Peter thingie cause you know of the Googly-woogly thing called Google! Buuuttttt, we can’t have you wandering all over the WWW can we? So here it is:

In a hierarchically structured administration, people tend to be promoted up to their "level of incompetence".

An example: you have Ms.Champa Chameli who was a very good writer, next she is made a lead writer, SFSG (so far so good!) she continues doing a great job, she is made a Team Leader, parties all around! And then a new project comes along and the management decides that this is the precise moment when Champa needs to be praised to the skies not just in words but in kind with action and what better way then to make her a PROJECT MANAGER(PM)!!! And then there are some ladies who walked into NIIT wearing saries, looking very impressive, complete wih MBA/MCA degrees and go on to directly becoming managers! That sounds very reverse-sexist! But I don't belive that, idiots, fools, intelligence is gender, age, caste, color ... insensitive.)

BTW there are many routes to becoming a PM in NIIT (in fact a promotion in any damn place). It all depends on your Kaarma, your PR skills, your boss's PR skills, the boss's competence level, your rapport with ze boss, your visibility, lack of visibility, your manners, your clothes … you get the drift.

Please to be noting that I haven’t mentioned anything yet about your competence, abilities, skills …. Ah! You think she is coming to me. Nopes! I ain’t gonna do no such thing sweets :-)

Whhhhhhyyyyy you bawl?! Cause it doesn’t really matter u sweet naïve kiddie! The moment a person reaches a place in the corporate hierarchy where they are really screwing things up, they STAY THERE!!!! And screw up some more . . . I saw two of my very good and competent friends taking the fall for no fault of theirs!!!

In NIIT we had a real eclectic mix of weird “persona non grata”s. Now that was a place where you LIVED!!!! People fought, had affairs, got married (I mean not right there but found life-partners), got divorced, ….

People join a company and leave a manager. In my case (and maybe in yours too …) I left an entire (mis)managed style!!!

I loved that place but it was killing me:

• My personal life was non-existent
• I would wake up and reach Okhla
• Live on the sick cafeteria fare of alu-toast, thaali, maggi . . .
• Battle PTD (Project Tracking Database), SMRs (Senior Management Reviews), confused managers who tried to bluff their way thru
• Unrealistic matrix pressures
• Good people being labeled C players
• Brown-nosers being called A+
• Your PM not doing enuff PR, …, irony= Your boss is not really fond of you or even has an iota of your welfare in his/her heart but HAS to hold on to you (they have their agenda after all); won't let you go to another manager - who promotes her people to the skies!
• Being sent to the US as a consolation prize

I was called a commando, fire-fighter, type A, adrenalin-junky,… but with no real appreciation and no light at the end of the tunnel, constant fights at home, an unkempt home, going in a kamikaze cab back to GGN at 2 am in the morning, collapsing after each deadline, filling out NCS (Non-Conformance Sheets), all while tolerating so-called ISO audits by people who weren’t doing real project work but all this stuff (I know that’s important and esp. in an SEI CMM level 5 company but at what cost?), tracking things to closure (I hated this phrase!) . . . I wanted out.

FUFs had screwed up a project BIG-TIME that was part of her core-competency! So after salvaging Sun, Rags was packed off to HP to do one module! What a fib that was! The client decides that I was the stuff her dreams for the project (and my nightmares) were made of (I lost this sentence structure! And btw now it’s okay to end a sentence with “of”)!!!

From one module, I get 2 courses, meanwhile 2 people collapse, and Ash, Bang, and I shoulder the entire mismanaged screwed-up project! I lost my most favorite teamie to mind-games people played with her. My own friends did that and to date it I am mad about this. Bad resource allocation – imagine handing an HP (techy as heck) project to a Social Butterfly?! I am flown off to Singapore to fix / kick-off round II of project HP!!!!

This was a project where I worked with Happy for the first time, of whom until then I had a very unmentionable opinion ;-) We all nearly died, Ash's dad nearly threw her out of the house, Bang kept falling ill, I nearly died twice driving back home with a drunk/sleepy cabbie, ... Happy used to stay with us (a huge rarity! why would a PM do a night-out?!!! and here there were people like me - I would always have to stay back - regardless of my designation / classification ...), we did so many night-outs that we burned-out! FUFs walked out of the project or maybe she was shown the door? Happy takes over the HP junkyard!!!

Ash was a friend for quite sometime but we worked together for the first time, Bang actually started writing in HP, and explained XML tags to us - Ash and I went mad laughing on his head-para-para!!!

So here you have a single-sourcing, an XML-based project, where you are a co-vendor with Mastek for HP, a constantly changing team, I rejoined work after some serious medical stuff, DGs was in the US, the padosi team was winning "BEST TEAM AWARDS", I was being sermoned to that "You can change the world, you are a born (ring) leader, ....spiel, spiel, spiel ... !!!

Happy proved what a fantastic manager he was, we three (and Sri too actually) slogged and delivered the goods, we saw XML in action and got multiple outputs from the same XML!!! AAG and Loo were happy. All was fine in the world ... or so we thought.

Then we all quit ... Suchu turns to social service, Sri went to one of the Noida crappy joints, Happy goes to Kash (still wonder why?!), Bang goes to Kol, Ash goes to Cadz, I join Ajeeb-O-Gareeb.

Now the management of NIIT has decided to have a collective shift in email address and has gone to GE!!!!

I leave this post for my Sun and HP teamies to share their tales of woe and why they quit the place and love it and hate it forever.


Every statistic was green, the company follows Six Sigma, still something was rotting ...

The Corporate Corridors and Confused Creation

Be warned - This is a long one even by my standards ;-)

In an information economy, the most valuable company assets drive themselves home every night. If they are not treated well, they do not return the next morning.

So said Peter Chang.

Page 3 HR

Let’s start with HR (Achaar?! No that’s quite a useful thing unlike the HR types)

I have always wondered what exactly an HR executive does. They all look hyper-busy, they have the swankiest stationary, wear really snazzy clothes, … what bothers me is the fact that they are like this 8x5x250 (the working part of 24x7x365 in case you are wondering what this is)!!!

In the Ajeeb-O-Gareeb company that’s currently paying me a pretend salary, we have this really Rekha-type HR Country head. (Pretty as heck, she has two grown-up kids and she is currently enjoying her second attempt at holy matrimony.)

Now her retinue has all these guys, blokes, babes, BTMZs (Bhaiyya/Behenji-turned-mods-zabarzasti!), 15 (I jest thee not!) contract employees, two major processes outsourced to Malaysia and one financial setup in India, a HUGE fan-following!

All that’s fine but WHAT DO THEY DO???? Is this a celestial suffering being meted out to me cause at one point of my life I was seriously planning to be an MBA in HR?!!! (By the way I still entertain this notion in my mindless ramblings.)

All that they do is come up with one BIZZARE policy after another! They favorite trip in life is the mutual admiration society they have. Ex did a new policy (clappity clappity clap!!!), Why did what we hired her to do (Muuuuaaaahhhh air-kisses all around), Zee came back from leave on time (Woooowwwiiieeeee) ….. They had two semi-respectable people who gave up on them and walked off to greener (browner whatever) pastures and one DAMN cool bloke who went to NIIT!!!!

Can you top that? There are things that when in NIIT I took for granted and never realized just how cool our HR and FSO was until I walked into this extremely twisted place!!!

They took 3 months to get my FBP (ask me what this is offline) right! They made our Per Diem fully taxable! They can’t ever get the Individual Contributor vs Manager thing right! Some of us PREFER not managing IDIOTS okay?! But now I seriously think if I am going to be LED by IDIOTS, I might as well lead a few myself ;-)

M-O-R-O-N-S!!!! They are oh so good with spiel – “Industry-leaders”, “market-trends”, yada, yada, yada, blah, blah, blah . . .

I actually am tempted to slap them all, lock them all in a room full of anacondas, arachnids, …. right through Zebras… and throw away the key! But I can’t do that to those poor animals.

In the hope of a better HR!!! Someday somewhere . . .

Then that gets me to another of my peeves – so called Technology Project (Program whatever) Managers being the bosses of Technical Writers.

PM who wonders what a Tech Writer does?!

Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand.

So said Archibald Putt.

In Ajeeb-O-Gareeb we have a dual reporting structure. So I report to a Technical Writing manager AND a Product manager. Now, this pops open a brand-new can of worms!!!

There is a very VERY fine line of what you can share with Boss A and let Boss B also on it! And if one is Indian and the other is American, oh baby! you are in such an unenviable situation!!!!

Both ask for the same thing but with different twists on them:

• A wants 8 hrs logged
• B says just give me what you really did so, if a day has 5 working hours, it’s okay.
• A says make a column for India-specific activities
• B says you are not to spend more then 10% of your time on that stuff
• A says one working day has 7 hours
• B says 6 hours
• A says working from home is a joke
• B says go ahead do it!
• A does your appraisal without understanding your work
• B understand your work but has limited say in the appraisal
• A focuses on company values (which are very nice as values go but kind of impossible to follow all the time), contribution to company, and how you are so blessed to be here
• B focuses on work and values (but of course! We can’t have someone not really giving a rat’s ass about the company values and actually saying so!!!) and growth as a professional

You get the drift. . . btw when all else fails they indulge in India vs US turf wars!!!

Now I am going to indulge in some psychobabble - These tech managers are usually guys from small-towns who were good (read class-toppers) in studies, they would know all multiplication tables, they rattoed all formulae, lived in an ivory tower where they somehow lost out on the other things in life. Playing carom (you think scrabble – you okay?!), watching Knight Rider, playing normal childhood games, … they must have been the really suppressed achcha bachchas who did their homework in time (including their holiday homework!) and were ideal children who were used as examples for the not-so-academically inclined cousins and neighborhood kids. (The sort I used to bite and beat up as a kid!!!)

So the achcha bachchas grow up and get into engineering college and one thing leads to another and they land these jobs in MNCs. Now here also they are working really hard and do their stuff and then growth and recognition happen and viola! Achcha-bachcha from small-town is a MANAGER!!!! I cringe each time I hear them talking to the US team people, they spew out whatever jazzy stuff they last learnt. BTW in our case, it’s Six (sick) Sigma!

Now what if the guys are from Bombay (I am a one-woman boycott team of the word Mumbai), Delhi (Soon to become Indraprastha?!), Bangalore …? They usually leave India and go to grad school in the US and become IBCD (Indian-born confused Desis) … watch SRK films in Naaz 8 and drive their BMWs in the Bay Area. Their fake wifes tell their kids "Honey, throw the kachra into the trash-can."

There are a very few who stay on (God alone knows where they are?! I didn’t study enough to work with them!) and of the .001% left, people like me get to work with them for such short spans of time!!!!

MBAs and business schools are screwing up people and policies! I am reconsidering an MBA to just find out what the heck do they tech / unteach there that ends up making such monsters!!!!

I think I should stop this post ….