Pink-Slip

“Suchi…this is really a nice painting…I can never believe that you know painting also…” – Nita, my school friend who had visited me after 12 years, jumped up being exited while saying this.

“Humm, I am just a pencil sketcher…besides that I don’t know anything…just see some pictures and try to sketch” -I told.

“But you were not good in drawing at all during our school days…! When did you learn this…? Did you attend any training…tell me, I also want to put my daughter…?” Nita told.

“No training…don’t know how and when it came to me…if you practice, you can also do…just need a little patience…that’s it…Lunch is ready…lets have it….” -I said, as even I was not able to recall the exact moment when I had taken interest in drawing, as it was a very boring job for a Math addicted student.

After sending off Nita, I sat quietly and opened my diary…

29th May 2009…

A major customer from Germany had escalated hundreds of odd issues, which was quite normal till date for the vendor. It had happened many times before, but this time, it was not accepted. The Vice President conducted whole day workshop for “root-cause-analysis” and even formed a working committee to “Fix” all “Bugs” within two weeks.

It was a question in the face of each individual and so of mine that why this sudden change in him — did “Pink-Slip” to 15% staff last week revived one of our many fading corporate values, “ultimate customer satisfaction”? Result of the workshop was bothering me more than anything else. In short it meant that all leaves were cancelled; and everyone for no mistake would have to work at least twelve hours a day; and finally NO weekends. I started planning about my weekends, which I had to sacrifice.

Don’t know anything can happen at any time…also I don’t have any keen relationship with my VP. I was scared, smile was lost from my face, heart and mind was grabbed by some unwanted fear. As soon as I came out from the War Room, where we all developers were sitting and fixing the bugs, I started browsing job portals. But, 404 Error — file not found. “Damn it, these guys are so cheap — they blocked it”. I knew that “404” was coming from our own proxy. With a sad heart and lingering thoughts in my mind, I left office at 12 AM in a dark, cold and drizzling night of Dec 13, 2009. I left for the day and slept without having anything.

The next morning, I arrived in office around 8am to start my work.

My fellow colleague came to me and started talking about the current situation of the organisation. He enquired whether I had already uploaded my resume in the job portal or not and if not done yet, then he could help me to do that now itself as very few team members have come to the office by that time. I was surprised how he was able to use job portals from the office network. Then he clarified that even though he had heard Internet traffic was being monitored, still he used his hot skill and uploaded his resume and very next day, he had already received four calls from consultants. He got the confidence and felt superior than his fellow colleagues by thinking that why they were so afraid of “recession”… “take three months notice period salary, plus severance allowance, go for a month vacation that we never get on job, and get new job in few weeks. What is a big deal if you are laid-off?” But I kept quite and started concentrating on my work giving a reason that I could do it from my home, as I had to finish lots of work , assigned for the day.   

For him, it hardly mattered if job portals were blocked. He had list of many other sites to time pass. Next he tried Facebook, by using his hotskill and was successful in accessing his account. But, his profile showed 0 connection….how come this be possible…?” he asked me……Instantly I found the “root-cause” of the bug. It was simple case of buffer overflow. Yesterday he had accepted thousandth friend request. “Yesss….Programmer would have used array of only three char to display friend count. They never thought of someone as popular as me who can have friends more than 999. Wow. How come Facebook could not find “Array index out of range” in code review? I would post this bug on my blog and was sure to get at least million hit per day. I converted it in US$ by assuming at least 4% CTR for ad displayed on my blog. Why would I care for recession and this kind of job. I knew how to survive in recession.

Then he moved to start his work. He opened ticket-tracking system. First ticket read “ Improper display of label in the pie chart…”. He came near me and asked me “who was the developer who had coded that particular part of developing pie chart….” I remained quite and concentrated in my work, as I didn’t have any answer.

It was almost 10am and we had to attend the morning stand up to provide the status of the bug fix…my manager assigned me few more after I updated my status.

After coming back to his desk, my fellow colleague started accessing twitter. Still it was blocked.  He told himself…”What was going on? These rascals would have at least given notice. I would have purchased data-card. It is a clear case of employee exploitation. No exit — all job portals blocked and then put pressure to get double work done. Someone had to compensate for those 15%.” With this frustration, he started playing games in his mobile.

Again post lunch, we had to give the status update once more, in which I had finished all the bugs assigned to me.

Around 5pm, I got a call from HR manager to meet him in his office and after meeting him, I came to know that that if I gave in my resignation voluntarily it would help me find a job outside. It was a sudden slap at my cheek. Without making a single minute delay, I came to desk and dropped the resignation email, to my manager, keeping HR manager in loop. If the organisation didn’t need me, then why should I stay there even for a minute. While packing my stuffs at my desk, my colleague showed me his promotion letter. I congratulated him and left the office as earliest possible, without thinking anything.

My company was headquartered in New York and they have their offshore divison in India. After my promotion, I was being told by my manager to play a senior role and to build a team from scratch, so I worked day and night to do so. Everything was going great. I was expecting my second promotion, my manager called me last month and said that I should be taking care of the team as a lead, as he had seen the tremendous growth. I was so excited and confident after hearing his proposal, I worked even more aggressively towards my goals.

That is, until one fine day when my HR manager called me and said he was laying me off! The reason? The reason he stated sounded ridiculous -- at least to me. What he said was: "You have been an exceptional performer. Your ratings reflect that. But due to the uncertainity in the financial sector, you do not fit in any role as of now, so we have decided to..."

Life had become tough for me those days as I had lost the ability to trust. I did what I was asked to do, I was told by my manager that I would be promoted, but instead of that he fired me.

Initially I was shocked at the news and felt sad because work was going on well and, and on a personal level, I was learning a lot. After this development, it wasn't all gloom and doom, at least for me. Well, that was what I felt but sadly (or in fact I would say luckily at this point of time) I was proved terribly wrong.

I had worked in various domains, my performance was on the higher end of the scale and that's why I felt I would be indispensable at least in relative terms (ie there were better candidates for laying off). I always propose the feasibility of a problem, after designing it technically, so that it can be concluded whether it can be technically possible or not, instead of just bluffing like a marketing fellow, without going into the depth of the problem and because of this, I had few clashes with my VP before. This might be a reason why this unpredictable decision had been taken for me.

I felt so shame that I could not tell this to my parents…!!!

One day, my mother guessed of something was wrong from my voice and at that time I busted out over tears in front of her. She consolidated me by saying “You have lost only job…see people around you have lost everything in their life…still they have the hope to live…, you have the talent, you will get another job very soon…you don’t have any financial commitment, so just relax and sharp your skillset…you will get a better job”.

Sitting ideal at home was very painful for me, when I was thinking that I  was not doing anything…I was feeling like a junked iron. I was sad all the time and the sadness was so heavy that I could not get away from it. I was exhausted from trying to be stronger that I felt. I felt so disconnected from the World and felt like no one had noticed me and cared about me anymore. I was tired of feeling worthless, tired of feeling hopeless, but above all, I was tired of feeling tired.

Everyday, I was getting interview calls, but all were offering much less than my current package. I was rattled, lost my calm but was getting some new interview calls immediately. I was very unlucky though, I landed in the weirdest company India has. Though the CTC was higher, I got a pay cut of Rs 1.8 lakh. All credit goes to bonus and nicely designed pay packages. But I could do nothing just waiting for my time to hit back. I accepted the offer and committed to join on the immediate next day.

But, in the morning, when I was getting ready to start for new office, I got a call from the recruitment manager that my employment is discarded as I don’t meet the required skillset for the project for which I was being hired. “How come this be possible, even after getting qualified in the interview process…?” Whatever I had to accept it.

I could do work hard but these kinds of incidents made me broken. I stopped preparing for interviews, lost my patience, I became silent and started spending my time, just by doing some rough paintings.

Yes, painting of a girl who was not able express her feelings, a crying girl, who was dealing with her depression on her own way. To make myself engaged, I started drawing random images seeing from Google. Google was a huge source of information, to what I was using to code fix of my bugs, then I was using to draw some pictures, by doing what my mind was getting concentrated into that image, rather than roaming in an unexpected fear, which was running behind me at each and every moment. Small to medium, medium to big, pencil sketch, sketches for glass paintings, everything I started doing. My friends, who were staying with me in the Paying Guest accommodation, started liking my paintings. Then I realized “yes, I had grown up a new skill…about which I could never think before. So, time was ever changing, and no one knew what would come next. Something bad or might be something good come next…then bad time was going on for me…some good time would definitely come next…”.

By that time, I had lost my interest in preparing for interviews. Was attending interviews without any preparation.

The next week, I got an interview call from a very reputed and established organisation. Even though I was not interested, thinking that why this big organisation would hire me…? I attended the interview casually, surprisingly all the interviews got over on the same day and at last the HR manager mentioned to send my offer letter by next day morning to my email id and the pay package was 50% more than that of my previous organisation. I was surprised was this organisation not affected by recession…!!! 

Even though, this time of one and half months was very painful for me, but it made me a pencil sketcher, which I would never have become, if that situation would not have come in my life.