93 Hours

In an entire floor capable of seating 150 odd employees, lights were burning above the only cubicle in which work was going on in a frantic pace. Scrambled hair, stubble that had begun to look like a beard, blood red eyes, the shirts tucked in shabbily, the face red with all the exhaustion - the above description befitting the 3 engineers sitting around 1 engineer who was gazing at the computer screen like a zombie, breaking their heads to resolve the issue. Any outsider, who would have seen any of them in their avatar, would have recommended their names for the role of “Saamri”or “Shakaal” in the next Ramsay movie.  These engineers would have fit to the role perfectly, even without the “necessary” make up. The barely visible wall clock on the opposite wall was showing 4:00 am and it was the fourth time in that week that those four engineers had seen that time on that clock, in that office :) 

The Project Leader, sitting at a distance, biting his nails, having given his fate in the hands of his four trusted soldiers, helplessly looking at his team, hoping to get the answer from at least someone in the team. His expectations, from giving a world class product within 4 months, had reduced to just ship the product if it worked fine. 

After 2 hours of discussion, the team arrived a seemingly possible solution, and implemented it in half an hour. At the stoke of 6:30 in the morning, the code was compiled and when the “RUN” button was pressed, the wide grin that was there on all the faces initially, turned to a smile and finally ended in a frown. The Project Leader was still grinning though :), unaware that the problem had manifested itself into something more complex. 

The first engineer exclaimed, “How the hell this thing became so slow!!”, the second one, “I give up guys!!, I can’t think even a minute more”,  the third one, “I just hope this thing works, and I swear by almighty, I would never enter such a project”, the Project Leader realizing that the fix dint work eventually, had to say something to up the ante, but was lost for words when the fourth one who was sitting in front of the comp said, “ha ha I knew this would happen!!” The three engineers and PL ready to butcher the fourth one, spanked him on his back. The full vocabulary always comes out in its full glory, only in the mother tongue. Here is the last line what they said. “Abey saale agar pata tha, toh pehle kyon nahi bataya?”, the fourth engineer who dint get the opportunity to break the rhythm of their verbal assault, finally found something to reply to this last line. He said, “agar pehle bataya hotha toh pehle hi maar khaana padtha tha na :)”. I know that was the most stupid answer that anyone could give, but that lightened the moment, and such humor tonic was most necessary at such pressure situations. The fourth engineer was ME, the happy Joe of the team. Not a cool dude, who solved all the problems in a jiffy, but definitely a lot calmer than the rest in the team and was able to deliver one-liners at the drop of a hat. Yes, I was working hard, or rather slogging, but I always had this comic timing, that I used to come up with something hilarious in the weirdest circumstances, that was very popular in the team as well. I still had that strange stupid attitude that things will work only when they are supposed to work

The above episode was during final integration of the software into the product, the project schedule crammed into 4 months duration. The result; the final one week within a span of 5 days from Monday morning 8 am to Friday evening 5 pm, the entire team including the Project Leader(the poor soul was the only married person in the team, and worse still, he had got married couple of months back) had managed to hit 93 hours!! 20 hours on the first three days of the week, and the 4^th stretch was a 33 hour marathon!! 

It all started on the Monday of that fateful week, when we started the software integration of the different modules. Initial glitches, to patch up, took some time, and hence was a cause of concern. Until that last week, the general time at which the team left office was around 11:45 pm. However, as everyone had expected this eventuality, we knew that we would sit late even beyond midnight. As the issues began to increase, we started realizing that more time needs to be put to resolve the mounting issues. Things weren’t that bad, and by 4 am on Tuesday morning, we could get the fully integrated code running, as a first cut version; albeit with lot of inconsistencies. 

The progress on Tuesday and Wednesday, each day consuming 20 hours of time, for resolving the inconsistencies in the software developed, was not at optimum speed. The reason being that, during the 72 hours on Mon, Tue and Wed, we had spent 60 hours working. Hence, everything starting from leaving office at 4 in the morning, taking a nap (or rather fooling the body to believe that it is getting rest), having breakfast, and coming back to office all had to be covered in a span of 4 hours on each day. It was shame to expect that our body and mind would be able to perform. However, we continued to toil hard.

Barring one inconsistency issue, we were almost ready to ship the product. As goes the saying that the final stretch is the most difficult, that issue had become a pain in the a** for the team. Experts within the company, and the experts from the silicon vendor were consulted, however the bug would not budge. It took careful analysis from the entire team of the project, and a marathon 33 hour nonstop slog to slay the bug.  The product was thoroughly tested for one last time and delivered to the dispatch department at 5pm on Friday. The product shipped to the customer, on the promised day!! Phew!!!

Even to this date, I can’t believe I put in so many hours of work in one week. Guys in the IT Services Industry (with due respects to others slogging in other industries) are known to slog for such crazy hours. It’s inhuman to expect people to perform at the same level of consistency for longer hours. The mind just blanks out and to think about the solution of even a simple problem, takes such a long time. It’s okay if one person has slogged for that long, he would always have someone or the other in the team who is alert and would be able to correct the mistake just in time, however, if the entire team is clocking close to 90 hours, then the mess is indescribable. The burning eyes, with each blink giving a feel that 100 pins are piercing into them, refuse to co-operate any further.  Add to that, the disrupted biological clock, cries to deaf ears. Was it worth the effort? For the company, yes, it was. The product was developed from scratch, right from the concept to prototype, in 4 months flat (Europeans would laugh their heart out, if they hear that the product was shipped in 4 months!!, they take 4 months to derive the specs of the product)!! It was a roaring success with not even a single failure in its pilot run. The overwhelmed customers, amazed at the speed of work, continued to pour in additional work in terms of projects. What about the fate of the team that did this entire miracle? The Project Leader of the project quit the company as soon as the project was complete. The team of 4 was dismantled and was allotted as resources to slog away at other projects. The reputation of the company to produce products real quick, which work and work really well, was intact. Those four engineers and Project Leader, who almost kissed the feet of the almighty during this execution of the project, were chided badly from their peers for having completed the project so successfully!! The chiding from the peers was quite natural, because it would always be perceived by the management that 4 months was lot of time, and hence the future projects could have still shorter schedules!! It would be expected that the teams perform miracles on a daily basis!

The above was the episode of my first project at the medical division in an Embedded IT Services firm. Although the Project Manager, assured us of taking care of the schedule in future projects, I guess that was all that he could do. In the retrospect, what is the fate of the people, who are made to work as if their life is depended on the success of the project? Some, who feel they are indebted to the company for having given them a livelihood, brush aside their personal pressing worries under the carpet, continue to ignore personal life, and work in the hope that their life would change after they complete that “one high priority project” and get the rewards, recognition for all that they sacrificed on personal grounds. If by chance, the project becomes a success, which is a miracle in itself, then these work horses are spared. But miracles do not happen on a daily basis, do they? God forbid if the project bombs, then a near death sentence would be issued to the entire team, and the PL would be crucified morally. Even in the case of the success of the project, the appreciation that is always received at the highest level of the hierarchy, gets diluted down the hierarchy, and the by the team it reaches the Project Leader and his team, the perceived significance of the project almost turns out to be a farce. The appreciative words, are carefully interwoven with words of caution, which always mean to say that the team dint do anything special after all, and it was expected of them to do what they did. 

I have moved on in life, left that company for good. I am not a policy maker, who can define rules. Neither have I had the power, nor the authority to ensure that the policies are in place that would help employees in these firms feel they are humans. Surely there must be a way out of this whirlpool.  I wish the day doesn’t come when our kids remember us through our Skype ID, and a smiley on the chat messenger is the only way we smile at our kids. Our kids deserve better parents!!

A[V]I