It was a lazy Saturday morning. I picked myself to get up
and go the office as usual. Working on Saturdays had become a part of my
routine over the past few months. Weaving through the Bangalore traffic, I
reached the office in good spirits. I hadn’t worked on the project the entire
week and now I had to cram for 8 hours and do something productive to cover for
the entire week. I was asked to work on a project that had been dumped a month
earlier for another project. The girl sitting next to me greeted me and I
reciprocated. And as was the norm, she flooded me with doubts soon after. This
was part of my work – to train and help her become a developer. I quite enjoyed
the role, but I knew I hadn’t succeeded at the rate which I would have liked. She
was still struggled to code, but had learnt the configuration part of the work
well. My
employer would generally come around for an hour or 2 on Saturdays and it was
usually around noon. So, I was quite surprised when she came in early this
Saturday.
Flash forward 2 hours – the girl sitting next to me couldn’t
control her emotions and started crying. There was no one around but me. I am
so bad with girls generally and this one was also crying!!! Groping for words,
I shifted my gaze on the computer right in front of me and started consoling (mumbling
words). What had happened in those 2 hours exactly? Well, I was laughing those
2 hours, but it did strike me later in the day.
We were
fired/ let go off/laid off in those 2 hoursJ.
The girl had gone in 1st into the adjacent room on the employer’s
call. The employer- a nice, sweet lady, had given the girl her 1st
break. The girl had struggled for 2 years to get into the IT industry; she had joined
this firm sometime last August and was the only employee (Me an employee?? –
Later). My employer was not from an IT background, so both were finding it
difficult to get work done, both trying to learn at the same time. Now, she had been let go.
I had
no clue at the time why the girl was called in. She came out of the room after
being in the room for around 45 minutes. I didn’t notice any expression on her
face at the time. I was busy working!! I was called in, and my employer was
sitting on her newly furnished couch, smiling at me. I went in with no clue
whatsoever. She started the conversation lightly, asking about the start-up
where I had given an interview in the past week. My potential employers had
asked me for a reference from her and she had happily obligedJ. We were discussing
about that and she asked me the reason why I was keen on leaving my current job.
Let’s be honest – it’s a well-paying job, nice perks and benefits. But I still
badly wanted to leave, because I was STAGNATING
badly.
Time to clear the air – The employer
I was talking to, was my part-time job employer. I was stagnating at my well-paying
job last year too; I thought I needed the experience and started to look for
part-time opportunities and was fortunate to have found one in September last
year. I worked my ass off after coming back home, working 3-4 hours every night
and on Saturdays to complete my part-time job commitments. This went on till
January this year. Then, slowly, over time, I didn’t have much work here too
and worked only on Saturdays from their office.
Coming back to my conversation with
the employer – I said I was stagnating and that was the reason for my decision
to look for a job. She hung on to the word “stagnation”. She picked it up from
there, and said the same thing was happening here. The projects I did for them
here weren’t seeing the end of the day because the directors had other
commitments. They were basically businessmen who entered the software domain just
to explore if they could mint money here. One excuse kept following the other –
the tenders from government will be evaluated only in May, financial year-end
problems, registration with a govt. firm is still pending and so on. I wasn’t
overly agitated because I was still developing things. But, I was sensing
trouble to come soon. This model of work couldn’t have worked for long - paying
2-3 resources for projects which would never see the light. She was distraught
at the directors’ apathy. She had hired a full-time employee, and now had to
let her go, so that she could find a better future. She had worked so hard on
these projects; being from a non-IT background and being an UK expatriate, she
had worked hard to get things moving here. She had some good vision; all the
projects that I was working on were for government sectors; to curb corruption
using technology and to help students/parents evaluate their performance in a
better way. And now, all the work was going to waste!!
I was still laughing at being
fired! To me, frankly, it didn’t make much difference financially. If my
potential employers offered me a job, then I would have lost all the time I had
travelling and couldn’t have worked here anyway. So, it seemed that all the
pieces were falling into place now. I felt bad for the girl and discussed how I
could help her find jobs. It was easy since I myself was on the job hunt. With
this, I bid her goodbye and she left. The girl was in the room outside and it
was then that she started crying. She was much closer to the situation; she was
working here 6 days every week, seeing no progress happening in the past 2-3
months. She had decided in her mind to quit on her own terms, but was waiting
to complete 1 year; for the experience certificates. And now, she was let go.
I tried consoling her, promised to
help her out. I intend to it as well. I thanked few people there at the office;
the cook who made awesome ‘pulav’ J
; the admin who paid me on timeJ.
I wished the girl good luck and rode back home. On the way back home, few
creepy thoughts started coming to my mind. I was wishing in December last year
that my well-paying company fires me; they fired 70 odd people at the time, I wasn’t
one of them. Now, having experienced a lay-off, that wish seemed a very stupid
one. I reached home and started laughing about it with my mom.
But I am really grateful that what I wished in December didn’t come true; this is one experience that I don’t want
to experience EVER AGAIN!
