Somedays ago, we had a session with a few GSM architects and seniro managers of our clients.
These people have been working on GSM since 1991 (when I was 11 years old).Our clients are one of the top telecom companies.
Then there was the questions round.
Question :-
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Since we at India, are doing monotonous maintenance and sustenance work, we will never climb up the value ladder. We can never become architects like you guys, isnt it ? When will we get into development work ?
One of the architects put it short & sweet and said :-
If you people are motivated by challenge, then the difficulty level of bugs are as follows :-
1. Bugs found during Coding and Design (least complexity)
2. Bugs found during component level integration
3. Bugs found during system testing.
4. Bugs found during maintenance after deployment.(extremely complex)
But the person who raised the question was not exactly convinced.
There is a general notion that development is a superior job among us.
Sometimes it is tr.ue, but imo, each job has its share of challenges (for people driven by challenges). You dont need to look down upon system testing and maintenance.
Then the MBA manager(IIT+IIM guy) came to the picture.He gave a beautiful answer.
Ofcourse development is important, there are people who are doing development,But they lack the big picture most of the time.The real DREAM development job is a responsible one done by a few percentage of architects, who sketch out the functionalities based on their experience.If you consider extremely successful product companies like Microsoft, then more than 70 % of the engineers are into maintenance and sustenance.If your company is spending most of the time just in development and more development,and no time on sustenance, it means your products are not successful in market. The greater the number of products into sustenance and support, the better they have fared in the market and they are more successful.
I agree totally with the MBA guy.
Speaking of Microsoft, Bill was in Bangalore.He announced a Code for Bill Contest in Palace Grounds.
However, it seems VTU is making it compulsory to use Microsoft Products like Word and Excel for VTU Final year Projects and this has pissed of the Free Software Community.
2 comments:
My manager always used to tell me to read 'Writing Solid Code' and 'Code Complete' :) . The difficulty level of bugs among other simple things, which are non-trivial per the author are explained brilliantly.
The real dream job, is still that IIT-IIM guys real dream job.
Great products and great services make great companies. Any product company worth its salt cannot shy away from providing high quality services to its users.
Can we imagine driving our cars but not knowing whom to give it to for repair/service. (But, the ideal state is to make a product which is ABSOFRIGGINLUTELY bug free, but it is utopian still)
Somehow in software the model of outsourcing product service to partners has not taken place (like franchisee service centers for automobiles). Piracy, copyright etc,plus the need to be in control of whats going right/wrong in the market.
If that kicks in, then there wud only be developers in a company(?)
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