A few lessons!

No philosophy lessons here. This is just a summary of some of my biggest learnings working for almost 2 years in a project(not important) in the same company(irrelevant).

Here are they:

1. Results Matter: It does not make a difference whether the company is in deep shit or in its biggest times of glory. What is important is the results you give to your company as an employee, even if your project does not earn them a penny. They have obviously employed you coz they thought your job profile does not require great skills and that's the reason YOU are there working with them, for them. Your results do matter to them. Thats the only way they can say that the project is useless and can be scrapped.

2. Leaders(Read Managers) make choices and you(Read Engineers) are held accountable: Obviously, your manager does not know even the ABC of your job. All he knows is to give you some high level gyan of how to architect systems and build modular, robust components. You might need to undergo an hour long sermon on Scalability, Reliability and all the "abilities" that any system should guarantee. But, when it actually comes to implementing them, the following are some of the things which are told/asked:

• "What is the ROI?
• This is more of an engineering task, does not have any business value.
• Our business is driven by priorities. These are all NICE to have things.
• Maybe, we can take it up later. Let me check with the Product Management to see if it matches their priorities.

....

When when the product goes out for production and we see performance issues and shit hits the roof, then comes our leader to smartly ask , "Why could'nt we have been able to catch this apriori? We should ensure we have enough review done before releasing something".

3. Make Right choices : Well, this is probably the outcome of the some of the above learnings. It is easy to get caught up doing the urgent. It takes real skill to do the important.

4. Are you an AssLicker? : Hmm...if you are not, then you are probably in trouble. If you lick your leader 's(read only leader :) and not manager) ass, then you elevate him(or her). This forces him/her to elevate his/her leader(read boss). And the process is transitive enough to hit right till the top. This helps you save time to do something productive and also help build a good raport with your leader and probably RESULTS DO NOT MATTER. My dear friend (again irrelevant) may not agree with this, but Engineering freedom is still a dream far from even being dreamt. The new order of the day:

• Your Leader is always right!
  
• You, are always wrong.
• If you have any doubts, go back to rule number #1.
  

Ass Licking(recoining it as elevation of the leader) is the only fast track way to reduce problems at work place, improve productivity and achieve results. Don't think, just act!