LETS SWAP THE ROLE

Tell me one thing, What’s so boring about your day to day corporate work?
Or do you have any complaints or suggestions for your senior or junior ? Or any colleague?

We always have a conversation with our team mates that “If i was at his position i will have done this in that way. If I’m at my manager’s place then i will not do that with my employee, or i will do this task in this way.

Yes we always know better then anyone, because we also know how MS dhoni should play in cricket ground. It’s just we are busy in coding or managing our team or in corporate meeting so we can’t go on pitch to play for india.

So we always say  “ If I was him / her then…. ”

Well, Guess what? I’m gonna give you super power to swap your role with anyone you want and anything you want to do.
Yes , Anyone. Even with CEO Mr. Agrawal too 😉

Let’s start with Me, As I'm the inventor of this idea (Jiska bat, uski batting pelhe 😉 )


Let’s start with Developer vs Manager

Me in Developer’s Role :

Well , Everything was going good in our team. It was a new Product we were developing. With few and new team members. Team was doing well. They were hard working , curious to learn this new technology and new product. Everything was set until my manager came in and told us from now you have to do JIRA Log work everyday.

As it was new to us, not have done this before, everyone was new in team, product was new, this agile process also new to us. We found some day to day activity very boring. We as developers, always criticize things like doing log work in jira everyday.

we were busy in our own task, our day to day chaos. Do sprint task,
Maintain demo servers, resolve any critical bugs that suddenly raised by IQA Team.

So many chaos. And in between these all, now we have to do work log that takes our 1 Minute.
Yes, That 1 minute also cost us lot as a developer 😉  as a joke sometimes i was telling to my friends that I’ll hire G.E.T to do my work log at 10rs per Log 😄

[ I expect my audience to have little bit humor so they can take it as a joke 😉 ]

Slowly and gradually we adopted this new agile process. But yes there was a time we felt annoyed by this day to day new process.

Let’s Swap The Roles with Manager:

Now I’m Engineering Manager, managing my teams, my product, attending many meetings to define product road maps and what not.

I’m having 20+ engineers working under me, they are doing amazing work. But the company is asking me for a report. As company can’t see what these guys are doing. I know They are doing great, Management also somehow knows that these guys are doing great. But not on paper.

Someone from Management is sending me emails with red marks that your team is not doing well. We can this in our data.
Now as a captain of the ship, it is my responsibility to show my team’s hard work to management. In terms of data they want.

I will go to my team and ask them to do jira log everyday. So that I’ll show them how amazing and creative these guys are. I will feel proud if management recognizes my team's effort.

# After swapping this role,  Now suddenly my thinking changed. My attitude changed. The way I was looking at these boring things are changed. Useless activity looks very important to me. I felt the importance. I felt my manager was right. He was actually at our side. Not the other side.

Now Let my manager swap the role with me as a developer :

If my manager swap role with us and be a developer, then what will he do?

As a developer he also will feel the day to day hurdles , headaches and chaos. He gets to know ground zero life. And what he can do as a manager for his employee. And i know once upon a time he was developer too. :)

So now he will look into to code very different way. He will do the task with more quality because as a manager he know how he will expect the code to be done. He will try to understand the domain , try to understand the new technology trends.
 
Moreover, he will learn new things every day, learn to improve communication , learn to write emails in a professional way, alway learn new skills and earn certificates to improve personally and professionally.

Why? Why when manager become developer he focuses on other things than just coding? As a developer we don’t require better communication, better presentation skills , better management skills.

But he knew that when this developer will be in my position , he will require all these skills in future to maintain the repo of managerial position.

Oky one more,
Developer vs Management (may be a C.E.O)

Forget every small complaint. We as an employee in every company have one big complaint in common.
“Paisa sahab… Paisa”

We always have complain that company is very miser, not want to give us our PLI , giving less increment. Even this year i have worked lot, earned 5 certificates. Solved issues at late night, attended many meetings. I have improved my self better then last year. Can't my company see that?

Let’s Swap the role with CEO:

Now I’m The BOSS. I’m the C.E.O of this entire organization. I am now at the top of the hill.
Everything looks very different from here. I can see far away. I can see where the company is heading and where I want it to be. I now have a long and far vision.

Well, I saw many employees complaining for increment and PLI, These employees have done very hard work, earned so many certificates, late night work and what not….

Let’s look at my company’s balance sheet…

Oh, Nothing reflected here. Your late night work, your certificates, your efforts. My company is not earning well. Whatever you have done, there is no impact on business.

Then what’s the point of that effort? Was that effort in the wrong direction?
If you are running for our company, and the company gets not impacted by your work in any way. Not even in a non-financial way. Then either you are running in the wrong direction or your running is worthless for the company.

If you are just walking, and every step has an impact on the company then  that every step becomes important..

As a CEO I’ll give lots of money , lots of facilities to make my employee happy. Because if they are happy, I'll be happy. But when? If the company earns enough money.


At the same time if C.E.O swap roles with me as a developer:

As a CEO he always worked under high pressure to run business very well. Have very great vision and goals for the company. A bright and visionary personality.

When any CEO become developer, he will feel how much efforts people are making at bottom level. Whether it is impacting the company’s business or not that is different thing. But they work for company by carrying hope that company will take care of their dreams. People become emotionally connected with company by the time. If you don’t care for them then they will lose faith in you and one day they will leave you. If you don’t “pay” them. Then at least “feed” them with Love and Respect like family , So that they feel appreciated for their hard work. They will work harder even if you don’t pay because now they can connect with you. They will understand your problem.

But at the positive side, When this person becomes a developer, What will he feel? Or what he will do? Or think about your designation? If CEO Mr. Agarwal swap role with your designation how they will handle the works?

He will do their task with long term vision. Will influence others to do their best. And they will inspire us to become a leader by showing how things get done with great vision and faith in company’s values.

He will not work for his PLI or his increment. As a developer he will work for the company's future. Company’s vision. He will be carrying a larger mindset than us.

He will do small things also in a great way. He will definitely change the way we work in our day to day life.


Yes, That's how it works.

Whenever you are free, just observer persona around you. he/she can be your colleague , your manager , your junior or even house keeping servant. either at office or at try it at your home with your wife or childers. You can be even chai wala for one day. who know tomorrow you can be PM 😄

Just close your eyes, and in parallel universe , swap the role and see how it feel , or how things are working at their level.

Well , this idea of Swapping a role reminds me of one of the best movie “Nayak” i guess , where Anil kapoor become CM for one day. (Yes, he swapped the role too 😄 )

[ See my popularity, even before me writing this blog , Anil kapur and Amrish puri adopted this role swapping idea from me. you better get my autograph till i got very popular and will be difficult to catch 😉 ]

"Sometimes we need to swap the roles , to understand things better, to gain new perspectives in whatever we are doing in our corporate or personal life."

This Article was not about some small complains we do, or the advice we gave to other person. It was not about negative and positive.

Whatever i have mentioned was just small example.

What I wanted to say is, its all about understanding each others perspective. sometimes we have very limited vision, sometime we stuck in our own idea of the person, sometime we get inspired from seniors, sometime a junior can also inspire us.  sometime someone can show us how boring work can be excited or can be done in very different way. just give chance to new person to do that same thing.

If you imagine a hill, then everyone is standing at different altitude and have different view from their point.  No one is wrong. We just need trust and have faith for each other.

Finally , I have so many things to write, but I'll stop here.

And You...

Try to Swap the role, have fun, get a new perspective and be “Nayak” for one day 😉

Just for fun , Tell me in comments , with whom you want to swap your role and what you wanna do? Only funny comments allowed 😄

ONE LINE MISTAKE

It was just a regular day in covid-19 situation. I was also working from home

And suddenly an email hit my mailbox.


Subject of the email was “....... Jira assigned to you”.  assigned by one of the Delivery Unit team.


I stopped whatever I was doing to look into the issue. Because I was the owner of that module.

And I was shocked. How can it happen? I have done that code.

It was working perfectly with one system. Now the same kind of code with little change was not working for another system. Why??? I was curious to know.


 I checked the attached logs and screen shot in jira. tried to understand the problem.


Then I opened my eclipse and checked the code. Then I realized, It was not my code. I wrote the code for one system. And by reading my code , one of the developer copied the logic with some little changes of their own. And committed the code in git. Assuming that it will work perfectly because my code was working perfectly so his/her code will also work perfectly. And it was working perfectly.


I noticed that everything was perfect, except just one line. he/she copied everything from my code but forgot about that one line that why I wrote that line.


Yes their code was not wrong. It was perfect but that developer didn't anticipated a circumstance where that code will  never get executed. It was just a one line mistake.


Now what’s the COST of one line code?


As a developer we alway play with our code in a development environment. We do some R&D, trial and error and what not. But sometimes by playing with the code we forget its importance of each one of line or that one function or that one file of code. Sometime developers forget to be conscious about the quality of code. He only thinks in one dimension only. Never realize that on the ground zero there are many uncertainties.


If any errors occur in a development environment, you can easily solve and deploy the fix.

If an error occurs in QA, you have to fix the code, someone from devOps team has to build the fix image. You have to give reply in mail chain that it was one line of issue and this is the build of the bug fixes.


If any error occurs in the development Environment, your team will point fingers at you for that error. It is your reputation at risk

When you release the code to QA team and if the error occurs, they will point it out at the entire development team. It’s your team’s reputation at risk.


If the same error occurs at production, then the business partner will point the finger at the entire company.

It’s entire company’s reputation is at risk.


Mail chain will be started and in cc you may see many cross team members, some managers and may be one of the department heads.


Everyone will know that some issue has occurred in this product / system.


What will you revert in mail? What was the Root cause of this problem? That one simple line? It will not look very professional. Right? You will try to hide the actual mistake by manipulating the reason for the issue


They will never know what was the actual issue. But you as a developer knows the mistake.


So that one line of code can be a pillar of the entire company. If the pillar is strong , the entire organization will stand strong.


This article was not just about that one line of code that i have noticed. It was a minor issue. Can be fixed easily. Not having a big impact on operation.  But I took this as an example that many times many things remain unobserved from us. And later on it will come in front of us with some cost. And we as a team / department / company have to pay the cost. Either by money , energy or our reputation.

    “Till the code is in your hands, you can play with it as you want. But as this goes far away from your hand, it will become more and more difficult to handle at every stage.”

P.S : If you want to make a mistake, make a big mistake, A reputed one. That by solving it you can be Employee of the year ;)