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  “No. I’m not busy. Why don’t you go with Shanthi?” asked Vinay.

  “No. They are seniors. I cannot talk casually. I’m not comfortable. Ok. So you will go with Himesh only right?” smiled Sana.

  “No. It’s not like that. Come let’s go,” said Vinay.

  They walked towards the cafeteria. Vinay then called Himesh and told him to come to cafeteria. While they were walking, Vinay observed Sana. This was the first time he was having a close look at her. She was two years younger than him, almost as tall as him and had a lean body frame. She would usually wear a simple cotton chudithar with an elegant design. She was wearing one plastic bangle on each hand. She had a long hair neatly folded in peasant braid fashion. She had a long face, high cheek bones, dark black eyes, arched thin eyebrows, perfectly cut medium shade pink lips and milky wheat complexion. She was wearing a flat sandal. Vinay disliked heels. He thought heels made the girls look ugly with their legs especially when they wore skirt.

  They chatted in cafeteria for a while. They talked about what happened after college. Sana had joined Holtezent only a few weeks back.

  “Every weekend will you go to Mysore?” asked Sana.

  “Nowadays I’m going. Yes. Now work is not that much hectic. I will board a bus on Friday evening and come back on Monday morning.”

  “I’m also doing the same thing every weekend. It’s taking three hours to reach Mysore. It takes almost one hour to leave Bangalore traffic.”

  Vinay checked the status of all the IS tickets he had raised. All are now pending with Jeetender who is the IS Manager. He and Himesh then took turns and gave sessions to the new joinees. They explained the project requirements and what they did as part of the POC.

  The project was in the initial stage and had not yet picked up steam. Vinay and Himesh came at 8.00 in the morning and left at 7.00 PM.

  “Wait. I’m coming with you,” Sana called out to Vinay.

  Sana and Vinay travelled together in the same bus as they had to travel along the same route. They stayed in nearby flats. Sana stayed in a 2BHK rented flat shared with three of her friends. Each bedroom would be shared by two people. She shared the rent, electricity, water bills and maintenance charges of the flat. She and her roommates mostly ate outside. Sometimes they would buy groceries and cook food in their flat during Saturdays and Sundays. Vinay was staying in a rented 1BHK flat nearby to her flat.

  Chapter 8

  Vinay slowly walked to his flat. There was no electricity in the entire street. His computer UPS was beeping. He turned on the monitor. He had two software ran in two console Windows. Both the console showed some error. He shut down the PC.

  Vinay first got to know about computers when he was in his eighth grade in school. His father had bought him a videocassette about computers. Vinay loved that video. It used a combination of graphics, animation and block diagrams to explain bits, bytes and the Input, Output and CPU modules of a computer. It also showed real computers running a program written in BASIC language. BASIC stood for Beginner’s All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. It was easy to pickup especially for beginners learning a computer programming language with its simple set of commands which could be memorized without difficulty.

  Vinay had varied interests in different subjects. He loved reading about Geography of various countries in the world. He loved learning Mathematics and solving problems given in the exercises of his school textbook. His interests gradually shifted to computers. The videocassette had sparked his interest in computers.

  Vinay then got hold of a book titled “How Calculators Work?” The book explained in detail the functioning of a calculator from the press of a key in the keypad to the display of a digit in the LCD panel. The concepts were similar to computers. His knowledge of computers grew more and his understanding got deeper.

  Vinay found other school subjects like Physics and Chemistry difficult. Though he could understand little bit of Physics, Chemistry was incomprehensible to him. Getting into a good Engineering college by merit required a good score in Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics as well as the score in the Common Entrance Test shortly referred to as CET exam. The CET entrance exam was usually conducted by all colleges to further shortlist candidates based on their score. A merit list of students would then be created by combining the scores of Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics and CET entrance exam score.

  Vinay had got a score of two hundred and thirty eight. Through merit he got a seat in a college five hundred kilometers away from his home. His parents had wanted him to stay nearby their home. So they had booked an Engineering seat under management quota for a seat in Mysore Engineering College. They had paid one hundred and fifty thousand rupees. The college was just ten kilometers from his home.

  While he was just joining his undergraduate, he got to read about Bitcoins and was intrigued with the concept of Bitcoins. Out of curiosity, he had created a Bitcoin wallet. The Bitcoin wallet was software based electronic wallet which would hold the electronic virtual currency Bitcoin. He had two miners running in separate consoles in his PC. He had scheduled them to run for a few hours every day and then automatically shutdown the PC.

  Bitcoin was trying to gain acceptance as a virtual currency. Many computers could participate in a process called Mining. Mining was the work carried out by a PC to validate a transaction between two entities or between two people. The computer which successfully validates a transaction first would get the transaction fees as a fraction of a Bitcoin. This was how new Bitcoins were created in the system.

  A miner was the software used to do the mining work. A CPU based miner ran directly on the CPU and a GPU based miner utilized the PC’s Graphics card for processing. Vinay had joined a large mining pool. A mining pool was a large collection of computers which used their collective computing power to validate transactions. For every successful transaction validated by the pool, all the computers participating in the pool would get a certain percentage share of the transaction fees received by the pool as a fraction of a Bitcoin.

  Vinay had a CPU miner and GPU miner running parallely. Each of them had been assigned to one worker created in the mining pool. The worker is the entity through which mining work is sent to the miner by the mining pool. His PC would be up three to four hours a day and then shutdown automatically.

  Vinay scored average in theoretical subjects while his interests were in practical applications. During his third year, he was pulled in by his seniors to organize Quiz Competitions and White paper competitions. He joined as Project Intern in SokoLabs for one month during the college holidays after his third year. He learned image processing algorithms for digital cameras, while working on a project there.

  During his final year, his college hosted the computer festival with the inter-college cultural events. He had met a group of girls along with Sana from State Engineering College of Mysore aka SECM college which was located nearby to his college. But he didn’t get to talk with Sana much. He was very busy with organizing and managing the various events planned out then.

  During the economic recession, companies had frozen fresher recruitment. Not even a single company came to the college for campus recruitment. His parents told him to go for higher studies abroad. He wanted to be in Mysore or Bangalore. He was also not interested in higher studies. After his graduation, he was unable to get a job interview. The economic recession lasted for a few more months.

  Vinay used the time to learn new technologies and broadened his knowledge. He read books and self-taught himself. He also worked on his own projects to keep himself occupied with some work. He used the time to write a small game for both iPhone and Android. He used software simulators to run the game in iPhone Simulator and Android Simulator.

  When the economy recovered slowly, his friends told him to come to Bangalore. He then stayed with them and started attending interviews. That was when he attended an interview with Holtezent and got selected.

  Vinay’s enthusiasm in Bitcoins gradually reduced over t
he last few months. Lately, as more and more computers joined the network for validating the Bitcoin transactions, it was getting difficult even for mining pools to finish validating a transaction first. If a pool succeeds, each computer in the mining pool will get a paltry sum something like 0.000001 Bitcoin. The payout varies and was computed based on the percentage share allotted based on the computing power of the miner.

  Vinay rarely checked his Bitcoin wallet. He had no idea how many coins he had and what was the exchange rate. The exchange rate was very fluctuating which was based on high speculation and acceptance of the Bitcoin by people. He didn’t know that he had an early adopter advantage as he started mining from four years back.

  Mining difficulty had increased over the years. CPU and GPU miners could no longer be used for practical mining. It now required ASIC miners. ASICs or Application Specific Integrated Circuits were specialized miners created for Bitcoin transaction validations and usually were expensive depending on the hashing rate each second. It came in a variety of configurations with varying computing power ranging from over one Giga hash each second and reaching anywhere to hundred Giga hash each second.

  Vinay had no plans to spend money on that kind of hardware. He soon discontinued Bitcoin mining altogether and hoped to cash in on the coins he had sometime next year.

  Chapter 9

  Vinay checked the status of the IS tickets. Four of the tickets were approved by Jeetender and were assigned to somebody named Ajay. He found the IS ticket for Java installation in “Rejected” status. The reason given was “Anything above Java version Update_29 requires client approval. Reason is Compliance process”. Vinay had mentioned version Update_31 in the IS ticket.

  Himesh told Vinay, “There was no security incident reported on Update_31. It is already used in Dochamk Bank’s computers. These lackeys simply reject the IS ticket because some line in IS policy mentions only Update_29. By the time they update the policy to Update_31, it would be already out of date.

  The very processes and the departments created to centralize and efficiently service projects are now hampering the projects. The most dangerous thing is they don’t answer to anyone and so they don’t adhere to any timeline. We would be the scapegoat for their faults and delays.”

  Vinay first sent an email to Ajay requesting him to start software installation on the four PCs at the earliest for the four IS tickets assigned to him. He then sent an email to Satish informing him to get client approval for the required software version for the rejected IS ticket. He had to re-raise another IS ticket once client approval was obtained.

  He now had a hard time following up with Ajay. He called his mobile many times but Ajay didn’t pick up the call. He then went to his seat many times at least three times in the morning and three times in the evening. Ajay’s seat was always empty.

  Jeetender usually assigned IS tickets to somebody in his team who was on leave. This way he bought as much time as possible for himself. Vinay spent three days following up and searching for Ajay only to find he was on leave for those three days.

  Vinay thought, “Then why the IS ticket was assigned to Ajay? Why it was not assigned to somebody present that day? Who is doing this assignment? Why don’t they understand project specific timelines? They don’t answer to client. They don’t answer to anyone for that matter. I would get blamed for the delays caused by them.”

  Vinay was very saddened at the way the bureaucratic process worked in Holtezent. He felt tired of the process. He was exhausted with following up with people for getting things done. He was blamed by Murali for not following up properly. Murali told him he didn’t communicate and escalate things at the right time.

  Meanwhile Himesh raised IS tickets for ODC door access and getting the login ids created for new joinees to the team. He had already experienced and knew getting approval from the Security Manager was a tough thing. The Security Manager had four mobile numbers and he would not pickup any of the numbers. Himesh found most of the time he would not be available in his seat. Himesh knew if Security Manager was not in the right mood he would reject the IS ticket saying this screenshot was not there and that course was not completed.

  Himesh had heard stories of how people suffered because of him. He had seen people standing near the ODC door at 11 at night waiting if anyone would open the door so that they could go out of the ODC.

  ”What satisfaction does it give him rejecting access for eligible people and looking at the very same people standing near the door and suffering?” Himesh wondered.

  Finally after two weeks of following up, Ajay called them to install the required software in the PCs. Ajay took his own time and gave a hard time to Vinay and Himesh. First he said he didn’t have access to computers inside Dochamk Bank ODC. Then he pretended he didn’t have the software installers to install the software. Then he said somebody who knew the software should tell him each step to install the software. He acted dumb and delayed the work. Vinay and Himesh took the pain on their shoulders to do the work for him. They basically spoon-fed him each step for getting the software installer to getting the software installed in each PC. The only thing Ajay did was login into the PC with his login id and password which had access permissions to allow the user to install and configure the software.

  Vinay re-raised the IS ticket for Java with client approval document. It would take another three weeks to get it installed.

  There were a total of around one thousand and two hundred requirements for the CDSTP project. It was decided by Dochamk Bank management to follow Agile methodology for the project. In Agile, a set of tasks was called as a Sprint. Each Sprint was created for usually three weeks. There were tasks assigned to each person, called Stories. Each Story was associated with a start date, end date and estimated hours for the work.

  Each story consisted of thirty requirements. Some stories would vary in size. Nitesh selected the story based on priority and assigned tasks for each Sprint. Every day morning he would call for a status meeting at 11.00 AM.

  In the meeting, Nitesh would start asking the status from each person. He would ask how many tasks were completed and how many hours were remaining. People had a hard time explaining him the issues they were facing, why some tasks would take more time than the estimated figures, why they could not complete their tasks on time.

  ”You know you are working very hard. How do you get work-life balance?” Sana asked Vinay during lunch.

  “I don’t even get time to think about my life. I can’t even breathe properly,” said Vinay.

  Himesh said, “What Shanthi is doing nowadays? She will come late in the morning and leave early in the evening. She will open a Use Case document. Whenever someone walks nearby her seat, she will press Page Up key or Page Down key just to show she is actively working. She has become very good in pretending she is busy with work.”

  Everyone laughed.

  Chapter 10

  Sana grew up in Mysore in a middle-class family. She was the only child in the family. She was brought up with all the attention and love her parents could give her. She went to dance classes for Bharata natyam and became fluent with the dance. Her mother taught her to cook. She loved cooking. She would try out different variations in making Sambar and Curry.

  Her father tried to get a medical college seat for her. But he was unable to afford the amount to book a seat in a college. Her twelfth grade scores were not sufficient to get a medical college seat by merit. But Sana had other ideas for her future. She was not confident in completing a degree in Medicine as her interests were elsewhere. She liked computer applications. Her father was able to get an Engineering college seat in State Engineering College of Mysore, shortly referred to as SECM, for her. She attended college there. She chose specialization in Computer Science and Engineering. The college was just five kilometers from her home.

  Sana was a shy girl and moved only with a closed group of girls. She won’t immediately start chatting with someone she had just met. It would take at leas
t a few weeks before she talks even a few words with new acquaintance.

  Her scores in college subjects were just average. She kept a low profile in her college. She didn’t get involved much in the extracurricular activities held in her college.

  Sana’s group of friends went to Vinay’s college to attend the inter-college cultural event held there. The college was very nearby to her college. So she also went. She and her group had met Vinay briefly, who was one of the organizers. She had observed Vinay was awkward in everything he did there and shy to speak to girls.

  Her parents tried to get her married to a well settled groom from a rich family residing abroad. But she preferred to stay in India and especially in Mysore nearby to her parents. She told her parents she wanted to go to work after she finished her college and work for few years. Her parents were at first against sending her to work. After her persistent persuasion, they finally agreed on one condition that she should get married after one year.

  Her parents planned to again look for suitable groom after she joined a job. She came to Bangalore and stayed with her friends. She prepared and attended interviews but didn’t get selected. So she joined a course in Java and in parallel looked for opportunities. One of her friend informed her about a walk-in interview conducted by Holtezent. She attended the interview.

  Sana was interviewed by a three person interview panel. She could not answer most of the technical questions related to Java. When she was about to be rejected in the end of the interview, one interviewer asked her about algorithm writing. She explained about algorithms in general and how to measure complexity and the big O notation. She was then asked to write an algorithm to identify which word was occurring maximum number of times in a text file. She was given ten minutes. She wrote the algorithm using pseudo-code notation. The interview panel concluded she could be trained further and she had the potential to become a good Application Analyst. They selected her.