Today at 17h30 today, I logged off for the final time. I remembered a line from a song in the movie ‘Pretty Woman’ – ‘It has been good; but it is over now’. Very true in this instance! Eventful 7 year association has come to an end. I got the letters from HR; though the final financial settlement would take some time. As expected, I also said Good-bye to all the folks I know. Anyone could observe the overflowing happiness in me. I’m glad to leave with a sense of achievement and gladness thereof. If I would’ve left any time earlier, it wouldn’t have been the case. Timing was perfect.

I lived and enjoyed every moment: took a coffee in the cafe and walked through the trees; had lunch with two of the team mates; met with almost all the people I know.  As I was driving back, thoughts kept flowing back: the day I joined as a developer; the day I was informed of the US trip; the day I left to Belgium; the day I came back; the day I had wine with few of female colleagues during lunch; the day I filled petrol in a water bottle to help a stranded friend and so on and on. Incidentally I was playing ‘Moments’ by ‘Kenny G’. I also went to St. Thomas mount and spend few minutes.

How do I feel? Happy, Sad, Anxious? May be all together.

It was 26th, March 1998. I set my foot into this software firm as a developer. By all means, it was a big career move. I entered with passion for growth, devotion for work and an un-quenching zeal to excel. As I look back, I could firmly say that I have kept the flame burning and achieved more than what I dreamt. These achievements may not be spectacular but looking from where I started, the path is filled with unbelievable events.

As much as the path is full of such events, time has come to move on; a time to say good-bye has come. In few more days, I’ll leave this organization. It is a strange feeling, a love and hate feeling, that engulfs me when I think of my last day. I am as much happy as I am sad. I only wish that I’ll be a success even in the new organization.

Ever since this current development project started, I am seeing the proof of Murphy’s law – if something can go wrong, it will; and it normally goes wrong at the crucial moment. It happened as late as this weekend and today. This weekend we were planning to do the database migration. We have done this many times at offshore and we were all set to do it in the onsite database. It had been taking around an hour time for the entire migration; I added a buffer of another hour. Trust me, we did this many-a-times in our local db and the results were pretty good. However, when we started the onsite db migration, one thing after another fell out of place! It took us 5 hours to complete! Ok, at the end, my onsite resource and I were able to pull through and set the database up, but after both of us going crazy.

Today, the application was moved to onsite server to start the QA cycle. We were doing sanity checks and everything seemed good. So we were all excited and I was going to shoot out a mail informing client of the good news. Something urged me to check the apps before finally hitting the ‘send’ button. Boom! it wasn’t working. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I did see it working just few minutes back. What the hell happened? Instead of ‘Get, set, ready, go’ mail, I had to send out a ‘hold on’ mail. Then after troubleshooting, I found out that the database was refreshed by the DBA! A misunderstanding by the DBA. He mistook the request we raised during the weekend as a request raised today. Thank god! we made a backup after the db release. So I contacted the DBA to restore that backup.
Though these hiccups throw me off track, they build me as well. Every single time, I was able to bounce back and every time the time to come back reduces. They cause me to take many factors into consideration. I agree, things will continue to go wrong; but only for a while.

For the past few weeks, I have been thinking of having to ‘work-under-pressure’. Ever since I joined this project, it has been a high stress work. I was handling production support team offering 24 x 7 support for three crucial applications and that meant being vigilant all through. Time and again, there were enhancements added; and suddenly a full-fledged development project gets added to the plate. Worst of all, having a not-so-good management, who believes anything the client says as true and walk over their employees at will. Tough, but I throve. Very often, I entertained the thought of switching out of IT. But I concluded that with my personality, I will always attract such strenuous jobs.

In this year alone, first there was a Q1 (Quarter I) release, then arranging Remedy training with a limited budget, then a migration project and finally this development project. With all of these hectic activities, I guess, I have learnt intensely and added value to the organization. I want to take a break for a while, so I am getting out of here after this development project. But I am sure, in my next venture as well, it is going to be something like this. If it is not then I would do something that I always want to do – hobby programming, rambling of my travels and so on.

Not just me, there are few of my team mates, who thrive under pressure too. There is one guy who works the best under stress. Come relaxed period, troubles come because of him. But there are others who cannot just stand the pressure. In the past two months, four of the new recruits fled as they couldn’t withstand the pressure. I cannot blame them; there is life outside these four walls too!

Incidentally, I came across an article in New York times that articulates these same thoughts.