Have you ever looked at your Sony Wi-fi laptop or that iPod MP3 player? Have you ever looked at that Samsung microwave oven, that LG washing machine? Have you ever looked at your Nokia handset? Or even at that IBM Thinkpad, that Dell monitor? And have you asked yourself this question: What makes them work? Have you ever wondered what makes that Excel worksheet do things for you, that accounting software deliver, that HR package on your desktop decide your company’s manpower needs? They probably happen because faceless knowledge warriors working out of Bangalore’s technology parks have put together complex systems that make your software deliver. ET embedded technology-challenged Shubhrangshu Roy in the trenches of MindTree Consulting at Bangalore for 33 hours to negotiate the minefields of the mind. He came back with a three-part report demystifying the incomprehensible world of India’s software gladiators
When 26-year-old Umesh Bhatt went to IIT-BHU a few years ago to major in computer science, he had a big dream sparked by the big noise about global software warriors. Sabeer ‘Hotmail’ Bhatia was a big hero for his generation. Bill ‘Windows’ Gates was larger than life. “They were my inspiration,” says Bhatt, now three years into code writing at MindTree Consulting, Bangalore’s happening place for techies. Umesh is one of 35 software programmers working on a project for a leading US-based anti-virus solutions company to develop a disaster recovery solution for computer hard disks. Simply put, the American company has commissioned MindTree to work on a software package that will automatically create a backup support and recovery mechanism in case your computer hard disk crashes.
Umesh’s work requires him to write miles-long codes on a computer monitor day after day following pre-defined processes to deliver a particular function on time. It’s a small part of a big project being worked on by his team, but has to deliver a significant task. Yet for project manager, Sandeep Agarwal, 31, (BE, Electronics), and his team, Umesh now wants to opt out. “I came up with a problem of not wanting to do a particular task assigned to me. I felt I was not adding value.” Though Umesh says he still enjoys writing code and wants to be an expert in his field, he no longer wants to spend time designing the small icons that you see on your monitor. So he is willing to cool off till his employer gets him a challenging new assignment. That assignment could take at least three months to happen.
“When I started my career, I did not have the confidence to say no to whatever I was asked to do. I can afford to do that now, because I have certain long term goals. And those goals mean that I should have a good knowledge of the software industry and technologies to be able to come up with a unique product.” Something that is as big as may be what Sabeer Bhatia, if not Bill Gates, had to offer the world.
It’s an almost similar story for Ram Prasad M R, 31, an electrical engineer by training from Kerala, working for the past two years on a MindTree project for Silicon Valley outfit Elance along with 75 other techies. Elance tied up with MindTree two years ago to work on a product that helps customers procure services of contingency staff and service level arrangements from a global pool of select vendors. MindTree techies keep adding new features to the original Elance product and customise it to meet specific client needs. MindTree also ensures product quality and maintenance. Elance’s major customers include Fortune 500 biggies such as GE, Motorola, Amex and Novartis, who save billions of dollars in service procurements every year. “In the two years that MindTree has been working on the project, the original product has been heavily redesigned,” says Mrudul Goyal, who is accountable for many technical decisions on the product. And most of that overhauling has been done by the boys at MindTree. “My engineering team plays a very active role in determining what goes into the product,” says Prashant Mehra, 31, the team’s project manager. “Today, my team is a virtual extension of the Elance engineering team. Rather, my team is virtually Elance’s Bangalore team. Better still, we are really Elance’s Bangalore team,” he adds. Interesting!
Yet, after two years into helping overhaul Elance’s software, Ram Prasad has opted out. “I had been at it for four cycles. It became monotonous and repetitive. So I trained the next guy to take my job.” To kill boredom, Ram Prasad plans to spend the next six months developing a server from scratch. Fifteen of his buddies at the Elance project have volunteered to spare 10% of their work time to help him out.
It’s not that the work the boys are doing at MindTree isn’t exciting enough. Afterall, when you are so busy executing a professional task there’s always scope to add value. But what’s this work like? It’s something like this: Elance comes to MindTree with a cardboard model of a house, complete with the number of rooms, the kitchen, the bath, the living area, the colour scheme and the garden. Then it asks MindTree to build on it and make a real house ready for sale. It also asks MindTree to suggest and add value: where the light fittings are to be done, where the kitchen sink is to be placed, if two large rooms will do instead of three smaller ones, whether the study is needed at all, what colour shades should look better on the walls. It also tells MindTree why the house is being built.
That’s when MindTree takes a good look at the cardboard model and becomes the engineering contractor for the house. MindTree tells Elance how many rooms are really needed, how many aren’t. What colour scheme makes sense; what gadgets are needed to make a functional house. And it anticipates the future requirements of the house. It also gets its team of electricians and plumbers and masons together and puts it to work. Once the job is done, MindTree delivers the house to Elance, which then sells it to its big ticket customers in the West.
“Right from the junior-most engineer to the project leader, we make an attempt to build the house by trying to understand the needs of the end user. All this boils down to applications development. To build the house, I first need to make the bricks. To make the bricks, I need sand. The sand is the systems programme. It is the most fundamental stuff with which I build the house. The applications guys keep adding to the sand, and then the bricks, to make a livable house,” explains Mrudul. In real world, applications are all about writing codes that add up to make the house, not to the cardboard model.
So what does it take to write the codes?
It’s as if the applications guy has a dictionary with him and is told to string together key words to write a line. At any given time, several code writers could be sitting as a team, writing separate lines. Then someone in the team puts those lines together to make a stanza. Then another person in the team puts several stanzas together to make a poem. And somebody else puts several poems together to make a book. That’s what code writing is essentially about. And that’s essentially what most of the software work happening out of Bangalore is all about, not just what’s happening at MindTree. There’s plenty of creativity in writing those lines that make the poem, but at the end of the day, it’s a guy in the West, who’s imagined the book. And he’s given it a name. And he gets the credit for the book. And once the book is done, he sells it for a price. In turn, he also pays the Bangalore outfits for compiling the lines and the stanzas and the poems to put together the book. And the boys who write those lines get paid. Over time, they shift to writing new lines that are strung together once more into new stanzas for new poems for a new book. The code writer remains nameless. And writing those lines gets routine.
But then it’s for the code writer to figure out what exactly he is doing and find satisfaction in his job. “You could either say I am laying the bricks, or you could also say, I am building a temple,” says project manager Prashant. So, it’s not as if the work is entirely boring. And Umesh and Ram Prasad are exceptions than the rule. Others prefer the comforts of life that come with working in a Bangalore firm, drawing fancy pay packets at quite an early age. At MindTree, for instance, the starting gross for a greenhorn is as high as Rs 2.5 lakhs a year. That makes the job well worth the slog.
Disclaimer: While this series draws heavily on the reporter’s interactions at MindTree to understand the world of Indian software, in no manner does it attempt to be a report on MindTree, where many good things are happening beyond the context and scope of this series.
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