The Diary of Deployment: (Frustrations and Commitments of a Developer)

The clock was ticking 11 PM and I wasn’t feeling sleepy, not even a percent. My nights extended deep down into darkness every day. My daily routine had been so for almost half a year now. The platinum application of my body my brain was sending me mixed signals knowing what lay ahead. But I was in no mood to catch even a few hours of sleep.

RSE and DEMAJ were glued to their systems in the large hall of my apartment which was in terrible shape. REBAN was in the kitchen trying to cook something decent so that we could keep our engines running. Given the pressure he had been through for the past 2 days, he should be in his bed and not in the kitchen was what, was going through my mind. His entire team, his colleagues, his managers would be sleeping in their cozy beds and there he stood cooking for us. At times we hardly realize what small little things people do for us, most of the times it goes unnoticed. But yet again I knew this was my extended family out here. I’ve got your back mate, went without saying, with us.

I sat there staring at my blue, black and white tandem screen which had been my soul life from the time I had landed in Aarhus. This was not what I had imagined while I was gearing up for my onshore assignment. “Grass on the other side is always greener my dear” was what SHGH always told me. She was damm right. As we have a human life cycle we also have a life cycle in IT (and I am not talking about the software development life cycle), no-one ever told me that. I wonder why the company doesn’t put in a specific clause for every project that you are gonna join. We defy every law of Mother Nature, nine moths absolutely no, every six months we go into the frenzy of producing something else, something new or adding organs to something already created, providing accessories to an organ in order to achieve something else. Six months have passed when we first started the process of creating the new child called R19. Requirement gatherings, HLD’s , DPD’s, workshops, defects, code-fixes, endless sleepless nights, blame games, escalations and meetings is what it took to reach here, the days of deployment. Six real hard months of continuous labor pain was what it took to reach where we are today. Innumerous teams involved in different phases. The PM team, the BA team, Release Management, Deployment Management & the Deployment team plus the higher management (everyone talks about them even your managers or the HR’s but no one has ever seen them, guess someone like BIG BOSS) have been the fathers of the child.

Who is a developer, is what I ask myself almost a million times every day. I am yet to figure out the answer. And where I stand today the only answer I have goes like this:”A developer is a person who does not have a personal life. A person who’s life is someone else’s owned. If bachelor will never get married. If married is having a screwed up personal life. A person who’s weekend is as ruined as his/her weekdays. A person who’s professional life requires him/her to work and prove that they have been working 25 hours out of 24 hours to achieve a good annual hike”. The only people who come below a developer in an IT firm are actually none. Even the cleaning staffs, the securities are vendor managed. The lowest in the hierarchy yet the strongest ones. The ones with the least to loose and the maximum to gain. The backbone of the entire infrastructure on which the IT is thriving.

When reality hits, it hits real hard. When I look at my watch now, it shows 1:00 AM and I decide to pamper myself. On the way to the kitchen to refill my glass and enjoy the luxuries of a Tennessee whisky, I find my buddies RSE and DEMAJ wired up on different calls corresponding to their deployments. I find REBAN sitting with DEMAJ helping him out with ORACLE. I keep standing there frozen seeing the scene. It’s madness. I am blank with nothing in my mind. Suddenly I realize that all of them are staring at me and it is then I realize my phone has been ringing. It’s 3^rd of KJA’s call. I immediately call up KJA and my absence from the hall goes un-noticed. RSE and DEMAJ go back to their systems. KJA’s deployment is done. A smile with a sense of satisfaction runs my face. A dear friend’s achievement is almost equivalent to your achievement. My glass is refilled and JD goes back to the shelf.

I walk back to my workstation. I don’t even have a peep to see what my friends are upto. I know they won’t rest till they have nailed the smallest bitch of code written by someone or by themselves. I know the Spartans are out there fighting and my mind knows within a span of some hours, I would be joining them. There is absolutely no feeling. I place myself on my chair and lit a fag so that I can drag myself into a world of illusion, where everything would be owned by me.

My phone starts on again. This time it’s the alarm of 3:30AM waking me up and asking me to buckle up for the task ahead. My friends TACHA and SHHCH are already on their way to an early Sunday down back in offshore. I know it’s not about them or me, it’s about every individual, every developer who has put in all his/her effort to make this release a success. As I stand there looking at myself in the mirror in my washroom, a flurry of questions rush through my mind. Is it all worth it? Will the amount of money I earned compensate for the losses? Will the satisfaction of work done compensate for my happiness? Will my closest buddy ANVEN forgive me for not attending her marriage or helping her out when she was alone? Will the developers get as much appreciation as much they are thrashed during their failures? Will they even be remembered once they move out of the account? Will I be able to make up for the time I missed spending with my loved ones? Is it all worth it?

As I step out of the shower ready and armored for my fight, for my time, for my deployment, I know this is not the end, this is just the beginning. There will be many more R20’s and R30’s on their way. Many more developers sacrificing their personal lives in the name of professionalism, onsite’s, ratings & hikes. Is the new sun going to bring a new brightness or will it be followed by new defects, rollbacks & high priority incidents. The time shall speak for itself.

As I gear up for the final battle of the year (I know I will succeed) Harivanshrai Bachchan’s words speak aloud in my head “In the rush of life where was the time to sit somewhere and think, whether what I did, said and believed in, was good or bad” ………….

My deployment starts in 5 minutes at 4:00 AM.