INTRODUCTIONS

OK. That’s all was the content of my email and my entire contribution to the eBook that contains a collection of my contributions to the Testing Circus; the idea actually germinated in one of the millions of brain cells located within the confines of the head of the Editor of this magazine; and so, thank you so much to Ajoy for the eBook. The eBook is available in PDF, ePub and Mobi format.

It can be purchased from https://leanpub.com/FST_TestingCircus Our subscribers will get it free. The 100% discount code has been emailed to all our subscribers.

It was April and the same thing that’d happen to employees who have been working for 2 years happened to me. No; it was not a promotion or another bad rating or an onsite trip or any client awards; none of those happen to me. I was chosen as the mentor for a new joiner. Yes, I was the “chosen one”; such tags like becoming a mentor would always come from my management with a carrot of “it’s good for your career path in our company”. And yes, this came with a carrot too. So, that’s when I thought I’d take around the new guy around my company and thought I’d introduce him (and you too) to the various folks in my company and what they do.

Meet….

… the CEO

He’s the face of our company; he has a team who manage to get him in the financial times, technical times, local times, international times papers. I call him the “Timing CEO”. Every year, he always comes up with a behavioral way, which according to him, would be the path to success of our company. He has come up with new behavioral change of “learning the client” this year; His behavioral changes over the past few years were “understanding the customer of the customer of the customer of our client”, “making permanent friends with temporary enemies”, “28- hour day”, “sun-never-sets-land”. 2 years back, an institute of leaders overlooked the fact that the claim to the sun never sets in our land was originally said by someone 50 years back and gave him a business award for suggesting that new type of behavior. According to the world, it helped the company become a billion dollar company. The truth was that a set of our business clients wanted to reduce costs and decided to offshore a huge chunk of their projects, coincidentally at the same time; that helped our CEO’s award.

… the SVP of our division

usually, he makes an appearance to the right side of the CEO; in every meeting, he manages to whisper something in the ears of the CEO. After he whispers, the CEO would respond with a nod or a loud laugh or a quite smile. In fact, someone actually took a photo of this and he’s framed it in his office. I call it “The Whispering” photo. He manages to make a press release whenever the company makes a product launch or win a whole new deal. He would give a 1-liner or 2-liner and all of those 1-liners can be found in the “press release” section of our website. He always seems to have a management degree from the most prestigious marketing international school. What he usually does on a daily basis is not known either.

… Ravi, the marketing manager.

This guy works in total secrecy; his offices and his working space is always access restricted. Most of the company does not know what he does on a daily basis; if I were to read and comprehend his emails, then I guess even he does not know what he’s doing either. even I would not know what he does on a daily basis. he comes to work with a cup of branded coffee in 1 hand and today’s paper wrinkled in the other. Enters the office space and exits usually by night fall. His emails to our company are usually full of lot of charts (different charts, pie-chart, bar-chart, etc. etc.).

and … Ravi (Version 2.0), the Sales manager.

This guy works in total secrecy too; his offices and his working space is always access restricted too. Most of the company does not know what he does on a daily basis too; Hey, wait a sec. Does it look like a replica of the marketing manager? Well, this is the sales department of our company. They and the Marketing teams behave like twins. An exact replica of each other. Please don’t ask me about the difference in sales and marketing; I have no clue and I am sure that these guys don’t have either.

… Rohini, the onsite coordinator.

She can’t be met; only heard. For most of us, she is only like a voice; a voice that commands you to do things on a daily, hourly, “minutely” and even on a “secondly” basis. Is heard on phone calls in the early mornings and in the late evenings. And is the person that gets the entire credit for delivering the project in the eyes of our client. Can always be heard complaining of her work-life balance from the time she became an “onsite coordinator”.

… Sanjay, the test lead (and “Yes-man” of the client)

He’s the “Yes Man” for our client; Whatever the client asks for, he gets it done. He is the guy who gets the credit in the eyes of the local management whenever a project is delivered. He always sends a report on a weekly basis; this report has a lot of bugs, colors, numbers, values, and stuff that most of us really believe that he spends an entire week creating such unreadable reports.

… Raju, the security Guard

One of the most dedicated people in our company; he’s the person whom everybody meets on a daily basis, but the person whose name is known by nobody in our company.

… Ragini, header of our training programs unit

she’s the one who’s responsible for informing our clients why we are better than the rest of the world; to prove that, she came up with so many varieties of training programs and certification exams. She is always given a slide to present on every visit and is usually found at every conference that talks about testing and offshoring in this continent this year.

… Shakthi, the super-star employee

And this is the super-star employee; every project would have a lone super-star worker who would carry the burden of the entire project on his shoulders; he is always shown the carrot of promotion or a carrot of a hike and that naive hope always fuels his work. At the end of the day, his name would get lost in an appreciation email. And in spite of this, he would work the same way for the next project too. … and me, the add-ons of our company. And me and most of us are usually the extras and the add-ons; An organization usually survives not because of its top 5%  performers, but because of the next 90% average performers. Me and rest of us are in that category. The company can never get a great billing numbers if we don’t exist; but in spite of that, we are bracketed as the average performers to make the top batch of us look happy. This is all the stuff that we are made up of. I hope you had a nice time meeting all of us and had a nice tour of our company. Adios till May!!!

Fake Software TesterA Fake Tester's DiaryFake Tester,Fake Tester's DiaryINTRODUCTIONS OK. That's all was the content of my email and my entire contribution to the eBook that contains a collection of my contributions to the Testing Circus; the idea actually germinated in one of the millions of brain cells located within the confines of the head of the Editor...