Another Day in the Life of a Software Engineer

So here starts another day in my professional life.

My earlier project had been in the concluding phase for many months now. After my return from on-site I had only minor tasks to accomplish till this project successfully concluded on last Friday. Since everybody was aware of this from earlier, a new project to enhance the application was scheduled t o start on the very next working day.

As per the above plans I was entrusted with the task of creating design documents based on another document which provided the requirements. Today being Monday and the first day of this new assignment which spans over two long years, and with the guilty feeling that I have been sitting idle for so long a time, and with the interest to do something productive and brain cracking (duh!), I started to office one hour earlier than my usual time (which I wont declare here, read the disclaimer if you have doubts. )

(If you still have doubts don’t read further)

As expected, no one had come in the cubicles near to mine when I reached. The usual start time for my fellow colleagues on Monday was later than usual! (not a bit of doubt allowed!)

So, with the satisfaction that I have already achieved something I opened the Mainframe terminal and started my analysis to find the design changes for the requirements. During this time my team members arrived one by one and were amazed at finding me working. Well, my sense of achievement increased.

Again as expected, my manager came to office about one and half hours after I reached. And he began to forward those mails which he normally would not understand but will forward to the team member whose name is mentioned anywhere in the contents or cc list. And I got three mails in order!

I opened the mails to see three documents attached with a note that those were detailed description of my requirements. I opened them with apprehension that "detailed" is another word to make my task difficult, and what did I find?

There it was the line by line design changes to all the requirements, the very facts which I was trying to find out by coming early on a Monday morning. Thanks to the on-site guy who thought that me (the dumbo) cannot create it from his requirements document.

Well, I did the next best thing you are expected to do at that moment. I logged off from Mainframe, opened my Firefox browser and started typing in the name of one of my favourite websites...

Its life as usual, again!