Hi folks,
Lets discuss about life of a software engineer - the pressure, deadlines, conflicts, uncertainty, late night working, bugs, bashes, appraisal remarks, hike variance, uncertainty....etc: the reality
vs
what the external world imagine us - secured life, great job, good salary: myth.
"My brother used to comment: If you throw a stone in chennai it may fall over street dog or software enginner- 24 hours day/night"
After my first stint in a small company i moved on to a reputed IT company in search of greener pastures. Every thing around me seems to be different from my older company - atmosphere, work culture, supervisors, colleagues and work . It seems i was lost in the ocean of the large company, during initial few months it was very difficult for me to coupe up to new job. I will return home completely tired and worn out. My family members and relatives who were in cloud nine after i got this job, consoled me that in such a big company there would be some pressure and complexity in work, which had to be matched.
Internally i would feel the pressure but i won't disclose it to them, many days i lost my sleep worrying about work. The first and foremost problem was fitting into a big project - handling a module according to requirements, schedule, methods, target set by some one else - process driven.
It was far different from my previous company where we are out own boss - we set our own requirements, methods, schedule and target to get result- result driven. In our older company we don't have resource or band-with for implementing a process, many times we use methods to get the result with minimum amount of effort, knowledge, resource and time (smart working).
WOW what a life........................
To be continued
Sunday, December 2, 2007
Monday, November 19, 2007
My first job experiance
Hi all,
I will be sharing my experience about how luck or God's landed in to my first job. After finishing my engineering graduation in the year 2002, which was shaken by dot com bubble burst scenario. Every one in IT were in nightmare as there was numerous job losses in the industry. It was when times were bad for people in software industry to retain their jobs and at that time my hunt for job started and it was very difficult to get jobs in reputed companies. I was trying for all kinds of jobs, and after some rough SWOT analysis embedded system field looked as a bright prospect to me to start my carrier. It would be also in tune with my area of graduation (Electronics and communication).
Hence after along search enrolled myself for embedded system training in a small institute. They explained the concepts using books and used software simulator to execute small programs of less practical value in industry. After finishing the course out my luck in smaller companies dealing with electronic products in industrial belts around chennai. None proved effective and my search continued day after day and pressure increasing from my parents.
One chance encounter changed my life and gave a break to my carrier. I used to collect micro controller related stuffs in my computer and subscribed to many software tools subscriptions from reputed electronics company in embedded field. They would mail all the subscription CD on a bubble covered pouch.
Once i thought of taking backup of my hard disk onto CD and hence removed my hard disk and wrapped safely on one such pouch and took to a near by computer shop to burn the contents in to CD. Since the burning time for each CD will take about 20 minutes, the shop vendor noticed the pouch bearing the company name and started asking about embedded systems. we soon started conversation regarding every part of embedded system, uses, markets and application areas. During that time he hinted that he owns a small company and they were expecting a new project in embedded system and was searching for any one interested to work with him without fat pay.
I forwarded my resume to them and after few months they called me (i lost my hope and tried some other places during those time) to join their company. It was a small room with a PC and PIC debugger along with all discrete electronic items. There i started learning from basics about transistor principle, board designing, digital electronics, power design, embedded programming in C, cross compiler. we used Microchip's PIC micro controller for all our projects because of in-circuit debugging feature. Out first project was a high power voltage switch for staring motors at preprogrammed time.
Then we started our main project of designing automation electronic systems for a leather painting machine for a mid size leather processing equipment manufacturer. Our job was to replace the equipment's discrete electronic circuits to embedded systems design reducing number of components and reduce service time. We both started a journey of challenging phase in all aspects of embedded systems design and implementation for completing the project successfully. Every thing we had to learn from scratch, we used innovative and ingenious technics to overcome design and development issues both in hardware and software.
once we wrongly designed the board circuit of a high current transistor (TO package) cross connecting the Emitter and collector points. we crossed those two pins and used heat shrink as insulator and soldered the transistor on board, every transistor was left hanging on board. We used schematics software Protel for design instead of graph sheet for a geometric calculation. At last after a great struggle we completed the project and installed in a factory. But the supervisor after noticing glitches on leather during power start up and shutdown refused to
accept our design. We then took a laptop to site and connected the laptop to board using in circuit debugger to fix the issue. But out laptop got hanged due to electro magnetic interference (EMI) from the machine.Then we analyzed the code off line and fixed the issue by adding a delay during power up stage. i enjoyed each and every moment of my work in that company.
I will be sharing my experience about how luck or God's landed in to my first job. After finishing my engineering graduation in the year 2002, which was shaken by dot com bubble burst scenario. Every one in IT were in nightmare as there was numerous job losses in the industry. It was when times were bad for people in software industry to retain their jobs and at that time my hunt for job started and it was very difficult to get jobs in reputed companies. I was trying for all kinds of jobs, and after some rough SWOT analysis embedded system field looked as a bright prospect to me to start my carrier. It would be also in tune with my area of graduation (Electronics and communication).
Hence after along search enrolled myself for embedded system training in a small institute. They explained the concepts using books and used software simulator to execute small programs of less practical value in industry. After finishing the course out my luck in smaller companies dealing with electronic products in industrial belts around chennai. None proved effective and my search continued day after day and pressure increasing from my parents.
One chance encounter changed my life and gave a break to my carrier. I used to collect micro controller related stuffs in my computer and subscribed to many software tools subscriptions from reputed electronics company in embedded field. They would mail all the subscription CD on a bubble covered pouch.
Once i thought of taking backup of my hard disk onto CD and hence removed my hard disk and wrapped safely on one such pouch and took to a near by computer shop to burn the contents in to CD. Since the burning time for each CD will take about 20 minutes, the shop vendor noticed the pouch bearing the company name and started asking about embedded systems. we soon started conversation regarding every part of embedded system, uses, markets and application areas. During that time he hinted that he owns a small company and they were expecting a new project in embedded system and was searching for any one interested to work with him without fat pay.
I forwarded my resume to them and after few months they called me (i lost my hope and tried some other places during those time) to join their company. It was a small room with a PC and PIC debugger along with all discrete electronic items. There i started learning from basics about transistor principle, board designing, digital electronics, power design, embedded programming in C, cross compiler. we used Microchip's PIC micro controller for all our projects because of in-circuit debugging feature. Out first project was a high power voltage switch for staring motors at preprogrammed time.
Then we started our main project of designing automation electronic systems for a leather painting machine for a mid size leather processing equipment manufacturer. Our job was to replace the equipment's discrete electronic circuits to embedded systems design reducing number of components and reduce service time. We both started a journey of challenging phase in all aspects of embedded systems design and implementation for completing the project successfully. Every thing we had to learn from scratch, we used innovative and ingenious technics to overcome design and development issues both in hardware and software.
once we wrongly designed the board circuit of a high current transistor (TO package) cross connecting the Emitter and collector points. we crossed those two pins and used heat shrink as insulator and soldered the transistor on board, every transistor was left hanging on board. We used schematics software Protel for design instead of graph sheet for a geometric calculation. At last after a great struggle we completed the project and installed in a factory. But the supervisor after noticing glitches on leather during power start up and shutdown refused to
accept our design. We then took a laptop to site and connected the laptop to board using in circuit debugger to fix the issue. But out laptop got hanged due to electro magnetic interference (EMI) from the machine.Then we analyzed the code off line and fixed the issue by adding a delay during power up stage. i enjoyed each and every moment of my work in that company.
Friday, September 28, 2007
Entering the blogging world
Hi every,
This is my first entry into blogging world..........I am a software enginner working out of chennai, India. My areas of intrest are Hindi Movies, Indian Economy, Personality Development and Current affairs. I will be posting my views frequently in the blog.
Murugan
This is my first entry into blogging world..........I am a software enginner working out of chennai, India. My areas of intrest are Hindi Movies, Indian Economy, Personality Development and Current affairs. I will be posting my views frequently in the blog.
Murugan
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