Long time….

Boy! Its been ages since I have blogged. I owe an apology ( I know no one is reading this, I am just talking to myself) to my readers. Basically I was running behind earning more bucks and slacked on the part I loved the most. I have to say its been a hell of a ride for last 8 months or so. One thing that I have learnt the hard way, if you are a developer who loves writing good software, always are responsible for your code and all other good stuff “The Pragmatic Programmer” has outlined, then Banks are not the place for you. If you already are working in one, well you are already in Deep Shit.

You may ask, why??? Now this would be my perception of the Banking world, but I think most would agree to it. Politics overwrites almost every decision. Now this might be the case more or less in most organizations but Banks are just exclusive for these things. Basically it reminds of Joel Spolsky’s statement about the kind of job you should choose. If you are looking for just money and are ready to work in a politically motivated environment, work like a dog for long hours and are ready to get fired anytime, you are made for Banks.

There is no doubt that Banks these days heavily invest on technology. Although the kind of investment seen sometimes is just seem so wasteful. So Mr. White Shirt is Ultra Global Senior (….) President of a bank. And you know he just loves Silverlight. It should not be surprising to see all kinds of projects converting their existing working HTML code to Silverilght, because hey that is the new Thing. Every thing starts looking shiny, Mr. White Shirt gets another adjective in his titles. Few months later, a rogue trader causes the bank to loose billions of dollars, shittt!!! Layoffs begin, Mr. White Shirt is made redundant. Those Silverlight projects look quite boring now and are maintained by some outsourcing firm in India. Who wants to work on that stuff anyways. Few months later, bank is doing ok, they hire Mr. Pink Shirt. Mr Pink Shirt is high on HTML 5. So he starts an initiative to convert all the existing Silverlight projects to HTML 5 because, well that is how it should have been all along you know! And the story continues…

I think the process I explained in the above paragraph is the reason why software companies are able to sell their latest products to most banks. It is the reason why Indian outsourcing firms keep increasing their revenues year after year. The question is, as a minion in all this, you DEVELOPER, what do you do. One option is to keep minting the money, keep open mind to change technologies and be ready to get fired with your notice period. The other is to think what exactly you want to do in life. If money is the only aim, you are in a very good place. If building good software and following good processes, working in a fun environment is your thing, its time to get your resume out on the job board.

Happy Thinking!!!