Manager asking junior to get married after being asked for work — This is real!!
There has been a lot of talk around engineers asking for insane amounts of money, even if they are freshers. But what exactly do they do once they get inside. Presenting an inside scoop….
My cousin, a coder by profession started working for this unicorn startup sometime back. Let me first brief you a little about his team and the startup in general. There are multiple products within the company and they cater to a mix of international and domestic clients. The product that my cousin works for mostly caters to the international market and his team is fairly lean with not more than 15 members, again mostly software folks and a couple of business guys.
So this cousin also happened to live very close to my place and I got a first hand knowledge of his lifestyle. Here is what his average day would look like:
9.30 am: Get up
10.30 am: Goes for a Cult session nearby
11.30 am: Returns home for a quick shower and gets ready for office
12:00 pm: Books any of those cabs
1.00 pm : Reaches office and straight for lunch
2.00 pm: Done with lunch and sits down for any meeting or work
3 pm: Goes down to play some cricket
4 pm: Books cab back home (wants to avoid crazy traffic)
5.30 pm: Second Cult session of the day (yes this is the second cult session of the day)
7.30 pm: Pings me for walks or beer depending on day and mood
10ish: Watching Netflix or doing some random stuff
So, yes this was his daily schedule more or less. There would be that one-off day that he would have to work and those days were the ones where he would definitely call me in an exhausted tone and say ‘Too much work today bro’. Very soon I realized that too much was 2–3 hours maximum. Mind you, he is very smart in terms of work and his product was succeeding in that bandwidth, they were making 6 figures per day or month something, that too in dollars.
By now you have a good idea of his lifestyle, both personally and professionally. But while you must be thinking that this is a dream job, it doesn’t really work that way. People get tired, they are looking for some professional satisfaction too and that happened with my cousin within 6 months. He was getting tired of being idle more than half the time.
So, very courageously he walks up to his manager and asks for some work. This is how the conversation went:
Cousin: Boss, I need some work, been idle for way too long, you need to give me something
Manager: Hmm..so you are telling me that you want some work
Cousin: Yes, need something to do…
Manager: Tell me something, how old are you
Cousin: What??? ok…I am 26
Manager: Toh bhai jaakar shaadi karo, honeymoon pe jao..yahi toh umar hai….(Go, get married, enjoy your honeymoon, this is the time for those things, not work)
And that is how the conversation ended and he sat idle for another 6 months before he could make a move again. Also, he is still not married…engineer haina..
Guys — for all those who want to know which company and which particular product this is, please subscribe to my newsletter..lol..I know I am stooping low, but then I have no other choice..
Let me make my case further with why this company might suit many of you…Again I have seen this conversation taking place over their internal communication channels first hand. For those of you who are unaware and are communicating via Whatsapp channels, there are many products which allow company people to have internal communications in a similar fashion by creating groups and so on. This company was using a product called ‘Slack’.
So this is also a pre-covid story and they had this thing wherein anyone working from home would put a message in the Slack group that they would be working from home today and so on. Here is the conversation:
Employee: Guys, will be working from home today, have some relatives at home, available on phone and Slack
Manager: There is no work for the entire team, what exactly would you be working on?
Employee 2: hhahaha
Employee 3: hahaha
Employee: aaahh..ok..
So once again, if anyone wants to know company and specific product name, you know what to do…
