(по заявкам читателей, на слабо)
This is a tale of a workman Baldev
and adventures he had.
(there should a priest in it, but there will be forty lewd dancing girls instead).
There once lived Bob, a corporate drone,
A perfectly adequate manager, for one.
Completed his MBA (this took two years and a day)
Knows all vice-presidents’ birthdays
And some of their spouses too
Any other talent God neglected to bestow.
One day he went shopping, concerned and glum,
To hire someone cunning in skills of scrum.
And he chanced upon Baldev, who was there,
Proud as a lion, wide like a bear,
Ambling mindlessly God knows where.
Every living man down on his luck
Will confirm: hiring market consistently sucks,
No long-term prospects anywhere to see
But hey, did you consider a career in IT?
First, let me mention all the money you get.
Also, you may be the ones to create Skynet,
With the help of blockchain, and deep learning, son,
Pull the other one, it's definitely got bells on.
Baldev asks: why so early abroad, good sire?
And what dost require?
[Because olde butchered English is supplemental
To all stories exotique and oriental].
Bob replied: a developer I lack,
Front-end, back-end and full-stack.
Who knows how to read code, purrs like a happy cat,
Practically sleeps in the office, but scrubs up well,
Does Windows. And every Linux shell.
Says Baldev: “I will come as thy servant,
I will be splendid, and punctual, and very fervent.
Will indulge all your wholesome and odd desires
For an H1-B visa (until it expires).
Have my own MacBook, will travel, willing to lose weight.
And my pay is three rupees (times ten to the eight).”
At this Bob pondered, and put his hope
Into American whatevs (a national symbol of hope).
While the idea of hiring only one braggart is odd,
Wasn’t feeding the crowd with two fishes an act of God?
Correspondingly, one fish out of water is an act of man.
By that insane troll logic let’s make him do what he can.
Bob smiles and says: well done! Let’s give this a trial run.
Half-pay for a year and a bit, to see if you are a good fit.
And then one quarter pay, but with benefits
(which include many giggles. But strictly no health insurance).
----
One year contract is all Baldev gets. But he has no worries and no regrets.
He babbles in chat like four men. But he contributes like seven or more men.
When he reads something funny, Baldev retweets.
Then finishes coding and promptly commits.
Watches football, explains quarter-final cricket,
His rubber duck has just closed three tickets.
In other words, he is a rare prize
For any imaginable corporate enterprise.
HR heaps diversity awards on his head,
Administrative assistant pines for him, and is sad.
Young intern calls him papá.
(All right, maybe this is going too far.)
But old man Bob never blesses
Baldev with praise and caresses.
Does not introduce him in conference calls
And forgets to invite him to bar crawls.
One time, a project manager speaks his mind,
We are better off without his kind.
I am not being racist or elitist, but here our plot comes to a common twist.
The more quality work someone has created, the less it is likely to be appreciated.
Meetings without critical remarks make management look superficial.
And objective competence clashes with power that is official.
I agree, productivity tripled in this last year,
But I have to declare this neither there nor here,
Every passing day makes my character daft and droll
Because in truth I don’t know how anything works at all.
Now, middle management is keen and quick-witted,
And for exceedingly clever plans is fitted.
Those two devised, in mood lackluster,
A way to (a) escape the disaster
(b) maintain impression their importance is paramount
… and, most importantly, (c), to increase FTE headcount.
Now Bob’s heart is more cheerful, and his looks at Baldev are less fearful.
He cries “come to me, please do, Balda, my friend honest and true!”
Now listen well to scope of work hereby stated,
And appreciate the responsibility delegated.
Informally, it’s like this. We have a team of contractors, based in Abyss.
(Not Abyssinia, literally in the depths of Hell.
But they are affordable, and have a good mix of skills.)
Sadly, we forgot why we hired them. This is bad,
because we also, somehow, paid them one year ahead.
Their local time is midnight, and one of them always lies,
But please view this as a challenge and a chance to rise,
Rather than a last-moment fix in a cause all but lost.
Go forth and take ownership. I want every t be crossed.
-----
Without arguing anymore, Baldev goes to explore off-shore
.
With due diligence and meticulous eye,
Reads necroposts, and emails without reply.
Shared files accessible through out of print software,
And evidence of product testing, dispersed between here and there.
At midnight, they notice. Liaison officer calls him out.
Baldev, who are you and what is this all about?
This is disruptive software development, old boy!
Everything will be re-written and re-deployed.
Whatever is currently in Java, must become pythonic,
Thus avoiding compatibility issues, both severe and chronic.
The ancient coder hears this, and grieves in his mind.
What have we done to deserve this treatment, utmost unkind?
While in theory those sound like the changes we ought to make
We both know that in practice all legacy code will break.
What have you done? Why, nothing. Corporate thinking at its most common.
But I suggest to stay positive rather than argue against a strawman.
If, by the end of this week at most, we sort out the requirements, by risk and cost,
We will practically know what’s in the MVP. After that, validation. And home scot-free.
Dear subcontinental friend, we kindly ask to get out of our hair.
Take a chill pill. A nap. Start and end an office affair.
Meanwhile, our engineers will follow up with you very soon.
Baldev thinks: “… and Swiss cheese is made out of harvest moon”.
An electrical engineer in zoom appears,
Mews like a famished kitten, is close to tears,
Good morrow, Balda, my dear muzhik!
Now tell me what is this ‘statement of work’ you seek.
We never heard of it, that’s flat.
Why, we poor devils don’t worry about things like that.
But you can write it yourself. Under one condition,
For such is the judgement of our commission,
That no grievance hereafter be …
… we have a constrained optimization sparse algebra library!
Originally developed in COBOL by ghost of Ada Lovelace,
Contains artefacts of both sexual revolution and cold war arms race,
Documentation is absent, that’s probably best for the peace of mind.
Since the last man who read it, regrettably, was confined.
Let’s each of us try to get it running on a modern machine.
If you give up, no hard feelings. Not everyone can win.
At this, Baldev laughed himself silly. Is this, my friend, your device so wily?
Is that the most terrible rivalry
that you conjure up to contend with me?
Do you know there is no contest between lions and men?
I need to call my cousin. Be back in ten.
(We fast-forward through some technical dialogues
In Bengali, Hindi and Tagalog.
The idea that English opens all doors is sweet,
But also fairly trite, and occasionally obsolete.)
On a bare hill’s top, somewhere in the North … code, it does not run.
While Baldev’s benchmarks are the envy of everyone.
Shamed opponent disappears inside the mirror, dazed.
And look, Baldev is rested, cheerful and unfazed.
What is the secret? Why, project branching, my clever eyes.
Did you know Delhi has thirty districts and fifty-nine towns besides?
-------
Ancient fiend is weighing his remaining options,
While Baldev makes all kinds of noise and commotion.
Data lake he troubles, complains that Redshift could have been more rad
And his queries drop SQL server dead.
Another day, another zoom call. Listen, Srinivasa Ramanujan,
We have this unfinished paper, in submission to the PLOS One.
A multidisciplinary study in string theory and epigenetics,
Focused on Godel’s incompleteness, as introduced in Aristotle’s “Poetics”.
It starts with Tom Lehrer’s song (can you guess which one?)
And then padded, for volume, with yellow pages of Yerevan.
The section “Methods” explains that those were the days, my friends.
And then disproves Church-Turing’s thesis, where paper suddenly ends.
We are not exactly expecting Fields Medals (though also nice)
But four patents are pending with our legal advice.
If you finish it by the morning, we attest you are a superstar.
Or else we trust you as far as throw you. And we can throw very far.
Baldev is having a sleepless night, counting hours to morning light.
Feeling sorry about his plight.
We are not saying that his academic degrees are hollow,
But, at this point, his own thesis he cannot follow.
Obviously, he reads technical periodicals, but to practice what someone preaches…
… at this point Baldev remembered: “those who cannot do, should try teaching”.
He could not understand what he read. But he gave a Ted Talk instead.
Consisting of: introductory video by Elon Musk, a laser show with elephants,
A recital in native Basque.
Remaining from the original text: not a single thing.
Finished with mamushka dance while fat lady sang.
Queen of England is writing: “First!!11! How original, what a joy!
But also, who was that weaselly little man next to Mrs. Lakshmi’s boy?”
Pope in Rome, Ayatollah, Lady Gaga write:
“Baldev’s presentation is the best show to watch tonight.”
Saturday Night Live wants to talk to him. For some reason, the Daily Mail.
also American Idol, and America Has Got Tail.
Something to tuck away into storage between your ears,
Social networking is, today, the most notable skill, my dears.
------------
Baldev has had his moment as the internet sensation,
And returns to his duties with vigor and dedication.
He logs on to the remote office with a mighty roar,
And threatens fiends with the statement of work once more.
Now it is my turn, conditions to make
And your lot is to listen and in fear shake.
Did you not seduce relatively honest businessfolk,
with sweet words like ‘boutique’ or perhaps ‘bespoke’?
Did you not watch the requirements swell and creep,
Those promises you have made, now is time to keep!
We need to: set fish on bicycles, knit up a nettle dress,
Catch a tail by the tiger, answer three riddles of Death,
Grant Aladdin his heart’s desire
Everywhere, replace duct tape with barbed wire,
Empower corporate users from mice to men,
And make sure that code converges in O(n *log(n)).
Come on, sons of mothers, do you want to live forever?
(A weak voice in the back of the room trails off “I never… “)
Poor, poor Smeagol could not think of anything else to plot,
Crawled back into source files and gave them a lot of thought.
And there he lay tugging her. And there he lay lugging her.
And there he lay debugging her.
And in three weeks he wore the bitch down!
(See, we had reasons for sudden gender pronouns.)
And now he deserves a rest. The project passed alpha test!
-------------------------
This is where Bob re-appears, as an omen of sweat and tears.
I hope everyone had fun. I am here to inform you that you are done.
While I hold you in great esteem, I am still transferring ownership to the internal team.
At which point we will apply every professional skill we brought,
And redact every other line, whether this makes any sense or not.
Baldev sighs: any miracles will come true
If most of the work has been done by you,
But most of the credit you share
With people who weren’t there.
(That was Sakamoto Ryoma, but do you care?)
Now, the date for release is set, but the story isn’t over yet.
Some of the most senior leadership attend, lining up to shake Bob’s hand,
A representative from HQ, a foreign visitor of odd hue,
Someone so important he does not speak,
Office hypocrites looking for boots to lick,
Millennials paid peanuts,
Some boomers (i.e. simply senile nuts)
And random NPCs hoping there will be donuts.
Test One gave them all an odd feeling, Bob nervously watches the ceiling.
Test Two was displayed, the results of which deprived him of already meagre speech.
At Test Three server crashed. (And the release is fucked.) Now what?
Look what trouble your miserly ways have bought.
This is the end of our morality play.
Vice was punished (sortof), and virtue affirmed today.
On cue, our curtain rolls.
-------------
...
But wait. What about lewd dancing girls?
I see. You must be new here.
By the way,
The problem with representation of women and minorities in the industry
Is not cancel culture, or wokeness, or critical race theory,
Not cultural education, nor wealth tax, not rights to bear arms and pray.
It’s mostly that some people have a little power over others
And use it to act like jerks.Okay?