Corona Stories: Software engineer vs Teacher
Most of the software engineering work will be on silent mode, as we have to deal with systems, programming, automation checking the alerts. The most of the time our phones ring is when there is an alert, and more when there is escalation, and we are busy when we have meetings. The caller for most of the time will be system generated message of an alert.
Life is busy with the systems, scrolling over and over, and if not we have to keep watch on mails and chats or meeting pop-ups.
For non IT person, its like we are just sitting in front of the system, or making keyboard noise. Even for a slight break if we just listen to song or watch a movie, people think we are free enough and have no work or just killing the time over the system.
And the life during this pandemic has been horrible, as when we just get up to take coffee, or walk have to take up some household work, or get the grocery. The people are also fed up with “you just in front of laptop, and keep munching something, how many times you eat and drink”.
Some days it will be whole day of meetings, and some meetings are just called off, and people at home thing we are just avoiding them and giving out a reason, to have to pick up to make breakfast or lunch or even dinner.
Now my wife who is a teacher, has school and even have to prepare for the class, so she can gel with kids to make the subject interesting. Teachers, they have scheduled time for the class, and then every two months exams, and before the holidays some school activities.
So, this pandemic year, she is also in front of her laptop, preparing vidoes for the class, or presentation for theoritical classes.
The class will be all fun and jolly, kids will call out “good morning teacher”, then a prayer, then some scolding for the late comers, and the people who are chatting or making noise.
The online class is also same as it has been at offline school, and sometimes to give warning to students have to come up on video, which would be different fun, as kids will be in odd position, walking on terrace or lying on bed, or munching something.
The phone rings for teacher is when someone has to talk, and the talk can go to any topic, and finally end at blaming software engineer “don’t know why he keeps making keyboard noise”, or “these IT people do such a show off, these systems are good for nothing, sometimes change icon, meetings are slow, videos are not clear, its always better to go school and teacher as these systems hung up so many times”
And finally blame comes direct, “why do we have to praise these IT people, some times network issue, some times needs reboot, sometimes need update, and for some the presentation fonts also dont appear, every time some or other issue, and say will fix in next version, why you people can’t fix once for all, last night whatsapp was down and I could not send my attendance sheet to school, so pathetic”
With online classes, now teacher have to work more, even sit late night check every photo to do correction, and some dont even have clear pictures, or shadow falling. Taking exams also has been difficult, some times oral, where after listening to questions, students go on mute and then answer. Sometimes written test, when we even dont know if student is on his own or copying, and we teachers have to keep watching them.
Well for software engineer, now we also have double work preparing the question paper, preparing excel sheet for attendance, to give precise how may login/logout kids did, setup and schedule class, and keep watch on the internet connection. If issue with internet connection followup with the provider, and also keep solution for others at home with hotspot live.
And here comes another alert.. and same message some node not accessible, just press of a button on phone I have to login, when my wife’s mobile rings there is good amount of talking.. if someone calls me and keeps talking will say kya pakao hai..
