Random thoughts

 We have started on a supposedly curious journey and looking at where we are I think there is still a long way to go. I am unsure if we will ever go to where we have envisioned. I felt maybe it will be good to talk, but then it will kill the chance to express myself. So hence this write-up.

It has been very stressful and difficult for the past 3 years and I guess it is the same for you people too. I am putting down my thoughts, feelings, and experiences here. This is to express myself and not to say address these issues. There are no expectations or requirements. These are plain thoughts.

We have transformed both personally and professionally in the past three years. Good, bad, or ugly you will know best. The current work environment is very stressful and toxic is what I feel. You may agree to disagree. We either ignore or may not be able to do anything about this as well. If anyone comes to me and says they do not have a place to sit, infra issues, and any other constraints I do not have an answer most of the times. Maybe I would say it would come eventually and try to dodge it. We take things for granted and try to come up with some intermittent solution. Be it love, hatred, or trust, it is all in the little things. Little things add up to relationships, feelings, and trust as well. If we take a long time to act upon setting up infra, and solving internal issues, by the time the issues are resolved people might already be frustrated. Today to purchase Altium license they say we cannot give you credit because last time you took 70 days to pay. Imagine the same thing happening with our own employees. The third floor has not been set up yet, for whatever reasons it got delayed, but it was ok if it gets delayed also. Have you seen where people eat lunch? People were trying to sit wherever they could. There is no place for discussions. I too do not have a place to sit at all. Not just me, Girish and Abhishek as well do not have a place. Half of the day, we have to figure out where we can sit and work. Figuring out which conference room is empty. Trying to find spots where we can at least focus. Imagine if there is a meeting, and conference rooms are occupied there is no place at all. If a thought runs in your mind at this moment, which says, use my room, please understand it is not practical. I honestly think that is not the solution here. Abhishek has a team as well, where do those guys sit? What if a bunch of people want to sit and discuss. Any person can focus for only 4 hours. In a noisy and cluttered workplace, we stretch the timelines due to shallow work. Something that is possible in a few hours takes a week. This is not because of the person but due to the environment. If people spend half of the day figuring out where to sit, and how to do jugaad to get work done, there is very little time left to work. Imagine after being frustrated and fed up, what will be the mental state of a person? We get mediocre work done. We let bugs go into products. We let products go out with poor quality. We are left with anxiety. We are left with fear. This fear creeps into every part of our lives.

This is not a write-up to list out the issues. I rather want to highlight nothing is being done here. People are taken for granted. We have gone through challenges and at this point in life, we might be mentally strong, at least I assume we are. Not everyone is the same. People may not have the patience to let go of problems and concerns. They may not adjust. Put in employees' perspectives and think. We might think only people with a good attitude will stay in spite of problems, if it is so we are not building a company for the long term. We should first focus on building a good environment, which I doubt is possible. In life, if we have problems we can either look at them as problems or as challenges. I have tried to look at these as challenges and move forward. Even though sometimes it is difficult to think this way since the issues are endless.

We do not provide or have peer feedback between us. Maybe at this point, we think it does not make any sense. I am constantly interrupted by emails, requests, and time from people. I feel I am not able to manage my time and work effectively, burning myself. In this process lot of times, I felt it was not very important to act upon a certain task. If Anant mails or some issue has come up in Livguard I tend to ignore it or procrastinate. I am working on this. Being drained and choked, I constantly feel frustrated. Responsibilities are endless. At this point in time maybe I am totally down and not feeling good by doing mediocre work. In many scenarios, if either Sriteja or I are occupied or not doing our work, Akhilesh takes it up. This ensures we still attend to requirements. I do not feel bad for this but I feel now we have become strangers and we do not share enough feedback. If I am supposed to do something and I am not doing it or procrastinating, what do you think you guys should have done? Sorry to say but today if I suggest a solution, write an email, or ask for some information in the case of Livguard or someone external or even internal, I do not feel confident. Not because I do not trust my judgment, it is because I feel I will be overridden. Sriteja, I do not know what we are getting from this deal with SAR group. Honestly, I just hope we get something and do not even care what the worth is. Forget money; are we content with what we are doing? There is still no clear path to where will we reach by doing what we are doing now. We cannot keep changing our targets and goals now and then. You say you have clarity, but maybe not everyone has. If we are not clear about what we are doing, I feel discomfort. What frightens me more is that everyone else is ok with not having a vision. If you have and I do not have, I am helpless then. We are not on the same page ourselves. Each of us has our own ways of doing and rather than giving peer feedback, we just do what we want to silently. I understand all of us work towards the betterment of this company, but this is not helping us grow personally. We do not have a common vision and mission for the company. Where are we even heading with the projects we are working on? I do not care at this point, what I am getting in return in terms of money, but my feeling to work here is fading away. I try each day to work on myself and handle stuff myself, but not getting there. All of us work without any bad intentions but we are doing things to attend to immediate problems. We could have worked ahead in time anticipating these problems rather.

It is not about tables, chairs, or having a place to discuss. It is about creating a workplace that is not toxic and stressful. It is about having clarity about the value we want to create in lime. Either we try to make that happen or we simply say to ourselves this is not possible and move on. Anything is fine.