A New Hope

Obviously I am a Star Wars fan, hence the title.
I thought about the time spent at office, and I've come to realize that I am not an expert in any field. In seven years, I know a little bit of everything, but am not an expert in any particular field. Not Good!
Being an Instrumentation engineer, I have given up hope of gaining expertise in that particular field. The reason being that I have no avenues to get my hands dirty. If one needs to become an expert, one has to gets his hands dirty. So what can I do?
I have a computer in front of me, so why not start coding and automating stuff. Automation is not just  for a plant, one can automate other stuff and add transparency to the system.
There are people who will tell me that numerous people are doing this, why should you do this too. You are an Instrumentation engineer and so on so forth. But I got to do something, and it is the best thing one can do, when the only resource available is a computer.
If all else fails....Code!

When everything goes south

In my previous post I mentioned that I had to attend an interview to get promoted to the next grade. In between the last interview and the recent interview, the promotion rules got modified. A new option was added, which could postpone the promotion by a year.
As luck would have it, I attended the interview and have now got a delayed promotion.
I studied a lot, but there were questions that I could never answer. The composition of thermocouples is not something that I am prepared to commit to my memory. You open a book its available.
I happen to work in the area of simulation and software etc. However, just a day before the interview, I have to wear the mask of an Instrumentation engineer. Thats bad!
Unlike last time, I am not very disappointed. People who are 2 years junior to me would become my peers. My batchmates would either become a year senior or two years senior.  All that doesn't matter, as long as the job is satisfactory. I wish I could say that.
As these promotions are the metric through which one can climb the ladder, and with what has happened, my ladder will be quite short.
I somehow feel at peace and yet there an urgency to jump ship.
I'll have to work towards that.
Obviously, twice in a row is a message of incompatibility. I can't just leave. I have responsibilities.
I have to be an expert in a field and maintain my market value.
As far as Instrumentation is concerned, I think the field is saturated and it is more of managerial work. We don't develop Instruments, we use them.
I am still working on my escape route but who knows, in the end I will be languishing in the same organisation and would be describing my next promotion interview after 6 years.
To quote Andy Dufrense, ' Hope is a good thing and good things don't die'.
I hope that I will enjoy my job, I hope that things will work out, I hope that I'll sleep content, and wake up happy.
I'll work towards that.

The Plan

When it comes to my house, I normally brood and think what have I gotten myself into.
Then I read the book, 'The Martian', I watched the movie long before. In the book (and the movie), I could see how the protagonist an engineer (and a botanist) was analytical and solved all his problems. His problems were a billion times greater than mine are. Getting Inspired from that book and being an engineer myself, I will get down to solve the problem.
To start with I live in a house which is about 28 km from my office. I knew that when I bought the house. After moving in, a road nearby was opened, and now a lot of traffic goes by my house.
The increased vehicular movement has made it very noisy. Somehow I find that most of the people here have a proclivity to honk. In addition, there is ambient noise from the neighbours walls. Last night he turned on his AC. The split unit made a lot of noise. I do not know why he turned on his AC, when the ambient temperature is around 20 deg C. Anyways, I got up in the middle of the night.
My house faces the Road, so in the morning and evenings are cacophonous. I can reduce the decibel level by closing all the windows, but even then, it still is uncomfortable.
In addition, I have neighbours who love to keep their door open and watch TV.
Neither my wife nor I have any friends here. There are many families living here, but we leave in the morning and return in the night. Weekends, I don't know how they fly by.
The obvious solution to this is to move to another house, which is peaceful and nearer to my office.
That presents 2 options.
Option 1 : Take a house on rent.
Option 2 : Move to the office colony.
Now Option1 is an immediate solution, and there are virtually unlimited options.
But moving into a rented accommodation has its own problems, for starters the rent increases yearly. There are virtually very less modification that one can carry out. The owner may object to banging nails etc. And there is always a likelihood, that I may have to vacate.
Option 2 on the other hand depends on many factors. There are three colonies for the office. Two of them are in the city and one of them is in the outskirts of the city. My office is also on the outskirts of the city. The colony that is located on the outskirts which I shall call colony 3, is okay and houses are available, but it is near the office (in fact to close for comfort), and being the outskirts, the power cuts are more and the nearest supermarket is about 15km away. That won't be a problem, because I order veggies online. But it is really remote, and I am sure, my wife won't like it.
There are two other colonies, Colony 1 and Colony 2. Colony 1 is beyond my pay grade(I'll come to that later). Colony 2 is in the city, in a very good area. Many shops nearby, a nice and vibrant place.
But most of the employees are seeking colony 2. It has a play ground and the dispensary is located within the colony. It is also very old.
Colony 1, is just one step above my pay grade. I would have been eligible, had I cleared the promotion interview. But I didn't.(I mentioned that in my previous post.)
Colony 1 is about 5 km from were I stay, but it is located in a very calm and quiet place. And it is bang in the centre of the city. Lots of amenities around.
So I guess my best bet is to wait it out till I get eligible for the Colony 1. The next promotion interview is in January 2017. I need to clear that 'son of bitch'.
Clearing the interview is completely unrelated to the amount of work I do(my productivity). All I have to do is study like a mad man and answer the questions that are posed. Nothing else matters.
That gives me six months to prepare.
I can't study at home(Too much Noise :P ). I have to study at office.
Earlier I thought I'll write GRE, or the German equivalent. But all that will not work out, not when you're married.
On working days, I am loaded with work and even if I am not, the atmosphere is not conducive to studying.
I will have to go to office on weekends to study. Can't help that.

The Up and The Down

A couple of years after I joined my work place, a senior colleague of mine, received  a coveted award for his contribution to the facility. I know him well and was happy for him. A part of me just wondered, if I would receive such an award one day. I told my self to stop fantasizing. I was an underdog all through high school. Not that I had fun, I just couldn't digest things the way they were. I worked hard, had my nose in all the prescribed book, but nothing would get inside. The results got my parents worried, can't blame them though, and I felt inferior.  In college I did better. The prescribed books were far better, and most of them penned by foreign authors.
 Getting my current job was a real morale booster. And I thought thinking about the award is a little far fetched. I stopped thinking about it.
I went on about work, giving it my best. And then after 4 years, I got nominated for the award and received it four months later. I was elated. I took my wife along, for the award ceremony.
More importantly, I got back my confidence. I felt that I could achieve many things, solve a lot of problems. I worked harder with more confidence.
Coincidentally, I had to attend a Promotion Interview for promotion to the next grade.
The Interviews are conducted in the HQ. The HQ prides itself in being a premier research centre. We are not exactly a research centre. The Interview committee consists of senior officials from the HQ.
Here is something important that needs to be highlighted.
The HQ is a full fledged research centre, where the primary focus is on research. We on the other hand are supposed to have a primary focus of Production, but unfortunately our office is torn between these two fundamentally incompatible values.
I believe, that the purpose of a production centre is to get the job done. However in a Research Centre, like our HQ, emphasis is laid on assimilating knowledge, with little or no output. The primary focus of most of the people, I believe is to publish papers.
Now I had to prepare for the interview. Normally a write-up is sent for the reference of the committee. The candidate is also aware of the contents of the write-up.
Being an Instrumentation Engineer, my job description should have automation projects using PLCs etc. However due to certain managerial issues, I was restricted to Relay Logic technology only. I worked on Relays for a year and a half, thinking I would be assigned to PLCs. That didn't happen.
I guess some people were insecure and some were timid, and I was stuck in between them.
Fortunately, due a person working in a different group, I could do something that was intellectually stimulating and after completing that task I received an award.
Before the interviews, there were mock interviews and my superior told me that it would be embarrassing for him and me, if I claimed that I hadn't worked in the domain of PLC etc.
So here I was spending precious time reading about PLCs and it features, despite not working on it. I felt frustrated. I read almost everything in my writeup.
Along with a colleague who had to attend the same interview, I went to the HQ.
We were given a room, next to the rooms of PhD scholars, and Trainees. Needless to say, the rooms were dirty and extremely obnoxious. We got it changed and it was the same in other room. In addition my colleague was a snorer. Not that I can blame him for that. A night before the interview, I didn't sleep. A day before, my domain expert asked me read some complicated equations. (Domain experts are people who are supposedly experts in the domains in which I work.)
The next day, I was groggy. In the Interview, I was not at my best. On top of that, I was being interrogated and intimidated by certain panel members. There were some irrelevant questions too.
I didn't make it.
I was devastated. I didn't know what to do. I was completely demoralized.
An award winner and a loser.
I was ashamed to go back to office. How could I face people in my office ?
I somehow went to office. From the car park to my desk, I could feel a lump in my throat.
I would be constantly reminded of my failure by people who actually cared and people who just needed fodder for gossip.
And there were those, who would ask me How can an award winner fail in an Interview.
I doubted myself, if I received the award on merit or was it just a random selection.
A few days passed, I thought I should pursue higher studies in a foreign country, then decided against it.
I initiated the expansion of my project, because it would help the office and was truly motivating.
At home, I read a management book that my father suggested, ' The Effective Executive ' by Peter Drucker. There were many good points in the book. One that relates to my Interview fiasco is that performance in school is a measure of promise that a person can deliver, however it is the actual work that a person does that counts.
Keeping this in mind, I could make peace. I worked hard, I got the job done, that's why I am getting paid. But I couldn't answer some questions and couldn't show promise. But I did some awesome work on my own, which was satisfying and met the targets of the office.
But some times I do feel a pang of sad emotions.