I am a middle aged woman (soon to be 30, in a couple of years), short and fat. I am not very ambitious, in fact I am very content most of the time.As long as I have enough money to travel, eat out and shop (i.e. after paying my rent and other bills) I am happy.
However to earn that money I take part in a very strange process. My job is to analyze...err yeah...most of my friends are also in the same profession.
People who are not analysts never can wrap their heads around "Analysis".
Parents, cousins, neighbors, my mom's dentist...all have at some point or the other have asked me,"Ki koro?" ("What do you do for a living?"). Earlier, I tried explaining what credit risk is and how a bank tries to mitigate it. (Yeah I am part of banking analytics).
All they could make sense of was the word "bank". So, now I just say I work with a bank and give a blank look afterwards, seemingly not confident enough to comment any further.
They sulk when I name the bank though,the foreign bank's name does not ring any bells. Thus they safely conclude that in spite of all the promise I showed while I was a student I have ended up doing "bull-shit" and earn peanuts.My parents get all the sympathetic looks, and "there there"s.
I wonder what were to happen if I tried describing a typical day as a credit risk analyst? No harm in trying. I can if I have the willingness, as my company keeps reminding me...that's the CAN-DO attitude!! Yeah baby!So here goes...that is a regular weekday for you if you are a credit risk analyst.
Well you reach office, start your laptop and wait for it to boot. Then when it has started with all fanfare you check your mail.
80% of these mails do not need to be read.They are from all sorts of people mentioning stuff of the following types:
1) Very Senior Manager Hiring/Firing: A new guy has been hired to replace another guy, whom you never knew in the first place. They always mention that we need not be worried because it will not affect us. You may ask,"Then why send me the mail, pray?"
2) The birthday wishes mail, like they care!
3) The sweets at my desk mail, most of the people eat the sweets first and then check the mails, people who come later only get empty boxes and grins
4) Someone had a "new " baby mail: why do you need to know???
5) People inviting the whole office to their wedding, especially from people whose weddings are being organized at some other part of the country; these seem less like invitations and more like dares to me.
Then there is the other category of mails; the important ones:
1) The farewell mails: you follow these people on LinkedIn for the next month. You may soon physically follow them to their new office, if all turns out well for them.
2) The out-of-office mails: it gives you hope.That person won't be bug you at least for some time.You can drop him any number of mails requesting data, code blah blah blah knowing fully well he/she will not reply soon :)
3) The mails from stakeholders/clients etc: you need to explain the same thing for the umpteenth time e.g 2 2 will always equal 4 no matter what time of the day the calculation is being made
4) Meeting request: People send you meeting requests "blocking your calendar to discuss changes you need to make in an excel template: Use of the color blue.". You have to accept them all, you do not have much choice.
However the most important mails come only with subjects and nothing more.They are from colleagues who are also friends or at least pretend to be.These make or break your day. They are of three types for me (maybe more for others):
Lunch?
Break/snacks?
shall we leave for the day?
Checking mails form a very important part of the day.Taking calls is also very important, very very important. You dial in to a conference to discuss your presentations and a lot of other stuff.
So here is how it works:
You dial in with a lot of effort, state your name after the beep and press # or $. You hear a lot of mechanical noises and are welcomed to the conference and finally it is announced that "You have joined"...and when everybody else has joined too the fun unfolds.
India team member:"Hi how are you"
The other side:"Hi hope you are doing well.....so why did you write 2 2=4, I clearly mentioned that 2 2 can not be 4."
India team member: "You see it always is 4"
The other side;" No no no no...you are not listening to me....you listen to me.."
India team member: " I am listening, but you are wrong"
The Indian team lead jumps up with alacrity and often a huge belly, lunges towards the VOIP and puts it on mute. Then he glares at his team member.
"How can you say that they are wrong??? Arre woh onshore wale hain"
"But...how can they say...."
"Arre there are other ways of explaining ....you have to be very polite"
He "un-mutes" the phone, tucks in the belly and starts explaining,"You are right,Mr/Miss Onshore 2 2 always is not 4. You see India team member so and so is new here and does not know that we have a tradition of 2 2 not being 4. So, I will take one minute to explain.....2 2 will not be 4 say when ..."
Here he takes a pause and glares a little more at you.....if you do not look intimidated so he goes on morosely "say if .....suppose,..........if we assume err, .....in case there is a ( 1) there alongside. Then 2 2 will be 5."
The other side:"Exactly! Now we are on the same page" and the call moves on to the look and feel of the presentation.
The other side: "You see the green color you have used is not the right green.I asked you to use the green of the rattle snake you have used the green of young sugar canes...it is preposterous"
The team lead apologizes and the call drags on .....discussing such "important" issues and others.
Now and then they will ask the India team to analyse some data and find out stuff like " How does the risk go up if the card member buys a new dog?". They will throw in the two or three technical terms they have picked up.
"Why do not you take the data and run the code in sas and make a pivot in excel? will ya? So plot the number of dogs the card member has on the horizontal axis and the risk on the vertical one.Please use the right lines widths."
While you are still recovering from the impact of the suggestion.... they will add some more suggestions each more ridiculous than the previous one.....like dog-breed wise charts, age of the dog versus age of the customer plots etc etc....
You may recover just enough to say " We do not have data on dogs of the customers", all the while fuming on the inside that even the relevant data is hardly trustworthy at all.
Then you are blasted for having such an attitude.....you have to do this. You are a very important part of the company and how you have to find a way. You have to have the CAN-DO attitude.
You feel a little like Frodo- the ring bearer.
" This task was appointed to you, and if you do not find a way, no one will."
All this is often marred by technical issues and not to mention a collection of diverse accents.So often we are caught in a loop with them, the onshore people, going " I wan you hggyfsiids yada yada yada" and we saying "Sorry did not catch the last line.Could you please repeat?". This goes on and on, day in and day out.
Then there are training sessions that one can volunteer for, which usually one is forced to attend.I go to such sessions armed with a cup of very hot black tea. My colleagues speculate that I have old monk in my tea cup and that's what keeps me going. I would not deny given the state of things I may soon try that out.
When all this is done then you have time to do stuff that is important like filing your medical claims, printing your train tickets etc.Also you catch-up with friends/colleagues and crib about the place.You fondly remember your last office,how lovely it was....there was a Costa counter and X-boxes and a swimming pool etc. All the while simply not acknowledging the fact that while you were there it did not feel all that nice.But one is only human.
Then you pack your bags and leave for home exhausted wondering how you ended up here in the first place.
By the time you reach your car in the parking lot you forget about all that ......for the evening is still balmy and the restaurants are open for business and you go ahead and have a great time .....remember the CAN-DO attitude!!