B.E.N.C.H

This one is going to be a post, which i wanted to make for quite some time.. The name B.E.N.C.H is a famous/infamous term among the corporate IT circle and the one that would have sent a chilling fear right down the spine of every software engineer three years ago, now thats not the case exactly, for a second straight day am able to blog.. so i thought of finishing this draft which was also due for quite some time..

Before i get to my take i would like to furnish a mail that i got from one of my friends which was really funny and at the same time portrayed the reality with the bench scenario in MNCs offlate, before i begin here is the mail i got from my friend and he wanted me to publish this in my blog.. here goes the article(the work of my friend will be given in italics)

"Bench ke side effects"


WARNING : All the views presented below are fictitious and any resemblance
to me is a CRIME. Believe me I DO WORK IN OFFICE.

Bench, yes you rightly thought, here I am referring to the famed IT industry
bench which has always been associated with frustration and monotony. It is
partly true, but there is a lot more to the bench as I discovered when I was
part of it. And this is what I share with you.

To start with, I don't see bench as a single word rather it seems to me as
an acronym whose full form is "Bachelor ENjoying Cashed Holiday". It's a
paid holiday package from your company where you are asked to do nothing and
you are paid for the same i.e. doing nothing.

As Newton said in his third law, Every effect has a side effect and so has
the bench. Let's discuss those side effects one by one.

Side effect no 1. I am now a days popularly known among my friends as the
yellow page guy. No not because i started wearing yellow pages, the title
has come to me thanks to my brain's search engine. Be it home loan queries,
tax queries ,credit card queries, good food joints, lonely places for
couples in and around city and I have the answer. If i don't have the answer
at that moment then i am always ready with my ready-made voicing message "We
are pleased to receive your query. We would answer your query in the next 3
googling hours , please bear with us."

Side effect no 2
If you have a creative hand, then these are the software for you - Flash and
Adobe Photo Shop . Install them and you will find doors of a world of
creativity opening for you. Experiment as much as you can and send it to all
your friends specially to those friends who are girl by their species. These
will bring you all the applause. So here a word of caution don't be too
creative and if you are in I-Can't-help-it sort of situation then atleast
dont mail around your hyper-creativity.

Side effect no 3
All the bachelors can be broadly divided into two main categories 1)Engaged
2)Ready to be engaged. Now if are in the lucky first category then you are
blessed if you are on the bench since you have a huge amount of time. You
can reach the restaurant 15 minutes earlier and wait for her (atleast keep
2-3 empty cups of coffee and 3-4 plucked roses on table for documentry
proof).This will atleast save you from all the scoldings in future meetings
where you would be certainly late. Now if you fall in much crowded second
category then this is the right time. You can attract your first love or search for second love or achieve your lost love.


Here is my take on this, For those who dont know about the concept of BENCH i wil explain it very clearly now, Every project generally recruits more than its need and once the need is fulfilled the rest of the people will be unallotted and they are those who are called as BENCH sitters for they are part of the project and are a mere a shadow resource and they wont be part of the project all they have to do is come to office daily,browse and return again.

For those who aspire to move faster in the hierarchy of MNCs dread this term very much, because with no work there will be no recognition and usual there wont be any onsite opportunity(its the driving catalyst for all software engineers joining now)
so many people generally avoid this by getting into some projects, but on the other hand those who want to earn their money without working make the best out of this.

Coming to the sideeffect #1: My friend says he has so much time that he can do anything he wants and even act like an yellow pages, thats absolutely true i have seen many people like him very recently, well there are bigger things which are targeted for people at bench, the thing am gonna talk about is the multilevel marketing(MLM) which i heard about when i joined in my organization a year back, i wont be naming the organization or anything in particular for there are many like it presently and all the executives in it are s/w professionals(i was stunned when i heard about it), as the name suggests one has to invest a particular amount to money to join(thanks to credit cards,this can be taken care of very easily) and then they have to continue the chain by making more members to join below them, for the huge investment they got some souvenir(they call it something else) or some product in exchange, so this has started as a new business and any working professional wont be able to make the cut in there because i heard one has to attend so many meetings and bring in more people to extend the chain..even during weekends at ridiculous timings like early morning 6.30 AM on a sunday!! i heard there are even onsite opportunities in MLM biz and many s.w professionals who are in bench spend more time in MLM offices than their respective MNCs.. These all info were given my roommate who has invested and lost a great deal in this business,how ironic he realized it very late i could only feel sorry for him..

no prob with effect # 2 as long as it hurts nobody, the concept of forward mails got a huge appreciation again in the s.w industry,my mailing list is very huge as well and in the midst of fixing a bug these forward mails give a huge relief and break from the tension, even if the mail is repetitive almost everyone cherishes them now except the very senior people in organization who have an aversion towards them(may be they have seen too many mails i guess!!)

coming to the effect #3.. as my friend put it out, bench life can be the starting point of many romantic interludes, am still wondering not many films are made about a guy or gal in software,there are as much as six couples in the first category mentioned by my friend in my wing alone(according to classified information ;0)), hope someone makes a good film on it sooner!!

now to round it off.. hope every1 got the two faces of benchlife, for a person who is aiming to do a higher education or go to some other company, bench life is the optimal one for one can use it to great usage, on the other hand if one has to move up the ladder in the company if you are stranded in BENCH its upto you to get out of the bench,those who are into MLM please be aware of all the risks one has to take before you invest,be careful with your credit cards for my friend who had joined this business had his credit card been swiped and then intimated, this post has been specially asked by my friend who was affected by this MLM..

Happy Bench Life for all those who are enjoying it!!! be careful thou!!
untill next time!!

p.s have to end this abruptly any time my firewall will be back!!

Comments

BENCH seems fun to me.
What exactly do these MLM do? I understand all you have to do is invest some money and bring some people in. What exactly do they do?

long time mate.
how did the gre go?
Venki said…
@Athos..
You refer ppl and u get a souvenir for d investment made,saying u wil get only one of d souvenir(i.e noone else in world will hav a collection like it)..then u wil hav to start referring ppl.. who wil invest much more.
Serendipity said…
From the day I joined this company, my utilisation has been reading 100 % :( I am not on bench when I badly need to be :(
Being in bench is part and parcel of life.Fundamentals of IT companies needs to be questioned.

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