Process... laws or guidelines ???

... this is one of the "occupational hazards" of working in the networking company. Building BIG devices that carries a country worth of networking traffic.

When one of your creations does some mischief a few thousand people suffer from "net-loneliness". Net (or Internet) has become a basic necessity and has grown on us like an addiction.

So, today was such a hazardous day at work. Somewhere in Eastern Europe, internet became free for most of the users. The service provider, did not like it. And the burnt came to us, the engineers who develop that device. After all what good is it, if it does not make money ?

One of my lead engineers, came to me. He has a fix. Has same sense of urgency to get this in to the hands of customer. Great ! Right ? Not yet ....

There is a barrier - process. We need to follow a process to deliver a fix. And process is an enabler of good behavior, founder of good quality and (alas) barrier for rapid recovery.

So, he shuffled through the stack of process, ignored a few. Saved some time. Delivered the fix.
No one got hurt. No one noticed. At least till now.

This reminded me of my childhood, when school, elders - all preached me on what is good and what is bad. Truth - good. Stealing - bad. Honesty - Good. Lies - bad.

During Ganapati, we used to have inter school competitions on whose Ganesha idol is decorated the best with flowers. That needed a lot of flowers to be collected on that day. No money. So you can not buy flowers. So, we would have to take it from some peoples gardens. Taking it with permission - good. Taking is without permission - stealing - bad.

And very few people gave permission.

So, I was seriously contemplating the second option (stealing) 4AM in the morning from the gardens. Just to get the guilt dissipate, shared my plan with my mom.

Her response was a bit shocking to me that time - "If you are stealing these flowers to offer to God on one particular day of the year - Its OK".

That was my first exposure to "context based Good and Bad". Till that time it was "Absolute good and bad".

Thanks Ma ! This is very handy tip indeed !