The alarming rise of SEs.

If you were ever be able to think, there is hardly anything more disturbing than the fact that we are becoming into a small nation of Software engineers. Finding a SE engineer a few years ago is like finding a gold mine, but now it is as simple as finding a general store. Go to any cross road in Pune and throw a stone, the probability that it hits a SE is more than that of Australia winning a cricket match.

It is an exciting fact that there is lots of money involved and software companies making more money by making its people sitting on bench; and many a young man, who if were to born a few years before would be living on a crest of Paav, is now spending his weekends in one of the multiplexes or discos. This obviously has a marked effect on our community. Our children grow up to adolescence with a feeling that they can become SE instead of working. Many an embryo scientist has been ruined by the thought that a SE makes lots of money. Lots of promising young microbiologists and talented physics lecturers are giving up their steady jobs to become a SE. Each day, almost all the roads’ progress in Pune is positively impeded by swarm of SE heading for their offices. It is horrible to see these young men, who otherwise would be happily doing some research in a lab or teaching someone in their class, smothering themselves, with their fingers in the hair and features distorted, trying to code in something.

If this were not to be enough, the rise in number of engineering colleges is adding fuel to the fire. It is too early to judge the effects, but one thing for sure it has taken the lid off and unleashed the forces on which no one can ever take control. All those restrictions on the requirements for the job of SE have vanished, now every one is an Engineer. And one more exciting feature for SE is bench; the very idea of earning without doing anything is exciting. And Software companies earning on bench strength is even more exciting.

Until this concept has come, there is one thing which stood like a mountain in the way of a tsunami wave. When one’s son comes and ask “Dad, I want to become a SE”, instead of searching for breath you can always scare him off; “What about the hard work you have to put in son? You will be trained in J2EE and will be asked to work in .NET, there will be no time for your family, no girls, nothing”.

The next day a new maths lecturer is born.

But now, things changed. There is lots of time for everything, you can always be on training and there is no utter necessity to be on production, you can earn lakhs and lakhs without having to do anything, and girls are a bonus.


Who can say where this thing will end? Engineering seat is with in reach for many. A sleeping nation has wakened to the realization that there is money to be made out of rewriting the same code again and again. Something must be done shortly if the nation is to be saved from this menace. Probably the only hope lies in the fact that SEs never buy other SEs stuff, they will download it from net, hack it, but nay, never buy it. When once we have all become SEs, the sale of all software ceases. And that day, we do not need to code.

-AKP,

P.S: This essay is inspired by PG Wodehouse's sarcasm.