May Day - Labourers day

One of the routine day, was travelling to office, by office bus. My office is located at, Sipcot IT park, Siruseri, Chennai. To reach office, we need to travel atleast 1hour 30 mins to 1hour 45 mins. To be safe to reach office, before office time, Management, have organized, bus to come to our destination, bit early. So minimum 2 hours, need to be spent, before start of the office and same hours for returning back to home. So, in action, I need to devote around 13 hours a day, just to go, work & come back from office to vice versa.

During bus travel, I use to observe, about fellow passengers / co-workers, about their enthusiasm, preparedness, curious of the day. But most of them, keep themselves as a regular mechanical activity. Getting-up into the bus, from the same pick-up point, grab a window seat on driver direction(Morning sun - Does not strike), or any possible window seat location and continue their morning sleep. Same story continues, evening too.

Few days back, when our bus was nearing to Sipcot entrance, I happened to see another bus, with lots of North-Indian(atleast not Tamil) faces, as construction workers(labour class), sitting into the bus, and looking for the day. To my surprise, all of them were awake in the bus, & it, just overtaken our bus for their business day.

After seeing that bus, I just looked at the people in my company bus. It just felt that, we are not anyway different from those construction workers. In general, we were brought to the workspace, by the company bus. We work / slog at office, doing all forms of activities, to fulfil our stakeholder expectations, to make our living. Probably that could be the reason, to refer, all software workers as 'Cyber Coolies' like construction workers.

Prime difference, Construction workers, can see their creations, and it can be shared and shown, with proud about their contribution. But Software in kingdom, their creations, cannot be seen by ourself and undergoes changes for every business impact or change.

Anyway...most of the software professionals, feel that the May Day belongs to Labourers / Working community alone. We are not part of that group. Just wanted to conclude you all, that this, May day is belong to all our software professionals also. We also represent, this working community.

Wishing you happy may day.