Karthik's farewell

Last Tuesday was Karthik's farewell. He was sort of my third "boss" to leave this company, not a very good omen. He is a man with a loud voice, or rather a person who dare to step up and voice out. Probably he is one of the good middle management material, someone who tries to look after their subordinate and did a good job in controlling the customer. Maybe he is too logical sometimes or lack of complete understanding or certain issues, but I am willing to forgo these "qualities".

We have a farewell dinner at Soi Fine Thai Restaurant at the 23rd floor of Menara PanGlobal. It had a modern contemporary atmosphere, but the price is pretty steep. The food is just okay, nothing exceptional about it. But the atmosphere is pretty good for couple to enjoy a quite night out, with a nice view of the city. But we sort of spoilt the atmosphere for some couple that night; we can't help but to be noisy, as there are 20 of us.



I was unofficially "transferred" to the R&D department in our company, which is "verbally" in existence at the moment. I was supposed to take the responsibility of Architect/Evangelist to come up with the development framework and best practices to be use in all future development. There is officially 2 person in this team, where another one is still busy with other projects while I might be transferred to other projects when such need arise. The problem is that we don't have enough manpower and the management is unwilling to go full sail with this R&D effort, as it is still a cost centre. Probably not everyone is willing to invest for the long-term benefit, or the management just don't understand Software Development. I would say they are pretty reluctant and was hopeful I can complete my mission with as little recourses as possible. The situation is not optimistic, but I still like the R&D thingy. I would proceed with my research to come up with a flexible and easily maintainable framework, which might in term make me a real Software Architect in heart one day. The challenge is not just to create a framework, but to preach the idea to other developer in my company to use it as well. Doing technical and sales at the same time :)

The ironic part is Karthik offered me the opportunity in R&D when I tendered my resignation sometime ago (to seek for more challenging task as the work here is pretty chaotic and monotonous), but he is leaving now instead of me.