My pet peeves at workplace

Where do I start it? Since the time I shifted from Bombay to Pune there has been a stark difference in the professionalism at office and in general, the culture. Sadly, its bad. While it was very evident to me at my earlier workplace in pune it never manifested the way it does in my current workplace. And one thing that bothers me the most is the way we communicate with our colleagues at workplace. read on...

One cannot avoid working with people with different cultures and regions at workplace. Essentially eveyone has a different native language. At my workplace there are south Indians with Mallus, Andhraites and Tamilians forming strong groups. And yes there are tons of Maharashtrians. It disturbs me that people speak in their regional language while talking to each in group when they very well know that there are others who wont understand what they are speaking. In my project there are equal number of Bengalis, Tamilians, Andhraits and lots of Marathis. Maharashtrians usually talk between themselves in Marathi oblivious of the fact that others do not understand them, so is true about the other groups. For me it all began when my counterpart Manager started explaing to me about the project in Marathi. I was always talking with her in English while she did in Marathi. Probably that had a good effect in a sense that after that she only talked with me in Hindi or English. Mind it that Hindi is still acceptable to a certain extent as most of the people can understand it.

While I consciously avoid talking in Marathi; a large number of my colleagues simply do not get why I am doing so. To an extent that have started doubting that I am a Maharashtrian. One fine day one of my directs gathered enough courage to ask me why I do not talk Marathi or answer back in Marathi even if anyone is talking in Marathi with me. My answer was simple and it was its just not professional. There are few others sitting around us who would never understand what we are speaking about. Speaking in regional language builds barriers amongst people and leads to forming goups in the team. Which as a team is non productive. People in one group are simply not comfortable talking to the people in the other group the way the do it with the people in theirs. This at time goes to an extent where its results in non productivity. To give an example I usually spend 3 times more time in understand an issue that one of my telgu collegue has just because he has lost the ability to properly communicate in English and I do not understand Telgu at all. This at times drives me to frustration.

So when Joel writes that good programmers should be able to communicate well, should be good writers; its not without reason.