IT CultureSeries: Office Bakwas

He was a developer once. In another life. He wrote Java. He remembers Java. He will mention this. He will mention this in every standup, every review, and every conversation where someone tries to explain a technical problem he stopped understanding in the Obama era.

By Bench Babu, BreakingBakwas IT Correspondent  |  May 18, 2026  |  Office Culture Series, Part 1

WHITEFIELD, BENGALURU — He goes by "Rajiv Sir" even though his name is Rajiv and the Sir is entirely self-appointed and nobody has questioned it in eleven years. He has been a manager since 2013. Before that, he was a Java developer for four years, during which he wrote code that he describes as "critical to the project" and that nobody has touched since 2011 because it works and also because no one understands it. This is his legacy. It is in production. It is untouchable. It is his.

Rajiv Sir's daily schedule is as follows: 9:30 AM standup where he asks the team for "updates" which means "tell me what you did so I can put it in my status email." 10 AM status email to his manager that contains everything the team told him, with his name at the top. 11 AM to 1 PM: back-to-back calls with "stakeholders," which means other managers who are also on calls with stakeholders, creating a recursive loop of management that produces no output but enormous calendar activity. Lunch 1 PM to 2:30 PM because he has earned it. 2:30 PM to 4 PM: reviewing documents that he will send back with "can you simplify this?" written in the comments, regardless of how simple the document already is. 4 PM: another standup he calls "sync." 5 PM: he leaves. He has a driver. The driver has been waiting since 4:45.

"In my time, we used to code till midnight. You people don't have that hunger."— Rajiv Sir, to a team that has been debugging a production issue since 7 AM and has not eaten lunch. He said this at 3 PM. He had a full lunch. He had dessert.

Rajiv Sir's relationship with technology in 2026 is: he knows what AI is, he has attended two webinars on it, he has added "AI Enthusiast" to his LinkedIn, and he asks the team every two weeks when they are going to "implement some AI" into the product without specifying what kind, in what form, solving which problem, or what the expected outcome is. The team nods. The sprint continues. The AI is not implemented. Next fortnight, same question. This is agile.

His performance review says he is "exceeding expectations." His team's performance reviews say they need to "improve communication skills." The communication skills being referred to are the ones required to explain technical problems to Rajiv Sir in a way he understands, which is to say: without technical content. This skill is real. It is hard. It is not taught in any engineering college. It is the most important skill in Indian IT.

Rajiv SirLast Coded 2014Your Technical MentorAI Enthusiast LinkedInStandup Bakwas
Disclaimer: Satire. Rajiv Sir is a composite of documented experiences from r/developersIndia, Blind India, and approximately every team in Whitefield. His Java code is in production. It will outlive us all. — Ed.