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Message |
| Posted By: |
Uncle Tantra |
| Date: |
30-Mar-2004-00:19:45 |
| Subject: |
L'Intelligence, Artificielle et Naturelle |
I remember well the moment I first realized that my life had become seamless.
It was on the Pacific Coast Highway, driving from my apartment in Malibu into Santa Monica, on my way to work. It was early in the morning, the sun was just coming up, and I was listening to a Bruce Cockburn album on my car's tape player. He was singing:
Sun's up, looks OK
The world survives into another day
And I'm thinking of eternity
Some kind of ecstasy
Got a hold on me
And I was smiling. On my way to work. Go figure.
It was the first moment that Rama's teachings about the possibility of career as path really made sense to me. I was on my way to work, but I was really looking forward to it. Because I had found myself a gig at the then third-largest software company in the world, and had found that I enjoyed what I was doing for them as much as I enjoyed anything else in my life. I had found that there was no longer any difference between my 'work life' and my 'real life.' It was all real. It was all life. It was all fun. It was a cool realization.
This morning, it happened again.
I was on Metro line #6, somewhere between Montparnasse-Bienvenue and Place d'Italie, jacked into my CD player, listening to the same Bruce Cockburn song, and the same ecstasy got a hold of me. And for the same reason. I was on my way to work, and looking forward to it.
Yes, it's true. Uncle Tantra, known I am sure in these parts as the Ultimate Crazy, the burned-out wreck who has been living as a starving writer in Paris for the last few months (well, not exactly starving, since I came here with a sizeable bank account...let us say instead living as a 'thrifty' artist in Paris) is...dare I say it?...working again.
For money. For good money. For a French AI company. Go figure.
And it's fun. And yes, I found myself in the Metro this morning yet again wearing the same smile I wore in my car that morning on PCH, having yet again the same realization, that my life was...yet again...seamless.
Oh, I'm still a writer in Paris, especially when that story has a greater probability of getting me laid than being a software nerd, but for the last six weeks or so I've actually been working for a company that is the world leader in its niche of the Artificial Intelligence industry, and enjoying every minute of it. And I thought to myself tonight, "Self, it's been a while since you've written anything for Ramalila with the intent of inspiring others. Maybe it's time you gave it another shot."
So here it goes. Another shot. What it's like to work in the software industry in France. As seen, of course, through the somewhat bloodshot and jaded eyes of an aging ex-hippie and ex-Rama student living as an expatriate in Paris. Be warned. :-)
First of all, I should point out that I owe this job indirectly to the time I spent with Rama. On one of his early Power Trips to Maui, I met a wonderful woman whom I fell madly in like with. I have never ceased liking her, not even for a moment, not even when things got their weirdest. (And most of you know just how weird that could be.) Anyway, when I moved to Paris last year, I knew she was living here, so I looked her up. We got together a few times over dinner, and on one of those occasions she mentioned that the company she worked with might have openings for tech writers. Well, I hadn't actually come to France with the intention of working here, and hadn't actually specialized in being a tech writer for years, but I thought to myself, "Self, sometimes you've just gotta say what the fuck," and called to arrange for an interview.
It didn't go so well, or so I thought at the time. Nothing happened. For months. Little did I know that leaving you hanging for months after an interview with not a word of followup about whether they liked you or not was the French way of saying, "We like you." :-)
Anyway, they finally called back. They liked me. Enough to overlook my quasi-legal status here and allow me to start working for them as a contractor. Enough to help me get legal. Such a deal. I jumped at the chance.
And it's been fine. Really fine. And my whole reason for writing this screed tonight is to share with you guys and gals who might have become a little dissatisfied with George W. Bush's America and thought that it might be kinda cool to see what life is like elsewhere, but who have been timid about actually doing it because...uh...because you're Americans and have been *taught* to think that way, that 1) it's easier than you thought, and 2) it's even cooler than you thought.
Let's backtrack a few years and unerase a little personal history. Uncle Tantra, who grew so sensitive that he really couldn't hack living in big cities full of Americans and moved to the deserts of New Mexico to get away from them, now lives in a big city full of French people and loves every minute of it. Go figure.
The difference is not in the number of people but in the people themselves. How they live. What they believe. What they think about on a daily basis. The amount of stress and bad energy they carry around in their auras and that you, as a sensitive perceiver, cannot help but share. What they believe about life, and its priorities. What they believe about work, and its priorities.
And the same things that make all the difference between living in a big American city and living in a big French city are the same things that make working for an American software company and working for a French software company completely different experiences. Vive le difference!
The company I work for is in a southern suburb of Paris, just outside the periphérique (the major autoroute that circles the city). It's a weird place unto itself. From my window at work I look out onto a couple of semi-high-rise housing complexes that in America would be vilified as "the projects" and filled with gangs and unhappy people. Instead, here they seem to be filled with French people who, for the most part, seem pretty damned happy with their lives. And -- go figure -- the village is Communist. Yup. This little urban village is one of the rare bastions of successful Communism in the world. The local government has been Commie for decades. The childcare center across the street (free, of course) has a thirty-foot-tall mosaic of Karl Marx on the side of the building. And -- go figure -- everybody here seems to like the situation just fine. They've had the opportunity, every couple of years for forty years or so, to vote out the Communist government. But no one does, because they do a good job of making the village a nice place for Just Folks to live. They don't allow rich folks to move into the neighborhood and put up fences and vote themselves into power; the only things here are affordable housing and businesses.
The particular business I work for has its own building -- nice, modern, five stories, air-conditioned (which is going to be a major plus in the summer). It looks a lot like the buildings that successful software companies in America might inhabit. Ah, but there the similarity ends, at least in my experience. Which, I should point out to balance my characterization of myself earlier as an aging ex-hippie, now encompasses over thirty years in the software industry. I was working with software when there was no such thing as Apple Computer and when the term PC stood for "pussy control," a euphemism for the inherent natural supremacy of the female gender. :-)
So what's it like to work in a French software company? A French AI company?
Now remember I've only been here for six weeks, and thus may have Many Things Still To Learn, but my short answer to that question for all of you former Rama students is, "Think about all the fantasies you had about what it would be like to work for Interdimensional Software, Inc. or one of the other Rama companies but that were overshadowed by the reality of working with...uh...normal human beings with samskaras just like your own. Think about what it might be like to stumble upon a work environment in which many of the ideas and ideals that Rama taught us about business seem to have just happened, without any spiritual force other than life itself driving them."
That is what it's been like for me to work in a French software company for the last six weeks. To drop my hipper-than-thou, cool-ex-hippie Uncle Tantra persona for a moment and just get real with you, I almost tear up at the thought of describing to you just how cool it's been.
I work with a group of predominantly young, predominantly excited-about-life-and-their-small-contribution-to-it, predominantly life-affirming, abnormally happy, and abnormally (from an American point of view) hard-working people. And I'm proud to say I feel right at home with them, and I uncharacteristically give most of the credit for that to Rama, who taught me to appreciate such rare qualities when I find them.
I work with guys and gals who, so far without exception, are smarter than the average bear. Or human, for that matter. I work with developers who sprinkle state-of-the-art AI languages and concepts on their croissants for breakfast, and then go to work so they can deal with something more interesting. I work with people who are heads-down coders when they're at their desks, but who have enough of a sense of what is important in life and what is not to have a leisurely four-course meal for lunch instead of wolfing down a stale sandwich. I work with people who take advantage of every moment of the two months of vacation a year they get, but who also take advantage of most of the other moments of their work day to actually work. I work with people who actually have the kind of work ethic that Rama told us was most missing from America -- the kind of people who actually enjoy doing a good job, because doing a good job makes them feel good. I work with some rather remarkable people.
All of the coders are brilliant. So far, not one exception. Even more shocking, the marketing people are brilliant. Every one of them has a Ph.D. Every one of them has worked in the field of the product they represent as a consultant. Most of them could out-code the developers themselves with one lobe of their brains tied behind their backs. Compare and contrast that to America, where the marketing people seem to have been purchased -- marked down -- from a blonde factory.
And everyone in the company speaks English. Everyone. It's the default language of high-tech. All of the documentation I write is done first in English, and then translated into other languages. Those of you who have hesitated about looking for work outside the United States, remember this.
And by far the most remarkable thing is that not one of these people I've met so far seems to consider himself or herself remarkable. There is a shocking absence of ego. If they think of themselves at all, I'm pretty sure that most of them would consider themselves Just Folks. Just working. Just doing a good job. Because that's just how Just Folks do things.
In my view, that's more than a little healthy, and more than a little inspiring. They are normal, in that they have embraced what it truly is to be normal, which is to embrace the true potential of being human. I happened to find it in France, without even looking hard. May you all find the same thing in your lives, wherever you find it, and with the same degree of effortlessness.
Namaste, and good night.
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