Sometimes we just get carried away with our ego/arrogance/one-up attitude and do not realise what kind of effect it will have with the people around [...]]]> Had a cool meeting with few old close friends and while on the way back home realised one stupid mistake i did in past which still haunts me till date.

Sometimes we just get carried away with our ego/arrogance/one-up attitude and do not realise what kind of effect it will have with the people around you. And in the process we hurt few friends which we don’t even realise till its late.

This incident happen some 3 and half years ago, when i was working for another ad agency in india.

My company had a strategic alliance/partnership/deal with another company dealing in Mobile solutions + campaign management in mobile space.
This company was big shot outside India and was trying to enter in India and our company then was the suitable choice for them to partner.
Our company was also sharing office space with them. (i guess it was rented.)

Before my friend joined that company, I helped them installing Oracle + Oracle Portal on one of their server. Those guys did not have full fledged technical team before that in india and co-ordinating the installation remotely was bit difficult for them.

The servers were bought from SuperMicro and were giving them hard time to install due to nasty issues with Hardware + 64bit Linux + Libraries required for Oracle.

To cut a story short I helped them initially to install this and our company charged them some super amount for the installation bit.

Few weeks later they hired new product/project manager who was technically sound guy and was a friend of my friend.

(I did not know this fact that time.)

He was asked to do another installation on the remaining server/s by his company, and he also faced the similar problems which I knew the solutions for.
(purely just because I also faced the same issues couple of weeks earlier and I was ready with those answers due to extensive searching and accessing the Oracle Knowledge Base + Linux lists).

Unfortunately his superiors did not give him enough time to do the research for this problem and expected him to finish this within a days time.

After couple of unsuccessful tries he and his colleague came to me for assistance and like an smart ASS I tried to squeeze them for more money by not helping them/redirecting them to my CEO.
(I thought i was doing some cool thing as i was trying to earn more money for my company and obviously earn some brownie points internally.)

My mistakes were:

1. Not helping someone who was in need (where I’m used to receive help from online community whenever I’ve got stuck)
2. It was not conflict of interest so the question of not helping for professional ethics did not arise
3. Screwing someone’s reputation in his superior’s view (I do not know whether this would have happened .. but my wild guess … )
4. Acting like some smart asshole without understanding the consequences
5. Not admitting this for last few years to a good friend (Yes, I consider him as good friend)

I doubt whether the incident has made any professional impact on him, nevertheless it still haunts me for the stupid actions done by me.

Infact for last few months I’m still contemplating about meeting him and saying sorry. (But somehow meeting is not happening.)

And because these days its ok (and fashionable) to say sorry on blog, I’m going ahead and saying “Sorry Mate” for the stupid acts done by me.

And thanks a lot for forgiving me for so many years. (Or atleast not showing any displeasure dealing with me.)

Would definitely meet him this week for this.

Since then, I’ve been trying to answer each help call by

• Straightway helping
• If not having time then directing to the right person/resource
• not acting pricey
• contributing to the community