Cut Copy and Paste

“You never care for the things that comes to you so easily”
Is that true? 1st July 2004, I got placed in one of the largest IT firm in India. The aptitude test was piece of cake and the interviews were cake walk, quite easy rather unbelievable that I was employed before even starting my last year of engineering.

Jay Ho Campus recruitment! Jay Ho SPCE (My College)! Jay Ho Mumbai University!
It was so easy and I so was happy, what followed after that was not exactly comes into a category of happy or easy. It says that we s\w professionals use Copy, Cut , Paste operations very often. I learned that even before joining the office, when I was Cltr X-ed(cut) from my home town and Ctrl V-ed (pasted) on various locations. My first attempt to write a blog, just to speak out the places I happened to visit on my professional journey.

Attention:
All the characters in this blogs are real. Any resemblance between you and the character is not coincidental. I may have met you sometime and I generally don’t forget that person. My 24 months journey started from Pune, then to Hyderabad and all the way to Seattle In this ride I met so many people some made their appearance here and some are still in my heart. We will start with Pune first

Day: 8th August 2005
Location: Mumbai Amit’s (My schoolmate) house

And the journey begins…..

Some mails can change your life. Wipro campus manager dropped a mail in my inbox stating that my training will be in Pune for 40 days and then will get posted to Hyderabad.
Hyderabad???? I literally screamed. What’s wrong? What is there in Hyderabad apart from two Mirzas [Sania and Diya] .Why they want me to work there and that too after completing my training in Pune?
“No way!!!!” I reacted rather overreacted when I read that mail. Amit bursts into laughter imagining me in lungi and gobbling Biryani. [That was our first impression about Hyderabad]. Soon I cracked the news at home. Aai Baba reacted exactly the way I thought of. Aai came up with her takiya kalam “whatever happens, happens for the good”. but i was in no mood to accept this Geeta Saar. Baba was quite cool, he asked me “Is there is any way to get your posting in Pune?” I assured them: “I will certainly try”…. I had 40 days in my hand. That was ample time to make some jugaad. I mailed, I phoned even approached personally alas no luck. I have to go to Pune and then to Hyderabad.

Day: 20th Sept 2005

Location; Dadar Station

Time : 5.30 a.m.

Aseem [My collegemate and Pune roommate] and I decided to meet at Dadar station at 5.30 a.m. to catch Pragati Express for Pune. Surprisingly train arrived at time and not very surprisingly Aseem didn’t turn up in time. It was awful watching your train passing in front of you. Then I called Aseem, guess what? That was wake up call for him. He arrived at 7.15 a.m. at Dadar station. Soon we caught Neeta Volvo, quite comfortable and 4 times more expensive than the railway fare. The only advantage they show movies in Volvo and movie was “Mumbai Express”, my Mumbai , Aamchi Mumbai….there are thousands and thousands of people coming to this city daily, to make their dreams come true, and here I am, one, born and brought up in Mumbai is going away from it. What’s wrong with my qualification? my profession that wont allow me to stay in my city, with my folks? Why there isn’t a single IT campus in the economic capital of this country? My thinking express started but soon got derailed because of Aseem’s snoring. He is from Srinagar, from there he came to Jammu then to Mumbai and now in Pune. May be I was overreacting; this change may not be that bad. Anyhow Pune is just 150 KMs away from Mumbai and with the express way like this I can cut that distance within 3 hrs. Let’s give a try, after all there isn’t anything else I can do now. So Pune here I come.

Pankaj from Bihar, Aseem from Jammu, Samsher from Kerala and Me Maharashtrian. My Pune apartment was the perfect example of national integration. All three of my roommates joined Cognizant just a week before me, professionally they were senior to me and quite enjoying there time at workplace.

Day: 23sept 2005

Location: Kaspate Vasti (Pune)

Time 8.00 a.m.

“80 Rupaye lagtil “ I was supposed to report at 8.30 and here is stubborn puneri rickshaw driver asking for 80 bucks. I have been warned by my experienced roommate that I shouldn’t offer more than 35. But that fellow was as firm as a wall, finally agreed for Rs.75 [that’s the best I could manage]. So finally I entered into Wipro arena at 8.20 am. Registered my name at entrance and got the EMPLOYEE pass.
After all the slog of 22 years, all the torture and the agony called engineering finally reached to the stage where I can be called as an employee. Working for the richest Indian’s organisation and probably the third largest IT firm in India, I was one amongst the 40000 employees of Wipro Technologies.

Wipro Technologies Pune Development Centre… 40 days 40 nights and Nightmare

3 towers, one administration block, 1 cafeteria, Tennis & basketball court that was all about Wipro PDC (Pune development centre) but quite trendy campus compared with neighboring Infosys and Cognizant. Just like any other IT firm’s training program, Wipro started with soft skill training called IMPACT. A bunch of 75 engineers picked up from all over India have been introduced to Platinum training space. Ice breaking sessions, role plays, and small presentations all have been taken to make us comfortable and conducive to the professional environment.

Day: 29September 2005

Location: PDC

Some days are special in your life, no matter where you are. 3rd day of my professional life was perhaps the most pleasantly surprising. My training instructor came that day with a vanilla cake. And yes that was for me, while introducing myself I mentioned about my birth date. She remembered that. My new colleagues were wishing me. It says in professional life there are only colleagues and rivals but no friends. Is that true?
In the evening I took my new roommates to Ice cream parlor. We gulped an entire family pack in less than 10 min. My place in Kaspate vasti was rocking, it was quite near to the campus, really cheap and had terrace with a water tank on that. I and Pankaj spent hours there talking, discussing or just sitting quietly. On my birthday night I was there …alone, thinking, life is changing, it’s moving, hope for betterment, I may not be with my people on this birthday, but even these people could be mine, could be……

And they cracked the news: We are Testers
U know, there are two types of people in the software world? One Developers and others called testers. I didn’t know this till the moment our training coordinator cracked the news in Platinum. our batch were put into testing domain and all the janta from IT and CS backgrounds were very apprehensive about that. They thought they have been betrayed. But I was more worried about the another news, to cope up with training deadlines they cut down our Saturday offs. That really hurt me. It was a masterstroke and all the anger burst on our training coordinator but he proved his metal, “All the strategic decisions are taking place at Bangalore” he has the stereotype answer for our every question. Bangalore people were in no mood to stretch our weekends. Anyhow the training sessions were as boring as I thought of. With the topics like C, C++, JAVA, PERL we cants expect anything else. For a mechanical engineer like me it was totally different field and I have already started feeling the heat. That’s it. So now, here I am at unwanted location with totally inferior profile and without any Saturday off. Not the way I wanted ”Jane kya hoga, Rama re?

Coming up ahead:

Pune Group: Ekade Tikade in short beauties with the beast

Assessment: Ultimate nightmare