IT's so gOOd!

p.s. This post is for college freshers only!

Hello Everyone!
Of late, I haven't been so active here! I will give some reasons for it, that's what every one does when he/she (damn you, CAT Grammar!) fails to do something
Getting admission into a premier B-School in India is not so easy. It takes a lot out of you, especially the weekend holidays, Yes, been there. Done that, or not done that, in this case. A weekend in an IT company is a blessing in itself, after all that slogging during the week. But then, I had to go through volumes of English and Math sitting at home or TIME class, all for getting into a top B-school. It's all worth it I guess, after you do get into one!

And that means I will invariably have to leave my current job in this India's most admired company. True. I will miss this. People will say all sorts of things about IT industry, I have not heard them :) I can only share what I have gone through! I don't believe in rumours. You shall not read further if IT field is in no way related to your life, but you may read on just for fun :P

1. I didn't enjoy bench!
It's just a whole waste of time. Reporting every day to the Resource Management Group and not learning anything at all. That too, catching a bus in the hot sun... enough said.
If at all you land up here for more than 60 days, prepare for CAT / GRE / GMAT. The situation is tailor made for this.

Anyway, I was in bench for just 45 days. Then, project!

2. Get into Development!
Let's face it. Developers enjoy the most. Not because it gives lot of onsite opportunities or more challenging; but because you get to work in general shift. You will have life after office! You can travel one hour to home. Sleep well. Just the best life you can get as a fresher in the industry.
Having said that, getting into testing or maintenance or prod support is not the end of the world. Get a house nearby to office and work for 10 hours or night shifts or second shifts.
"Life is all about adjustments - divide and rule!"

Do coding!

3. Life's fantastic in IT
If some one tells you IT is boring, don't believe them. What isn't boring in life anyway?
Performance in the beginning matters. Then you can get things in control. 9 to 6 job in one week, 8 to 5 in the next, 10 or 11 to 8... mix it up. Don't do the same things. It's up to us to make it lively, don't blame the system like you-know-who!
Don't bunk Fridays - they are the best days in office. Some people make the best use of it to make life entertaining for us ;)
Get some nice team-mates.

4. Appraisal season - become a theist
You can dig the rivers and drain the ponds, but you cannot get a good appraisal rating or band or bucket or whatever metric your company follows. Employees hate it; employers hate it. But it exists. Don't facebook it, face fact. Just pray.

If satisfaction = true
     stay
Else
     leave
End If

Yes, I worked in Visual Basic .NET!

5. Training period - College life upgraded!
Of course you learn a lot. But this is the best period you can get. At least in a few CMM Level 5 companies. After training, you get a lot of responsibilities, but here you are treated just like a student so it's just fAWESOME!
You get to meet schoolmates and collegemates all in one place. Well, IT companies are well populated and India is over populated. Surely you will bump into people.

6. KT
Abbreviates to Knowledge Transfer. It blesseth him that gives and her that takes!
Be all ears. "Thozil kathukonga!"

Okay, tell me more!

7. Get allocation
If you are not allocated, fight for allocation. If nothing happening, leave the project. Don't sit and work for free.

8. Follow your company timings
Work for 9 hours only (or whatever hours your company pays you for). Not a little more, not a little less.
"Companies are good, rules are good,
it's the people that make them good or bad"
 We were fortunate to get a wonderful trainer in our training period. He said these words which I will remember for a long long time "Who gave you permission to sit after work hours?"
Indeed! Coming on time to work is important, leaving on time is even more important. Don't bend your work hours like Beckham, and tweet about your organization.

Have fun!

9. Use company transport if applicable to you
This is where you meet people who can, well, you know... Just go for it. Could be life-changing!

10. Live SEVEN days a week!
I say it again. One week has seven days, not two.

Sorry about the huge dose of textbook stuff. Yeah, I heard a lot of noise, so this was my time to make some! You say something about IT once more, I am here for you!

Until next time,
Happy Summer!

ak

A Facebook Friend Request!

Mindvoice...
I am telling with utmost certainty that you would have received uncountable friend requests in facebook, mostly from complete strangers. If at all you know half of them, let alone knowing them all, you are really lucky!
On the other side of the sea, have you ever made a New Friend and connected to him/her (her/him, sorry girls; don't go on a rally now!) in facebook, you will understand what I am saying after this! Until this happened, I've never had any prognosis that a thing so simple as a friend request would be so daunting, so painstaking!

True Story...
As a rank tyro in IT industry, it was hard enough to finally get a project. Now that, the offices are mostly located out of the city on the National and State Highways I had to opt for company transport services. I knew no one in the bus. Moreover, the difference in ages of "colleagues" makes it all the more difficult to strike conversations during travel. Been a frequent traveller and a gregarious person in recent years (SRM, what do you expect!), I found this situation absolutely antagonizing. Digital storage is not plenipotentiary! The gigabytes of songs saved in the gadget did not help the cause, for, 70km a day consumes the quantum of songs in less than a week!

Slowly I started finding people to talk to. Again, if at all we make it to the same bus in the same shift, well, yeah, some talking after an exhausting day. Otherwise, it's mostly sleeping and Radio!

I finally met a (newly-made) friend the other day on my return journey. We started having a pleasant conversation after an arduous day in the office. Office stuff only, can't help it! Eventually it came down to doing a facebook friend request on the go. We were both loaded with 3G internet connectivity, so that was not going to be a problem. Er... Issue (we are all IT!), or so I thought! She was magnanimous enough to login first; well, she was always online. I told my name with correct spelling. I missed the initials.

The search results did not match. I told to include the initial.
Now the output went haywire - Zuckerburg had designed his website in such a way that the initials are expanded to His will. Except me, we found many names.

A smart person, she intimated that we could search using the email id! "Of course", I thought! Elated with the turnaround of events, I gave my email.
Zuckerburg was smarter this time. His brainchild gave a 'No results found' reply. I was so distraught at this. The bus started moving faster too.
Thankfully, she was showing her customary patience, associated with most people from her region. "You are in any pages or something like that?"

"Yeah! Wait, let me log in". While she was searching something, I finally logged in. It happened quickly, thanks to Airtel 3G - no I am not advertising you Bharti, you still stink all the same! I thought I will give a query this time, as she was doing the harder stuff all the time.
"Tell me your name. I will search", I offered. She told her full name. I typed it super fast. The website has its habit of adding some letters to the beginning or the end of names at will. You just don't know how to control it. And even if it does display some thing, it's just not sane! She did not come up. All I found was a junk of unorganized data.
I repeated the ploy of email id. Didn't work.
"You are in any Confession pages?"
"No. You know anyone from this school (she mentioned some school name, not important for the story)?"
"No."
She again gave an inkling.
"We have no choice, tell me any page where you do some activity. May be, we could find your name!"
"Alright go to Chess Confessions page. I would have liked the first post or something!"
She went to that page. To my horror, there was a stupid post that time with no likes or comments!
"Scroll down" I said. She did it.
As events unfolded, there were so many jobless people in that page and hence so many posts. With no offense to the users of that page, you guys are not helping my cause here! My comments were no where to be found.

"O...kay, I will like something here!" (Eating up all my pride - the first post was totally horrible. No one would even man up to post that one liner)
She smiled and said, "You can unlike this after everything is done!"
"Amazing, their brains!" (mindvoice)
So I liked it. She clicked the item. My name came. She clicked on the link and went to my profile.

(The story is far from over!)
When my profile slowly loaded, I heaved a huge sigh of relief at the moment of triumph. However...
to my dismay, there was no 'Add Friend' button. Only 'follow' and 'subscribe'! No mutual friend it seems!
"You have strict security settings, it seems...!", she said.
"But we are sitting right here! Can't facebook see that!? I know this person! U stupid Markie!"
There were no mutual friends, only common pages, that too, a very few, not of any use. Now what?
"Alright, I will send you a message. That way, you can see me!"
I was out of my mind. Still, I parked myself well and sent out an "I am-cool-with-it" smile. She 'inboxed' me.
In my phone, I opened the links "chat" and "messages", but there was none. She hinted "Reload!" I did the same, no use! There was no message. Only notifications. Where's the message???
"Mark Sucker_burp!"

Plan A, Plan B, Plan C... thanks to Chennai traffic, the bus was still moving without reaching the destination!
My Cover Photos were public. She was a kind person - 'like'd a few of the photos and told me this was the photo she liked. I duly followed the instructions. Opened the EXACT photo and found her name. Meanwhile, she checked her security settings - "Any one can send friend requests"
>> I gave The Friend Request!

So much for the 'technology'! And yeah, I unliked the post, you can't find it now! It was just a temporary variable. Destroyed it after using.
"Software Engineer"
ak