June 17th to July 14th
Graduating in 2005 with a B.Tech in Information Technology. You are in a veritable paradise. The Software Industry sports a big grin on its face. And yes, I stand there with three offers (Satyam, Motorola, Infosys). Although Neo says "Choice !!! Choice is the problem" (and quite rightly), my situation was different, an easy choice indeed. I headed to Bangalore to join Winphoria in Motorola (For all those who are unaware, Winphoria was a company started in 2000 and acquired by Motorola in 2003). "Winphoria, Winphoria, Winphoria" - The name had led me to think that my job will have something to do with Microsoft products (I just hate them). But "God Save the king", Microsoft Products were a scarcity here. I was given a linux box, but the sad thing was that it was a Red Hat 6.2 with a 2.2 kernel.
June 17th 2005 was my first day. I was assigned to Mr.Rakesh Agarwal. And fortunately or unfortunately, he was going on a long leave on that very same day for his marriage. I had to spend the best part of my first month without a manager. It was sort of a honeymoon period for me in the company. I would come early (9 - 9:30) in the morning, check my mails and then open Adobe Acrobat Reader. Endlessly and aimlessly scanning through those IS41 and IOS telecom standards without understanding a word. Soon it will be time for lunch. And after lunch, I am never the same guy. Fighting against sleep (called 'mabbu') was the only job at hand. But soon SUDOKU came to my rescue. I solved enough of them, and even had plans to implement one algorithm for solving the SUDOKU in polynomial time (as usual it was a case of OT - Only Talk).
In the meantime I had to attend a training program. Can you guess the duration of this program?? Goodness Me - just three days (I know ppl who attended training for 3 months, lucky ones). Never understood anything though. Ended up sleeping most of the time. But one good thing did happen. Found one of my best pals in Winphoria - Maheshwaran Velusamy. A Tam ofcourse and our conversation started like "endha coll ?"..... "St.Joseph's Chennai"... and then he said that he had quite a few friends in my college and he was asking me whether I knew that Mr.X, then Mr.Y, then Mr.Z etc etc. I knew none of those guys. Then he asked me "Do u know kamini ?"..... WOW!! with a big exclamation i said yes....i know that female... sema katte!!!....and thats how our relationship started.
A month passed and my manager was back. We had a code walk through. And then I was asked to do regression testing (which was followed by a huge truck load of bug fixing and an unsuccessful attempt at feature developement). This was the beginning of the most sadest and trecherous times for me in Winphoria. I shall write a seperate blog on my experiences with my manager. I was so pissed off that I started to look for another job. But after some useful advice from experienced people in the industry, I decided against it. But I had made up my mind that I wont be staying here for too long. Thats when a couple of my good friends came up with the idea of writing GRE. I liked the idea and had to jump into implementation right away (there was hardly any time left for analysis and design). So I moved into an apartment with friends, studied hard during the nights, and finally the results were good. But while all this was happening, my job was increasingly becoming a headache for me. So once I was done with all my application stuff, I put my head down and worked with some purpose for one month in Winphoria. And things changed. My manager suddenly became the Mr.Nice Guy, and I found the work to be more and more interesting. I had some acountability in the team. I also did some night outs and all. I liked all this. While I was getting more and more into my job, a series of events took place (responsible for the state change in the FSM). An admit from UTA, successful VISA interview and the Resignation letter which was accepted with a huge smile by my manager (Will have to write seperate blogs for all these major incidents). In between all this I had this 15 day long awesome himalayan adventure. Quite a few diverse activities sandwithced together to form this beautiful meal called life.......
The time that I spent in Winphoria after the himalayan adventure (Mid June onwards) was also another honeymoon period. July 14th 2006 was my last working day in Winphoria. Apart from learning quite a few new and interesting things in Winphoria (techy and non-techy stuff), I also ended up making a handful of good friends in Motorola (they mite prefer to be called Motorolans), and some for life.
The next state beckons - Graduate Student in UTA.
As Van Halen says, its time to
"Dream another dream, this dream is over....................dream another dream"
June 17th 2005 was my first day. I was assigned to Mr.Rakesh Agarwal. And fortunately or unfortunately, he was going on a long leave on that very same day for his marriage. I had to spend the best part of my first month without a manager. It was sort of a honeymoon period for me in the company. I would come early (9 - 9:30) in the morning, check my mails and then open Adobe Acrobat Reader. Endlessly and aimlessly scanning through those IS41 and IOS telecom standards without understanding a word. Soon it will be time for lunch. And after lunch, I am never the same guy. Fighting against sleep (called 'mabbu') was the only job at hand. But soon SUDOKU came to my rescue. I solved enough of them, and even had plans to implement one algorithm for solving the SUDOKU in polynomial time (as usual it was a case of OT - Only Talk).
In the meantime I had to attend a training program. Can you guess the duration of this program?? Goodness Me - just three days (I know ppl who attended training for 3 months, lucky ones). Never understood anything though. Ended up sleeping most of the time. But one good thing did happen. Found one of my best pals in Winphoria - Maheshwaran Velusamy. A Tam ofcourse and our conversation started like "endha coll ?"..... "St.Joseph's Chennai"... and then he said that he had quite a few friends in my college and he was asking me whether I knew that Mr.X, then Mr.Y, then Mr.Z etc etc. I knew none of those guys. Then he asked me "Do u know kamini ?"..... WOW!! with a big exclamation i said yes....i know that female... sema katte!!!....and thats how our relationship started.
A month passed and my manager was back. We had a code walk through. And then I was asked to do regression testing (which was followed by a huge truck load of bug fixing and an unsuccessful attempt at feature developement). This was the beginning of the most sadest and trecherous times for me in Winphoria. I shall write a seperate blog on my experiences with my manager. I was so pissed off that I started to look for another job. But after some useful advice from experienced people in the industry, I decided against it. But I had made up my mind that I wont be staying here for too long. Thats when a couple of my good friends came up with the idea of writing GRE. I liked the idea and had to jump into implementation right away (there was hardly any time left for analysis and design). So I moved into an apartment with friends, studied hard during the nights, and finally the results were good. But while all this was happening, my job was increasingly becoming a headache for me. So once I was done with all my application stuff, I put my head down and worked with some purpose for one month in Winphoria. And things changed. My manager suddenly became the Mr.Nice Guy, and I found the work to be more and more interesting. I had some acountability in the team. I also did some night outs and all. I liked all this. While I was getting more and more into my job, a series of events took place (responsible for the state change in the FSM). An admit from UTA, successful VISA interview and the Resignation letter which was accepted with a huge smile by my manager (Will have to write seperate blogs for all these major incidents). In between all this I had this 15 day long awesome himalayan adventure. Quite a few diverse activities sandwithced together to form this beautiful meal called life.......
The time that I spent in Winphoria after the himalayan adventure (Mid June onwards) was also another honeymoon period. July 14th 2006 was my last working day in Winphoria. Apart from learning quite a few new and interesting things in Winphoria (techy and non-techy stuff), I also ended up making a handful of good friends in Motorola (they mite prefer to be called Motorolans), and some for life.
The next state beckons - Graduate Student in UTA.
As Van Halen says, its time to
"Dream another dream, this dream is over....................dream another dream"
posted by Wherever I May Roam at 12:47 AM
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