TRAINing TRAVAILS!!!

Statuary warning:This may seem like an arduously long post to read...srry abt that...u may skip it if u arent that intersted in getting an insight into the corporate world!!



Now that the summer vacations are poised at the tip of the knife,i thought i'd mull over on how i'v spent all these 2 months ,and the most significant thing i seemed to have done was the fully-faltoo training ...a gruelling 9 to 6 shift with not less than 5 hrs of chatting everyday!!!(pheww!!)...i wish i'd worked on something tangible ,but sadly inspite of sincerely pleading the guys to gimme sumthin ,i was constantly sidelined.... pretty lame experience i'd say ...though i still managed to learn first hand what goes on in the famed software companies here in India ,the work culture ,and a peek-a -boo into what exactly goes on in the senior manager's office(read on to know more)...

The very first day that i stepped into that company after having found a chartered bus which would ferry me to work everyday ,and flirtin a bit with the 4 girls goin to their college who accompanied me on that day-sadly the last working day of their college b4 goin off for summer vacations -i was handed a big HR MANUAL stating the rules and regulation that i was supposed to flout ,the work ethics which were never meant to be followed by an IITian , the rules concerning leaves and probation -which had nthin to do with the nature of my work(given the fact that i had already made up my mind to attend just 3 days of office in a week!!) , and the history of the company whose resources i was abt to slander for the coming one month !!!

It was followed by an HR personnel givin me a short lecture on how the company came into being and the aims and aspirations the company desires to acheive -an asinine repetition of the HR manual - and was followed by apocryphal praise for the IIT system and IITians in particular (oh! heck, i was feeling like a goat who was about to be slaughtered!!)...All this in a period of 3 hours and i'd not hesitate to admit that i was feeling a little giddy by now!!!
i was shorlty taken to the floor where the software developers sat in front of their computer screens doin some crazy stuff i couldnt understand -though i later came to know that it was called .NET!!!

The first day passed without nthin substantial -i was made to sit at a corner and told precariously that this is what every1 does on the first day at work !!! Obviously i did nthin much apart frm observing .The days which followed were too agonozing -and most people even know about my agony-as i was handed a 64 MB RAM comp with windows XP loaded ,and with the capability of bringing the most advanced supercomputer in the world to shame with its antics .I noted the exact time it took to boot-20 mins ,time taken to create a new folder -15 mins,time taken to open internet explorer - 30 mins (that is ,if one was lucky enough to get the IE window before the comp restarted!! )..


The first week passed very swiftly ,what with most of the time being spent on booting and opening a bloody IE window!!They gave me a newer comp later on,but that first week itslef was enough for me to observe a lotta things...

this is what the hierarchy looks like in a software company,or rather i'll personalize it with my own experiece(starting from the top) -

1.The CEO :Is supposed to be that highly qualified guy holding zillions of degrees from all over the world ,and is supposed to meet clients,handle the paper work and everything that involves none of the degrees' expertise that he's gained all these years ...only the work teaches you here in the tricks of the trade..

The CEO of this company was a tall guy with a slightly bulging belly ,but surprisingly young-in his early 30s- and charismatic and had a typical british accent which he had procured after spending his childhood in London. It was a treat to watch him pass orders at his subordinates, all of them more than double his age !! It seems this guy spends half his time in the UK division and half in the indian one.. My encounter with him occured at a very late stage of my training ,and the very first thing he said was-" Oh! great ,people from IIT are finally stepping into our company ..he's our wonder boy,put him into my personal software division -its more fun there!! "..and everyday after that he'd cheerfully ask me -"Hey wonder boy -hows it goin huh!!! " ,and since i wasnt doin any work virtually all i could give was a decent smile and a thought insise my head -"Dude,i'll wear a blue undie over my pants tomorrow -with 'W' printed on it ...then u call me wonder boy!!!"

2. The Senior Manager : He was guy from IIT (the only one in that company frm the 'prestigious' insti )-a man in his late 40s -and since i had the privilege of spending a considerable amount of time in his cabin on two occasions -i know that his work was limited to forwarding emails (the ones with silly jokes and idiotic photos) to the employees , drinking coffe more than 5 times a day ,passing orders to the HR manager ,listenining to the orders from the CEO ,making phone calls ,and stuff like that which i guess deserves no more than a few thousnd rupees a month .heck ! what a waste of a degree from IIT!! The last time when i met him he promised to put me in a good project-and for the next half an hour he kept on browsing all the floors of the building ...I ambled along ,albeit with no success!!

3. The CTO: The chief technical officer ,my foot- He should be called the chief Tymepass officer!!! Thats coz most of the times i saw him in his cabin -he was playin solitaire ,wasting his 70,000 ka laptop!! Doesnt he know that there are better games in the market than solitaire!!! ;) ,and then with a routine which includes drinkin milk 2 times a day ,he sure seemed like a lunatic stuck in the wrong place .
On a more serious note ,his only duty was of an advisory nature -to get the innovators out of the most serious loopholes ever encountered in programming history and to tell them what to do,to start with!!

The first time i talked to him , he was like -" what have u learned at IIT??" ,with me half conteplating to say -"nothing at all". the second tym i talked to him was when he gave me something to do,for a change ,but to my utter displeasure -he told me to make a prog to read the file and directory structure faster than windows (phew -with those big geeks at his disposal ,when bill gates and steve balmer couldnt do it,howd some1 lyk me do it ??) ,and obviosuly it did little to assuage my woes!!

The last tym i talked to him ,he was fuming with anger...bt i wasnt complaining,i had a nice tym orkutting and chatting!!

4. The HR manager : A weird lady ,but newayz amiable and with talked with a friendly disposition ,i guess had all the qualities which are prerequisites for being an HR manager ...though wasnt very smart and good-looking !!
Didnt have much of an acquaintanceship with her ..though she acted as my complaint box ,one which had no outlet and so my complaints lay almost in a state of decay until they were looked after!!

5. The project manager /Lead Innovator: was a tall,bloated guy and looked cockeyed most of the times!! Was very busy ,and most of the times on the run -he was supposed to be the guiding light fr all the innovators ,and had to virtually spoon feed them for every small things

6. The innovators /Trainees : Was a bunch of unusal people ,though very friendly .Most of them ,or rather all of them held a postgraduate degree in MCA or M.Sc. and none of them had graduated with a B.Tech-that made me the only B.Tech guy ..the team consisted mostly of guys ,and there were about 6-7 girls too-although they were fulltoo brickheads!! Apart from the ardous task of programming all day long ,even the innovators didnt hold back frm chatting once in a while with their GTalk windows minimized ,and even among themselves they chatted throughout the office hours!! Every1 of them had orkut accounts ,and although it was blocked ,i had found a proxy and so,the orkut bug had surfaced what with me on the prowl!! All of them seemed rather dissatisfied with ther pay figures and half of them were giving interviews to other prospective employers already .the most senior employee in the company was employed for just over 6 months,and that is proof enough of the growing discontempt among the software company employees ... Though the sight when a new female employee was inducted into the team was remniscent of the IITs -people tryin to catch a glimpse of that mew girl ,and envying the one who gets to be the first to ask her for a coffee,or the one who sits near her table!!!

I enjoyed thoroughly with them ,all being very supportive and helpful ,quite unlike the people at IIT ,and those gossips at the luch table still gets me in splits when I think of em !! The girls were cool too -though i still wonder how in the world they had never heard of IITs .Then there were those guys whi had taken it to be their birth right to tease the female employees ,and i became one of em!!

7.The caretakers: Life without them in a corporate is simply unimaginable ...From simple chores like cleaning cups and saucers to mundane issues lyk providing 'bournvita' to the CTO two times a day ,and even important issues lyk upkeep of hygiene at the workplace nd bringing in lunch ordered by the employees -the caretakers form an inseperable part of the office workforce...
This particular guy at the SMX global office fr was assidous and perky one with antics which made me cast serious aspersions on his sexuality...and if u've ever seen Karan johar laughing u'll know what i'm hinting here ...Though in ne case he was afffable ,and easy to talk to,and most importantly did what he was supposed to-care !!

Out and out ,I'd say twas a very good experience ,although accompanied by a lotta boredom ,and non-productivity!! But i dare say i'd rather not wanna get stuck in such a workplace in a position lower than the CEO!!! hehe...i guess its askin too much and however paranoid it mite sound ,but now that i've been there ,done that i'd make sure I dont land up at such a place ever-and no offecnce meant,by such a place i mean one where the employees dnt know what they are doin before they consult a zillion web pages via google,and ones which hate the company and still have no other alternative in hindsight!!!