Golden 18 months Comes to an End

My association with Aricent has come to an end. It has left only sweet memories and sometimes I just wonder was it really to necessary to break this tie up. Let me just recall this glorious period and see what all I went through.
The start happened on 30'th June, 2009. In spite of the rumors of late joining, Aricent was second only to TCS in giving the joining date for our campus. This was a welcome respite for all of us who were to join as we were getting bored of doing nothing at home for the last 2 months. The three months training period was an extension of college life with two major exceptions. The guys were not that close as in college and the girls were not that far as in our college. There was healthy interaction.
The best part were the non technical sessions. It was great fun to participate in the activities scheduled for such sessions. In business acumen session the instructor gave us a psychometric test. Based on the score he gave his verdict that I was not for engineering but I was made for business. But the drama he created in saying these words was spell bounding. Acting as if he is greatly shocked to see the disparity between the score I got in his psychometric test and my academic background.
The technical sessions were cakewalk for any CS background engineer. It was all practical for the theoretical knowledged mugged up in the college. I wished this all should have been in the curricullum. Anyways since the work pressure was really absent so it gave a lot of time to me to enjoy the NCR. I used to goto malls and shopping complexes religiously almost every day. And the hot Delhi girls were icing on the cake. It was too much for a small town boy like me. But gradually I was getting used to it. Saturdays and Sundays were generally spent at few of my relatives' house. There were quite a few of them.
Finally the fun filled Delhi era was over. Next to Bangalore in subsequent posts.

Why Should one work in a Service Company

Finally I have reached the last week of my notice period. First I should define the notice period for people who might not be from private sector or who are still student. This is the period between the day you notify of your resignation to your current employer and the day you are actually leave the company. This is very crucial period for you and you get a chance to think and rethink your decision. And if by any chance you revert your decision then its a jackpot for your current employer. In this period you go through several meetings with your L1 manager, L2 manager, HR people and they all try to convince you that this is the best place for you to work and you should appreciate the fact that the company has really worked hard to build your career as well. These all persuasions are elements of this period. I also faced these things and during the course of this period I was made aware of the benefits of working in a service company and that brings me to the topic of the post.
In a service company you get a variety of fields projects to work upon. You have much more options available with you and you can actually try them out and see what suits you the best. You want to be a developer or a consultant or anything else. After working for a period in a project you can switch to other project and if you are not feeling comfortable in your current project. In case of my current employer this minimum period fixed was of eighteen months and there were many examples where people changed their projects according to their liking. A vast number of opportunities used be available there at intra net where I could browse and see the requirement, talk to the manager and apply to that project. In product company you don't get this flexibility. You are associated with a product and you survive with it. You will be working on release after release with a little bit of added functionality on the same product.
Second argument, in service company you are more of a team player and you lead a team much sooner than in a product company where you are more of a individual player. This is truth. One of my friend, who was in the team with the starting of the project, was a able to play a crucial role in hiring other team members and that also just with an experience of one year. He has got much more responsibility than any other of my classmates working with product companies. One year into my project, I'm also training freshers in my team. You get ample opportunities to display your leadership skills. There is something called "ambassador to your college" concept in my current employer. I'm one of them. So, I regularly interact with students of my college and tell them about the company and industry general and believe it really feels good to address a set of people.
Third argument, since this is a service company and your client can be in any part of the world so you get much more onsite opportunities than a product company. In product companies mostly marketting team keeps travelling round the world. But in this case testers, developers all for various reason, knowledge transfer or deployment, get chance to visit onsite locations.
These all were favourable points kept for service companies. Just wanted to share with you all ...

Finally, I cut the cake.

I'm on this earth for the last 24 years 5 months. But I didn't get a chance to cut a cake till last Friday. Last Friday there was target completion celebration for our team and my manager asked me to cut the cake. I was highly obliged be this gesture of my manager. He has always been so kind to me.