My First Academic Interview.

Looked at my watch and started typing on the Skype window- “Hello Sir, want to have a chat with you”. My lead replied-“in meet. Just 2 mins”. I could not understand the meaning of ending a meeting in 2 mins. And I don’t know what the %$#$(you can put anything in here) he does in that conference room. I waited for another 15 mins and again written to him-“Sir, I want to leave for station now. My elder brother is comin. I will be back in 2 hrs”. My team lead read it and replied “ok see ya later”. I knew that if I have kept waiting for the 2 mins to over he could have taken the whole day. I started running thinking in my mind-“Man I am total blank today, what am I going to do there”. Actually today was my first academic interview. Before that I have had already three interviews. I don’t want to clutter the space with those experiences. So the station stuff was all fake, common don’t look at me like that, else who will let me go outside for an interview and that to leaving the present job in the middle. I started off 1 hour early and reached there, 30 mins before time. Throughout the way I was thinking or making up my mind to face the bitter truth-“I am totally blank”. After I reached there, the guard sitting there gave me a weird look and asked me my purpose of coming. I told him my name and hearing for the interview word, called the principal. I was little bit frowned on the guard as he was not pronouncing my name correctly. I have to shout my name once or twice to make him pronounce correctly. The guard at the gate sent a man with me to the principal’s office. What I have thought from the previous conversations with the principal, the principal might be a funny looking man or at least humorous one and friendly. When I reached there the man escorting me told me to wait outside the room. I kept waiting there for a good 30-45 mins for the great Indian laughter challenge to start. I could see people (may be professors and lecturers) gathering around and going into the room. I got confirmed that ,that will be my battle ground. After some time, they called me inside. The principal told me to seat and as usual first question-Introduce yourself. It was my all time hardest question, as I couldn’t know what they want from this. Do they want to know my academic qualification, about my family, about my extracurricular activities, about the fact that how I fit into their system etc etc. or all of them. It would be good if you could ask me please Introduce yourself citing this this and this. After I have introduced my self(not fully as I was stuck after my educational qualification :) ), they told me to give a speech about any subject. It was a moment like if you have a gun but no bullets in it and to make matter worse you are asked to fire at a tiger attacking you. I told them I am not sure about any subject , but I can say something about my project. They agreed to it. As I started off , I thought the audience is friendly and they could let me go with the presentation. But then starts the tragedy. “Can I interrupt you?”. Shouted one of the person from the panel. I don’t know his name but he started giving his views and asked questions out of the topic. Then when I told that this is not the subject of the project , he got me in one of those formulae. I could not give a satisfactory answer for it. Then others joined him in. Man, the battle was getting fierceful with the opposite side with tight volley of grenades with no protection from my side. I just kept saying them that I don’t know the answer or better one was “may be, but I haven’t used it in my proj”. Then came the toughest part of the whole interview session, as I am still repenting( even when I am writing it) for not answering that. The man in the blue shirt asked me “ Please give me the algorithm and time complexity for the binary search?”. It got me totally blind. I was getting ashamed of my self because I don’t remember that one. I told him that I forgot it and I could see the level of dissatisfaction in their faces. I could know now that I have lost it. With a heavy heart I returned back as they told me that we will let you know about their decision.
The whole way back, I kept on thinking, after completing my masters in comp science if I cant give the simple explanation for binary search, then what is the use of that degree. I have became a dumb terminal now. 8 months after joining the company I realized that I have became a dumb terminal which doesn’t have any response or intellect. I was just doing some ctrl+c and ctrl+v stuff and earning the meager amount. I just cursed my life and thought that I have killed my ingenuinity and intelligence for making up some one else rich. I am just wasting and killing my time to make somebody else business grow. What do I get from it. I never had thought about it or I can say I have always kept a blind eye towards this matter. But what I have realized today is I was no more a person who could boast about his intellect or perception towards studies. All day I kept showing off as if nothing has happened, but from inside I was all broken up or in better words SHATTERED.I was just thinking of the disaster which was on its way into my life if I will keep working in the present environment.My position was like a person starving , and has to eat the food which he knows is poison.

I Love Deadlines!!!!!!! Ah I really love them...But do I...??

"What the heck are you doing? what do you mean by you cant do it? DO IT else..." this is what a typical dialouge of my boss. Before joining my first job place, i have thought of IT as a beautiful place to rejoice. You work on real projects, with real time data and above all a hefty amount in hand( the last one is a real joke). Forget about work culture, I have to face real trouble.

Deadlines, ya i have heard them before. deadline for submitting assignments,deadlines for paying your dues etc etc. But the deadline here is you will be dead before reaching that line. The deadlines are virtual and believe it or not you have to jump start things even if you have no knowledge about them.

Sometimes the situation is like your boss saying- Hey, yesterday my son engulfed a 50 paisa coin( i don't know if he is giving him food to eat or not). Can you please have a DIP into the sceptic tank and found it out. Can you just imagine yourself inside a tank full of human waste and you are puddling inside it,just to find a 50 paisa coin. To add to your pitiful condition, a timer is ticking. So in total in 30 secs, you have to find a 50 paisa coin from a tank full of human waste. If you have imagined it correctly, you could have already started vomiting,

Ya the situation gets similar when you are given a random project in which you are not even a part, neither during development nor during deployment and you are asked to find a bug which is not allowing it to run. Find the bug and remember that a timer is ticking and you are closing deadline." tick..tick.. times up you loser".

So if you are gonna in a similar condition,then perhaps you are in wrong business house. Doing postmortem on dead projects or projects which are left out by clients due to a mischievous developer writing stupid codes before leaving the company and also deleting some really related file. When these kind of projects land in your hands and you start banging your head and pulling you left out hairs, you will definitely accept my opinion.

Name Matters. Ya really Matters...

With the passage of time we always come to know the truth. As I am the writer I can give my examples( :) ). When i joined my first company, my reaction was - wow I got a job. people kept asking -"Whats your company name?" and hearing to the name, the reply used to be "ok but... never heard about it". At that moment I used to think, what the hell is in name. The thing is I am working and I am getting paid for my work.

As I told you, with the passage of the time I started asking myself the same question-"Is there anything to do with name?". the answer is YES. Dude, I know you will ask for explanation. ok,ready for it.

Lets take the example of a " factory service floor" and just few kilometers away from it, a local garage(like "Santa Singh da Garage"). So people work on both places on same damn things::Cars/scooters/bikes or anything you can think as an example. No difference. ya thats what I used to think.Lets have a closer look.

In a Factory service floor, there is a chain/pipeline working. I know Comp Science people know well about pipelines. So by chain I mean, the deliverable has to pass through various steps/stages and there are experts at each stage. You got a really bad problem and you cant figure it out, then just feed the car to the chain. the experts at each stage will take care of it. At the end you will find your car ready to go for a candle light dinner with you(literally).

Then whats the difference in garage. the garage seems to follow the same,at least to the external world. But the reality is only single person works on all damn problems. and the level of expertise-you better know it. And you can understand what happens when a kid is given a wrench and asked to play.

The other thing is the accessibility to tools. The Service center has sophisticated tools and all other cool stuffs which can make you car a happy experience. But the garage,If you cant make things happen with the tools available,then there goes a bang on that thing.Don't even think about the result of it and always be ready to hear excuses- "o ji pehel se tuti hui thi. hamne to bas kosis ki thi".

The most important part of the business are clients/customers. Just think about the persons who can afford a service at the factory service center and the people who go to the local garage. You usually find ELITE group vehicles(as in my example) in a Factory service floor than garage.

You will ask, whats the point of saying all these things. So I will come back to the topic of my question-"whats in name?". This is what the difference between people working at ELITE company with ELITE clients and ELITE projects and people working on GARAGE with Garage type work and Garage type clients.

I think I have proved my point that "There is always something to do with NAME ".

My Dear "FRENEMY"..

FRENEMY. Dont get astonished to see the word. Its just FRIEND+ENEMY. I was going through a daily newspaper article and I fumbled upon this word. I smiled a little when I went through the material. While reading I could visualize some incidences and persons. Ok its human tendency and you can't blame me. I thought of getting closer into this matter.
I came across many people and personalities(I like to differentiate in this way). I havent thought that people may come into this category or I can say I havent felt people to be in this category. After reading the article I could visualize those moments which came to my mind instantly. The article was a good one , describing what a frenemy is ,where they are found and how to tackel them. But one question is, if i know that the person is a frenemy then why should i continue with him. The answer came to me from my conscience(as I am a grown up dude).
The thing is clear, 80% of people I come across daily are unknown to me.15% are people with whom i deal daily.3% people with whom i talk daily(talking and dealing are two aspects).1% people i share some lighter moments. rest 1% are called friends. you can see the number is meagre a fraction of people i deal daily. So what if i ignore this 1%. Simple answer I will be left lonely and will be left out of those crucial moments of life which i should share with real friends.
The reality is, everybody has this pattern. I know some of them will disagree and will make this 1% to 50-60%,but analyzing the scenario will definitely boil down their calculation to my level. whatever. So if this is the pattern, how could i differentiate a friend from a frenemy? tricky question but you can make it simple. lets take one example.
we are two friends.went to attend a carnival(summer type). we attended it and at the end we are given two new books,identical and new. But what my friend(now distinguished to other category) did is looked into his book, then into my book and suddenly exchanged it. I couldnt understand. Before i could understand anything he wrote his name on it. I asked him why he did this? he told that " this book is good but the book given to me is defective .". I prefrred to keep my silence. Many other occasions are there but i shouldnt disclose and this one is enough to make you visualize. You will say that its a simple thing. But simple things should be considered before they get into complex things. what i mean to say that intelligent people should understand the criticality of the situation and what could happen later.
what should i do now? never look into his face and abuse him beacause he tried to take advantage of friendship. the answer is a big NO. Remember i have told about the 1% of friends, a majority of the people are of this kind. If i take such foolish steps, I will be the loser. I continued but with caution. The levels of intimacy and closeness decreased to a greater level. But the big thing is 'I continued'.
I dont want to guide you what to do or what not to do, but only want to tell you my experience about the concerned matter. So its upto you how you recognize them and deal with them.

Second Day at the job

I know,it will be funny to say about the second day of job,when everybody speaks about the first day of the job. My first day of job was not worth discussing. In simple words ,I and Suvendu Mohapatra, went to the office of Mindfire Solutions, sat there for about 2 hours waiting for the HR. Luckily she was on leave. Senior Hr came and apologized for the delay. Gave us employment contract to read. That was not a contract but guidelines for what to and what not to @mindfire. you have to .....you don't have to...you should not......bla bla.........You could figure it out.Then she took us to our mentor,Mr. sambit kumar swain, and told that you should be working under him. He took us with him,showed our desks. Within moments he was ready with work for us. We shook our head fro whatever he told to us, just thinking inside,ohh my god,what will happen if we will work under him??? This was all about first day,not to make noise about it.

The real fun came on the second day, We could just imagine the attitude of people there.We reached at the office @10.00 am. The first thing which shook me is that the desk assigned to me was actually assighned to a girl(not perfectly as she ws married). She has to shift her belongings for me only. I could guess the disappointment from the discussions among them. For some moment I thought that I was responsible for this complete shit. Whatever. The day was busy one,just reading reading and reading. It was really hectic to read concepts of a new language(ActionScript 3.0) than its implementation.

During the whole day i could see people doing some work(i really didnt know what they r doing).Looking at them a feeling came to my heart that we are at 1000 feet below the sea and they are 1000 feet above the sea.I was thinking inside -when i will be doing something??Difficult feeling for me.Ask me why,becoz i was frightened from inside to see all of them hurrying up with there work as if someone has set fire on their tail. Just in the evening,a mail came from our mentor. "Submit a report what you have done the whole day in my mail ID". We sent it as he told us to do. After few mins a return mail came,"Please give the report in the following format".The format was given and we delved to Outlook express,Typing in the given format. While typing I was thinking ,what mr sambit will be thinking about us?. Suddenly Suvendu told"Done,Lets go. Its the end of 11 hrs Duty".I looked at my watch,it was 8.30 pm. I told him to shut up and let me send the mail.I was still thinking something. what..............don't ask me ,I was also ignorant about it.

I like to show off. Did I really mean that?

I have seen people Show Off. Starting from daily use things like underwear to food, girlfriend to tiolet wash basins, they found something to boast about in every small thing. I came across some of my friends(not so close, you may call classmates) who start showing off on every bit of there life.
One of them was ,i think, a born showy person who started to show off to the doctor after he was born that "Listen doc i was born on this date and there is a strong chemistry for this and bla bla bla...". Another one just started showing off by just selecting a subject "I have to do this and then that and the result will be praised by Mr. Obama and #$%$#" . But really what happened to these people is the first one got kicked out of the company(Hyderabad based) beacause they judged him from the day 2 itself(they coould not judge it in the interview , thanks to his show off nature). The other one has to take over a totally different idea(Project) and work on it(he started to show off on the new topic also,unaware that it may also change).
The baseline is what do they get from these? A little bit of consideration, but what after that? Everyone of us has some important jobs to do in life, we have also some important things in life. Showing off means a Supremacy of ur thoughts,ideas and everything over others, which most of us dislike. then why to be a critcism of others dislike. A typical problem with these people is ,They dont think the importance of others. They just act spontaneously, speaking out whatever they want. But remember one thing showing off only matches with your caliberity to carry out a job and the confidence you have, to do the particular job. If you are a really good in a particular aspect, showing off doesnt matter because it brings your skill set(together with others jealousy) but there should be a limit, else you know what happens when you start walking on water-u SINK. My sincere request to my friends, please at least think before you deliver something because
THE WORLD IS A MIRROR,AND IF YOU MOCK AT THE MIRROR IT DOES THE SAME.
My perception is to keep a healthy distance from such people,beacuse you have other important works to do instead of listening to the bogus talks.

Why are we crying for something

From the begining of my life(literally from the day i got perception of adulthood), I have seen people crying out for something.

When i was in my graduation I have seen people crying foul, from the management and teachers. It is always said that "We have mistook this college with that" or "The people are just getting salaries for doing nothing" or "Damn on them. They had eaten up our job possibilities". I reached my post-grad, and found people crying for the same thing. In between , i thought to analyze the situation. What i found was, people will always deceive you,cheat you and make good profit out of you. But in the end , it is you who has to show them. It is you who has to take the challenge and face them. what I think is if i have sown something, and looked after it like my own children,then whom to fear. Except for my misfortune, nobody else is going to harvest it. Its yours and should have the gut to defend your prize of life.

so, it is best to wait for the correct moment. As one of my friends told

"Samay se pehle,kismat se zyada. Kisko nahin milta"