Hi guys, let me first introduce myself briefly. I am Kaushik Chakraborty from Ishapore(West Bengal), done my schooling from K.V. No 1, Ishapore and completed my B.E(Bachelor of Engineering) safely :P from University Institute of Technology,BU (Burdwan , West Bengal). Then I got a job @ Tavant Technologies India Pvt Ltd and currently I am living at Bangaluru.
I will talk about my past life in some other time in a seperate post some time later because that is more interesting and also need some thought process. As for now I would like to share my experience of 1 year being a software engineer.
May 28th -- I gave my last exam in my graduate life; it
was my final project seminar. After 35 mins of Seminar and random ragging by
the faculties I was let out of the seminar hall. The first expression on my
face was, "YES at last I am done with exams....... after almost 200 exams
and 4 years of suffering I am at last done......... Phew,,,". Sincerely I
didn’t enjoyed my last 2.5 of my engineering life. Now you guys might be
thinking that how come this is so indifferent to others that he wasn’t able to
enjoy his Engineering college life, well that will be a different story
altogether and the most influential part of my life that almost changed the way
I think and perceive others.
I returned home on 29th with all possible belongings of mine from pg. The luggage was too heavy but somehow I managed to reach my home :P …. That day I was very restless because I was the happiest one while leaving the college. When I tried to sleep my friend’s sad faces were floating infront me and suddenly I was able to remember every moment I spent with my friends at college, may be because with some of them I was too much attached. I expected that I will be getting my joining letter from Tavant Technologies with a gap of almost 2-3 months and I too wanted few months of gap after a hectic schedule of 1.5 months of continuous final sem exams.
4th June at around 11 – 11:30 am I got a call from a lady asking for me.
This was the conversation :
Lady(Megha) : “Hi, am Megha calling from Tavant Technologies. Can I speak to Kaushik.”
I returned home on 29th with all possible belongings of mine from pg. The luggage was too heavy but somehow I managed to reach my home :P …. That day I was very restless because I was the happiest one while leaving the college. When I tried to sleep my friend’s sad faces were floating infront me and suddenly I was able to remember every moment I spent with my friends at college, may be because with some of them I was too much attached. I expected that I will be getting my joining letter from Tavant Technologies with a gap of almost 2-3 months and I too wanted few months of gap after a hectic schedule of 1.5 months of continuous final sem exams.
4th June at around 11 – 11:30 am I got a call from a lady asking for me.
This was the conversation :
Lady(Megha) : “Hi, am Megha calling from Tavant Technologies. Can I speak to Kaushik.”
Me : “Speaking.”
Megha : “so Kaushik would you be able to join us on 11th.”
Me : “aaaaaahhh……… 11th next month right . Ok fine .. J”
Megha : “No, not next month’s 11th, you need to
join on next Monday.”
Me : *in shock**silent*…. “Ok I will call you back after few
minutes and let you know about my decision”.
Then I went my father and discussed with him about the
situation. He told me do you have a choice? I thought for sometime and called
back to Megha and replied her in affirmative. It was a mixed reaction on my
mind, I was happy because it came out of nowhere and suddenly am looking
forward to my new life and sad as I mentioned earlier that I was expecting to
spend some spare time of 1 or 2 months after the exams.
Never mind , these kind of situations/surprizes keep us
excited and makes us enjoy life to the utmost lever. And suddenly one notion
clicked on our(mine, my father’s and my mother’s) mind. Its 4th
today and 11th is on next Monday :O :O …. A small panic, what to do
and how to manage everything so fast.
*Skipping this week. *
May 9th : Then came the when time came to say good bye to my parents and Ishapore for an uncertain period. Tell you what it was the first time I was going aboard a flight, so I was excited about that also. I didn’t knew about the proceedings inside an airport till we get on-board. It was a good experience for me. So far so good, the flight took of at around 7:15 am and landed on roughly 9:40 am. While coming out of the flight the first thing that I immediately felt was the temperature difference. The outside temperature was 25 Deg Celcius , which was almost 10 Deg less than that of Kolkata. Ohh, and what a feeling I certainly liked the weather because I also prefer cold places. First impression about Bangaluru was fair enough. Me being a new guy in the town, didn’t know about the cab rates in Bangaluru, some or the other guys came to me and started asking me about my destination, I showed them the address(Koramangala) that I had, it almost 41Kms away from the airport. Few cabs agencies came to me and told me their rate , I started to bargain but was of no use since I don’t know how to bargain. I preferred to search for cab somewhere else, then I got a Meeru Cab at a rate lesser than the others. I reached by destination at around 10:30 pm. The accommodation provided by my company was pretty good. I was a bit tired by the time when I reached the hotel. I had a bath followed by lunch then later I slept for almost 4 hours, probably the weather was very good that’s why I felt like sleeping even more. At the evening I met around 22 guys and girls who also were newbies like me at Tavant Technologies. The next day also passed with a blink of an eye.
11th May: I woke up early in the morning and got ready for office. Every second was making me more and more excited , I was trying to presume what there in stall for. At last the cab from the company came to take us to the company, 8 of us jumped into the Innova wearing a smile on our face. As the place was new for I was enjoyed every view of it, and more importantly I was more astonished to see the amount of greenery all around. I already knew that Bangaluru was the green city of India and also has been chosen as the most preferred city to live in, but witnessing it by myself was something of a different feeling all together. Looking at the streets I was able to see young generation like me wearing formals were heading towards their own offices. 98% of them were Software Engineers, which I don’t need to guess anyways; its Bangaluru(the silicon valley of India) we can’t expect anything less than that. :P :P …..
It took 7-8 mins routing through the busy traffic to reach the Tavant Technologies building. Coloured in all Orange and Silver it looked somewhat apart from the other companies. We were greeted by some of the senior official and was told to have a seat in the ground floor conference room. First impression : Felt like some corporate, which anyone like me would feel for the first time while stepping inside a private sector company. We waited for 10-15. Then came our first mentor name Priya with a smiling face and a jolly attitude and she became a friend of us instantly. She offered chocolates, milk and coffee to everyone. The milk was a relief for me because it was a bit cold inside the conference room and frankly speaking I was a bit tensed too, thus my hands were getting cold. Then came the one more lady from the HR department named Sahana, she gave us some Tavant goodies. Then she made us play some games, one of them was to give an adjective for ourselves, which should start with the same alphabet as that of the starting alphabet of the first name that depicts us in some way or the other way. The most hilarious adjective was “NORMAL” Nikhil. I wasn’t able to find any suitable adjective for me, so Sahana suggested told it on behalf of me, “KILLER” Kaushik ….. and hell yea I did liked it. :D :D . Then we had some group games as well as activities, so all in all we had a lot of fun, frankly speaking I was still in the college days kind of a mood. Then came the Big Bosses of the Tavant Technologies, they gave us an introduction to Tavant, Tavant practices and more importantly the values of Tavant. That day only we got our Access Cards and we were shown our work stations. By EOD it was a great experience.
While heading back to our hotel during the evening I personally didn’t knew the streets, one of our friend headed us towards our hotel. Was enjoying the streets and light drizzles and looking at the people passing by and their tired faces all them heading towards their respective home.
Next day our training started, our manager was an old guy with world’s full of wisdom and not to mention his energy at an age more than 55, was anyday more than a young guy like us. His name was Srivasana Thothathiri, but people used to call him Dr. Saahab. Now you may ask me why? Because he is the only guy with a doctorate degree and for being the one of the fewest employees who has been with the company from the first day, has seen and witnessed all sorts of ups and downs of the company, and every single employee respects this fellow, thus for an honour came the name “SAAHAB”. And yes the now is the time to introduce all of you to our trainer, an Architect who used to be a part of Tavant Technologies 1 year back is now running his own company, Mr. Raghavendra Dixit , everybody calls him R.D. ,,, cool haaa…. :D …… But as the name suggests the guy is not so cool (Sorry R.D. dnt mind if your reading this line, assume that it’s not here….. he he… :P) but he is technically perfect. Well then enough of introduction, let’s get down to business; fun time was partially over for the next 2 months. A tough schedule of training started specially aiming towards strengthening the Technical Skill of the newbies as much as possible. For the first few weeks it was quite easy for me to get the things without even thinking much about it as I belong to a Computer Science background it was quite easy for me to brush up with the already known terms and technologies. After the first 3 weeks there was an exam conducted in which the overall result was fairly good. I got 12/15 and the highest was 14 as per as I could remember, though according to RD it was less as per his expectations. He was a bit pissed off with us also, we could feel that on his face sometimes. Some of the he used to lose temper and some unlucky guy might have suffered. For the next few weeks the pressure exponentially increased, we started learning a new concept everyday , and implementing them at the earliest. One more exam was taken and this was a practical exam, we were given a problem (a simple Banking Problem) and was given 2 hours to implement it. Some of them did it, some of them copied it, some them gave up and others were having fun,, * he he *. May be because humour is an integral part of life and it’s not something one can leave without, that’s why we all were having some or the other jokes or pranks pulled out even when we were not able to solve the given problem. I too enjoyed it to some extent. 2 hours went passed by , I came up with a solution of mine and submitted the code. Next day it was the result day, people was pretty scared of what its going to be now. He came to class room, and that day probably he was seriously angry with us. He didn’t even replied back to our good morning wish, then he switched on his laptop and the projector and started to surf through some java files. He then opened one file which actually was the code of one of ours, from the exam last day and he told us to go through that code and find the mistakes. We were able to find numerous numbers of mistakes in the code, and frankly speaking that .java file was full shit. We, except, were all thinking that whose exam solutions could that be. Then RD told that guy to stand-up and gave a huge round of lectures to that guy. Well I thing I remember what RD said, “With your standard of coding you don’t deserve to be in Tavant, you better leave this company or I will personally make sure that you leave the company.” That was some day, RD was super pissed off and he almost lost his concentration and might be we were now getting on his nerves. The next day everything was back to normal again and RD was back to his own techie form.
*Skipping this week. *
May 9th : Then came the when time came to say good bye to my parents and Ishapore for an uncertain period. Tell you what it was the first time I was going aboard a flight, so I was excited about that also. I didn’t knew about the proceedings inside an airport till we get on-board. It was a good experience for me. So far so good, the flight took of at around 7:15 am and landed on roughly 9:40 am. While coming out of the flight the first thing that I immediately felt was the temperature difference. The outside temperature was 25 Deg Celcius , which was almost 10 Deg less than that of Kolkata. Ohh, and what a feeling I certainly liked the weather because I also prefer cold places. First impression about Bangaluru was fair enough. Me being a new guy in the town, didn’t know about the cab rates in Bangaluru, some or the other guys came to me and started asking me about my destination, I showed them the address(Koramangala) that I had, it almost 41Kms away from the airport. Few cabs agencies came to me and told me their rate , I started to bargain but was of no use since I don’t know how to bargain. I preferred to search for cab somewhere else, then I got a Meeru Cab at a rate lesser than the others. I reached by destination at around 10:30 pm. The accommodation provided by my company was pretty good. I was a bit tired by the time when I reached the hotel. I had a bath followed by lunch then later I slept for almost 4 hours, probably the weather was very good that’s why I felt like sleeping even more. At the evening I met around 22 guys and girls who also were newbies like me at Tavant Technologies. The next day also passed with a blink of an eye.
11th May: I woke up early in the morning and got ready for office. Every second was making me more and more excited , I was trying to presume what there in stall for. At last the cab from the company came to take us to the company, 8 of us jumped into the Innova wearing a smile on our face. As the place was new for I was enjoyed every view of it, and more importantly I was more astonished to see the amount of greenery all around. I already knew that Bangaluru was the green city of India and also has been chosen as the most preferred city to live in, but witnessing it by myself was something of a different feeling all together. Looking at the streets I was able to see young generation like me wearing formals were heading towards their own offices. 98% of them were Software Engineers, which I don’t need to guess anyways; its Bangaluru(the silicon valley of India) we can’t expect anything less than that. :P :P …..
It took 7-8 mins routing through the busy traffic to reach the Tavant Technologies building. Coloured in all Orange and Silver it looked somewhat apart from the other companies. We were greeted by some of the senior official and was told to have a seat in the ground floor conference room. First impression : Felt like some corporate, which anyone like me would feel for the first time while stepping inside a private sector company. We waited for 10-15. Then came our first mentor name Priya with a smiling face and a jolly attitude and she became a friend of us instantly. She offered chocolates, milk and coffee to everyone. The milk was a relief for me because it was a bit cold inside the conference room and frankly speaking I was a bit tensed too, thus my hands were getting cold. Then came the one more lady from the HR department named Sahana, she gave us some Tavant goodies. Then she made us play some games, one of them was to give an adjective for ourselves, which should start with the same alphabet as that of the starting alphabet of the first name that depicts us in some way or the other way. The most hilarious adjective was “NORMAL” Nikhil. I wasn’t able to find any suitable adjective for me, so Sahana suggested told it on behalf of me, “KILLER” Kaushik ….. and hell yea I did liked it. :D :D . Then we had some group games as well as activities, so all in all we had a lot of fun, frankly speaking I was still in the college days kind of a mood. Then came the Big Bosses of the Tavant Technologies, they gave us an introduction to Tavant, Tavant practices and more importantly the values of Tavant. That day only we got our Access Cards and we were shown our work stations. By EOD it was a great experience.
While heading back to our hotel during the evening I personally didn’t knew the streets, one of our friend headed us towards our hotel. Was enjoying the streets and light drizzles and looking at the people passing by and their tired faces all them heading towards their respective home.
Next day our training started, our manager was an old guy with world’s full of wisdom and not to mention his energy at an age more than 55, was anyday more than a young guy like us. His name was Srivasana Thothathiri, but people used to call him Dr. Saahab. Now you may ask me why? Because he is the only guy with a doctorate degree and for being the one of the fewest employees who has been with the company from the first day, has seen and witnessed all sorts of ups and downs of the company, and every single employee respects this fellow, thus for an honour came the name “SAAHAB”. And yes the now is the time to introduce all of you to our trainer, an Architect who used to be a part of Tavant Technologies 1 year back is now running his own company, Mr. Raghavendra Dixit , everybody calls him R.D. ,,, cool haaa…. :D …… But as the name suggests the guy is not so cool (Sorry R.D. dnt mind if your reading this line, assume that it’s not here….. he he… :P) but he is technically perfect. Well then enough of introduction, let’s get down to business; fun time was partially over for the next 2 months. A tough schedule of training started specially aiming towards strengthening the Technical Skill of the newbies as much as possible. For the first few weeks it was quite easy for me to get the things without even thinking much about it as I belong to a Computer Science background it was quite easy for me to brush up with the already known terms and technologies. After the first 3 weeks there was an exam conducted in which the overall result was fairly good. I got 12/15 and the highest was 14 as per as I could remember, though according to RD it was less as per his expectations. He was a bit pissed off with us also, we could feel that on his face sometimes. Some of the he used to lose temper and some unlucky guy might have suffered. For the next few weeks the pressure exponentially increased, we started learning a new concept everyday , and implementing them at the earliest. One more exam was taken and this was a practical exam, we were given a problem (a simple Banking Problem) and was given 2 hours to implement it. Some of them did it, some of them copied it, some them gave up and others were having fun,, * he he *. May be because humour is an integral part of life and it’s not something one can leave without, that’s why we all were having some or the other jokes or pranks pulled out even when we were not able to solve the given problem. I too enjoyed it to some extent. 2 hours went passed by , I came up with a solution of mine and submitted the code. Next day it was the result day, people was pretty scared of what its going to be now. He came to class room, and that day probably he was seriously angry with us. He didn’t even replied back to our good morning wish, then he switched on his laptop and the projector and started to surf through some java files. He then opened one file which actually was the code of one of ours, from the exam last day and he told us to go through that code and find the mistakes. We were able to find numerous numbers of mistakes in the code, and frankly speaking that .java file was full shit. We, except, were all thinking that whose exam solutions could that be. Then RD told that guy to stand-up and gave a huge round of lectures to that guy. Well I thing I remember what RD said, “With your standard of coding you don’t deserve to be in Tavant, you better leave this company or I will personally make sure that you leave the company.” That was some day, RD was super pissed off and he almost lost his concentration and might be we were now getting on his nerves. The next day everything was back to normal again and RD was back to his own techie form.
It was the last working day of the first month and I was
eagerly waiting for my first salary to be credited in my newly opened account
and it was a great feeling when at around 7:30 pm an sms came to my cell phone
mentioning that “Your account with
account number XXXXXXX223 has been credited with an amount of XXXXX.XX INR.”
Immediately I called my parents and told them that I got my first salary
followed a small treat to myself with shopping and dinner outside along with
friends.
That day I got to know the value of money in real and my father used to tell me that, “The value of others money is always less than the value of your own hard earned money” and hell yea it was true to very last word.
That day I got to know the value of money in real and my father used to tell me that, “The value of others money is always less than the value of your own hard earned money” and hell yea it was true to very last word.
The training lasted for about 2 months and all of us finished 2 practice projects while being in the training session. The projects really took a toll on the fresher’s, but all in all it was good hands on work experience which helped in learning and development. Now was the time for the final exam a VIVA VOICE. We were told that based on our performance throughout the training , code quality and discipline in the projects done and Viva on all the technologies that was taught to us, we will allotted to projects. And the day for viva came, and my group was the first one to give the viva and I was the last one from my group to give the viva. It went pretty well from my side. After that the senior officials , told our batch that we have to wait for 1 week before the allotment is made. That 1 week I got bored a lot, coz there was a shift from a lot of work to almost no work. Somehow I passed the week and the next week I got the news that I was a part of the Tavant Technology’s biggest vendor. I felt good about it.
We all met our GDM’s (Global Delivery Managers) and
respective managers who gave us a higher level view about the project’s and we
will be doing in the upcoming days. Luckily, I got a chance on a new
development project which started almost 1.5 months back. I was introduced to
my team mates and was given knowledge training about the code technology used.
I was given a time of 3 weeks to get
used to the technology and then on October 17th I got my first block
of work, I was given a generous time to
2 weeks to complete the project. With the help my mentor, an IIT “geek” , an
hard-core chickeneatarian(especially KFC’s chicken) named Suraj , I was able to complete my task
with 1 day to spare. Then came the time for testing the functionality and undoubtedly I got some bugs in my
functionalities. I fixed them all and got them tested. Slowly I was beginning
to understand the SDLC practically. I had my own share of hard times along with
others members of the project, started spending a lot of time in office .
I got some positive feedbacks which boosted my confidence to some extent.
After almost 9 months of developments by the entire team (7 months from my
side), the project came to an end and tell you what it’s a great feeling when
your efforts give fruitful results.
For me the life till now been pretty balanced, I loved the culture at Tavant
Technologies, as we say it here "WORK HARD PARTY HARDER". We went out for team
activities for multiple times like to Worder La, Movies, numerous Team Lunches
and Bandipur National Park. I have now
got an experience of about 10 months waiting for my next project and waiting
for some my college friend to shift to Bangalore from TCS ILP.. and guess what
as an harmful part and package of being a software engineer I came to bangaluru with a
weight of 63 kg which is now 82 kg. :P :P mostly because of lying on my a** for
almost 10 hours a day and extensive
exposure to KFC and Pizza Hut ,,,, :P :P ……
he he .. Jokes apart I spent my last 10 months pretty smoothly and gained some valuable experience. I really donno about others IT organizations but frankly speaking Tavant Culture Rocks
...............\m/ \m/.............
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