End of an Era
What started a long long time ago… on a nice Monday morning
of August 28th, 1995 @ Electronics City Bangalore, is finally coming
to an end today on May 19th 2014 @ Hinjewadi Pune.
Almost 19 years, with Infosys (missed reaching the 20 year
milestone!). While it seems like a lifetime, it really wasn’t. When I think
back, I can still clearly recall the Monday morning when my uncle had come to
drop me to the Koramangala Infosys Office and I had taken a bus from there to
the Electronic City campus. I had walked cautiously into what was then just the
building 9 and 10 (Heritage building) of the current Infosys City, Bengaluru. I
walked to where some HR folks were sitting and told them that I was to join
from this day and they greeted me with a warm smile and pointed me to a room
where many others like me, freshers, were sitting to complete the joining in
formalities. For some reason I had
expected this to be similar to college’s first day experience: ragging. But
then realized that this was now a professional environment, that I was now on a
job and such things didn’t happen here.
We did most of our paper work and had sessions from NRN, NSR
and one or two more people and towards evening, I was enquiring on how to reach
to Ulsoor Lake (for that’s where my uncle’s home was) and boarded the
appropriate bus. Immediately that day, I got a taste of how things were to be
on the road in the days to come. It took 3 hours to reach back (a distance of
about 20 km). Uncle and Parents were a bit tense when I finally landed home.
Recall that those weren’t the days of mobile phones and they only knew that I
should reach home latest by 6.30 pm. It was a time when “reaching late to
office or unable to reach office” was a documented risk in project’s risk plan.
Anyway, from building 9, SBU3, NCR project, to building 14,
to building 19 in Infosys Labs (then called SETLabs), to building 23 basement
(we had to come to the ground floor even to take a bio break), to building 32,
I had not just a moving career in Infosys, but also pretty enriching. I remained
aligned to Microsoft technologies all along that helped me gain deep expertise
in MS products and further helped me bag the Microsoft’s Most Valuable
Professional Award 6 years in a row.
The day I had joined the Bangalore office, NRN had announced
that an office in Pune was being opened up and I immediately applied for it. By
the time they started taking people in for it, I was already assigned to the
NCR project where we were working with Windows 3.11 for workgroups, using
Visual C++ 1.5 and writing graphical user interface components to be used in
NCR’s Point of Sale terminal applications. This was very interesting work and I
was personally doing very well, so when I expressed my interest to relocate to
Pune, my manager tried to discourage me, but I insisted and was eventually
moved to Nestle project, that was expected to be the first one to shift to Pune
and start from there. However some delays in occupying the building (in Pune)
and contract signing from Nestle, and I was on bench for about 1 month or so.
During this time I tried to learn typing so that I could increase my speed of
working with the keyboard. I would pick a random book or carry the newspaper
and start typing from any random page in a notepad and later check for
mistakes. While this turned out to be a good thing, the ‘being on bench’ surely
wasn’t and I was getting frustrated sitting idle. So I finally approached my
NCR manager again and he gladly took me back in his project.
I continued to stay on in Bangalore till June 2004 and the
days, months, years were wonderful. I enjoyed the work in Infosys and had a
great personal time as well with friends. We visited lots of places in and
around Bangalore. I was in a much better physical shape then and could do
trekking, and played regular badminton at a resort in Yalahanka, where we had
become members.
Got married, had a daughter, bought a flat and I was pretty
much settled in Bangalore, but then slowly the 25 km distance from HAL Airport
Road to Electronics City started to take 1.5 to 2 hrs one side and this
increased the overall time away from home significantly. Also unfortunately the
climate didn’t suit both my wife and my daughter and both would keep catching
flue frequently and had throat infections; causing negative effect on my work
and their health.
Eventually in June 2004, I officially shifted to Pune, and
helped start local setup for SETLabs. Did lot of running around initially to
meet various DMs to help sell SETLabs and offered our folks for consulting
opportunities. Over the years Labs grew from the initial 3-4 of us in Pune to a
pretty decent size.
Once I became the lead for SETLabs Pune operations, I got to
join the Pune DC EC and it was a turning point in my life. Apart from my day
job, this opportunity got me loads of opportunities to contribute at the DC
level and it was an excellent team that I got to work with here. As I look
back, I have probably worked with almost all teams and committees. Been part of
DC EC, Phase 1 Ops Council, Phase 1 Canteen Committee, Pune Transport
Committee, worked closely with HR for many DC initiatives, drove the Innovation
agenda for the DC, mentored clubs like Eco Club, VOY, and Robogear team and
also worked for few years with Hinjewadi Industries Association (outside of
Infosys). Am proud that due to my pushing, the DC is now celebrating its
birthday every year as Pune DC Day on 15th May. It has been a truly
enriching experience.
All these years I have worked in many projects, with many
managers, and with very many people and have mostly good memories of everyone,
baring maybe a few incidents. Overall, I can say that my career at Infosys was
going pretty smoothly. In about a decade and a half years, I became Principal
Architect. The industry took a downward turn and things become to slow down.
The software industry was reaching an inflection point, where the initial rapid
growth for the people and the organizations was hitting a plateau and slowing
down. The industry was saturating, the services become commodity.
New joinees around this time started feeling disgruntled
that they didn’t grow as fast as we had grown and they didn’t get as many
onsite opportunities as there were earlier. Many good people left us both at
junior and senior levels.
The question that everyone asked while I was at Infosys –
How come you stayed for so long? And now the question is – Why did you resign? For
me job satisfaction is the key. So far I was happy doing what I was assigned to.
I pulled along all these years because I always happened to be doing
interesting things. The last few years, the work I was doing on Immersive User
Interface was exciting and we could experiment on lot of new technologies,
concepts and ideas including things like touch and gesture driven interfaces,
augmented reality, etc. However due to organizational direction, some of this
work had to be stopped and put on back burner.
They say - all good things come to an end. Such is now the
case with me. Having worked only for Infosys, I don’t know how the world
outside is going to be. Those who change the companies often, at least have the
experience of going and settling in a new company. For me, it is almost like
rewinding back to 1995 and starting afresh in a new company, but I guess this
was required now, before it becomes too late.
As today came near, I have been cleaning up my cabin and it
made me realize how many things I had accumulated over time. But it also taught
me something... that we tend to keep things with us, thinking that they are of
significant value, but they just occupy space and over the years, we hardly
ever go back to them. Same is true with our emails. If only we can learn to
clean up at regular intervals, we will probably not need the big data
solutions.
The last week has been all mostly farewell, meeting and
saying bye to friends formed over the years. Emotional moments. Am glad
that most people had good things to say about me, or at least they shared only
good things J.
Got some very good and thoughtful gifts that I will cherish my entire life.
Will keep reminding of the great times I had with these folks here.
Adieu to all my friends and colleagues at Infosys… my family
for so many years… my home away from home… till we meet again
It is time to say the standard developer line “Hello
World!” Here I come.
Very nice blog. Wishing you many successes forward. Over the years, I have got extremely accustomed to saying "My brother is in Infosys", and will have to learn to change that.
ReplyDeleteNice read Atul.
ReplyDelete