Brief History of Me.

These days too much oof self introspection going on. Reason is that I am applying to B Schools and currently in the process of writing essays - certainly the most painful process in the entire Application process. Anyway, the essay writing force you to think....think and think. You are forced to think in terms of Who you are as person, What are your priorities and where/what you are trying do with your life? Hmmm. It may sound easy to ears but when you shincerely do, its difficult. At least for me. Anyway, in this process of self introspection, I decided to write a blog and this is what I did in my proffessional career till date. Its really good to stop and look back in time and relish your achievements. Try it sometime.

CITICORP: I graduated from IIT Kanpur, the most coveted institute in India and somehow across the world, and got the campus placement in CITICORP OVERSEAS SOFTWARE Ltd. Now this was one of the most prestigious jobs from the entire department in IITK among our batch. The job was in mumbai, the most populous city of India with approx 20 million population, and the Manhattan of India. In the initial phase of the job, everything appeared quite contradictory to the notions held before joining the job. However, I realized the potential of my social network skills. I must say that the only thing I earned in my two years stay in Mumbai was the array of friends, typically hard core bankers.
I can now understand why I have so much of interest in Finance and Banking? Perhaps the first job had a huge impact on myself. I would rather attribute my friendship and mentor with one of my closest friend Satbir Singh, the hard core banker, along with many others as one of the biggest asset during my stay in mumbai. He even gave me beginners banking books, which further increased my curiosity. My belief in MBA got much strengthened when all my senior friends shared their 'glass cieling' experiences due to the lack of MBA. I still remember one of my genius friend, Pradip Nettar, who qualified for BBC Quiz Champion round, advised me very strongly to go for MBA. This was reciprocated by many others who shared the same feeling, particularly my reading club senior friend - Hari, with whom I occassionally have debates from anything to anything. I believe my MBA feeling got ingrained a lot after seeing/hearing my friend's experiences. The other good habits I cultivated were playing Squash in the morning - I slowly learned that its my favorite game and Trekking.

Achievements:

• Learned the processes of the Citi - a remarkable experience. Developed interest in the Core Banking after seeing the way Citi moves. Definately my first choice of employment.
  
• Found new interests - Playing Squash in the morning and Trekking. The rise in 'health conscious' index was also in mumbai.
  
• Started Blogging - I say its an achievement.
• Trekked the hishest peak of Maharashtra state - Kalsubai and also to Gangotri, some 16000 ft. from the seal level - the longest trek of my life - five days.
  
• Social Networking - Identified and worked on my new skill. I still have some very good senior friends in Citicorp, most of them in different places than mumbai but still in touch.
  

Setback:

• Tried to give CAT [Common Admission Test], an entrance exam for MBA in India but got hepatitis C just before the exam. Still managed to get 97% overall but could not get thru.
  

INFY: Time to move on. However the decision for the change was triggered by the merger of the Citicorp with Polaris, a vendor company of Citicorp. I joined INFOSYS in Bank of America group. I didn't knew at that time that my experience with Bank of America is a long way to go. The first project was a nightmare. The reason was that in Citicorp the work was not technology intensive but over here I was promoted to the role of Team Lead. Now there were expectations to maintain. First Job...Hieghtened Expectations...and struggle started. The problem was compounded with the structure of the team - three girls and me. It was fixed cost project for Infy and the deadlines were extremely tight. So the challenge was to learn the new technology, understand them and make the team members understand them as well. It was my first experience as a team lead and subsequently the people management. I learned that I was pathetic at people management. I could not understand the unproffessional nature of others, prioritizing the home stuff over the proffessional demands. I was more critical and had frequent round of misunderstanding with my manager, who was also new to these technologies. The only way out was to take all the work by myself - I thought. It was a big mistake and I was extremely stressed out. 18 night outs in 24 days. No weekend and no holidays. Desperate to proove myself at the new job, i finally tried to complete everything by myself and in the end, I was completely burned out. The project was not a failure but also not a success. There were many defects and my second attempt at CAT suffered extremely because of this project. I lost the CAT battle once again and perhaps the MBA dream at that point.

Learned a few weakness - loss of temper, early judgement and over committment. In the second project, life was cool. The irony of the life was that when I wanted time for CAT preparation, I got the hottest project and when I didn't wanted a time for myself - I got the coolest one. Phew.... Anyway, this time I discovered my interest in Real Estate. The RE was booming in India and I anticipitated correctly that people want more info about this sector. In the free time, I researched many areas, builders and places to invest and was amused at the Broker Business. Inspite of the NET, how can these brokers survive. why do seller and purchaser both need to pay the fees to broker. The ultimate hieght was that a seller and buyer, both were in INFY and then also they can find each other via broker. Created a Yahoo group for that purpose and it was rage in INFY. Currently that group serves as a local repository of the interested parties in INFY and people use it for selling, purchasing and also gathering useful Info about the builders - the most important aspect before making any decision. People used to share their bad experience they had with builders and it immensely benefited many.

Achievements:

• Pushed the limits of my work from working 15 hours a day to 36 hours at a strech. This I realized after I did it in my most stressful project till date. I guess I can work for more if there is a demand. :)
  
• Created a Real Estate group that was instrumental in brought interested parties under one forum and then it outcasted the broker, cut the group deals and centralized the useful infor at one place. Developed a deep interest in Real Estate and invested heavily in it.
  
• Involved in a Defect free delivery in my second project. This earned a praise from the delivery head and client - the dream of any team lead at that time.
  
• Got promoted to Team lead role.

Setback:

• Identified the Emotional Intelligence problems with myself during the hottest project in my tenure.
  

AFTER INFY: After Infy I joined TechSpan with a brief interval of Qwest. I joined Qwest because of two reasons - I was frustrated at the maintenance work at INFY and high technical work required at Qwest pulled me. I got a salary raise of 110% ws definately a bonus. However, in Qwest I quickly realized my mistake of domain change and switched back to Financial services and continued my experience in the same industry. As I said, I feel comfortable with Finance than any other industry even if it means writing simple code. Anyway, I joined Techspan and was put into Bank of America again. Got married during the transition and for the next few mmonths life went smooth. Still had the hitch for not getting into CAT, India's premium MBA door, but I started to look big - the GMAT. Perhaps getting an MBA is still a distant dream for a guy from Indian Middle class primarily due to the gigantic cost factor.

CHARLOTTE - Then came my first US experience - Charlotte. It was an eye opener in many respects. The work moves at a drastically different way at onsite than at offshore - First Learning. To be honest - Life was so cool at Offshore. The project was again one of the hot project as I was sent in to replace two guys - both senior - and worse the project was in UAT phase. I was sent on such as short notice that I had to read the Design Document of the project in flight. :( . One more senior guy was recruited but unfortunately his mother expired and then he also had to go to his mother place. Resultant - All alone and the heat was on - I mean UAT phase is direct interaction with users - first time - totally a new team to handle at offshore - GULP. Contrary to the expectations, the struggle did not started at the technical level. I faced much the difficulty in the accent problem, understanding the client - resultant - I rarely spoke in the meeting. This frustrated the already stressed out client - Tom. I still remember one our senior manager, Vinod Gopinath, used to make me understand like a friend, treating me like a buddy. I guess, I learned a lot of the people management from Vinod and one more friend was added to my asset. With Vinod's help I slowly started speaking in the meetings, pushed myself to open my mouth and this won the Tom's confidence. My technical experience helped me a lot in quickly overcoming the technical knowhows of the project. The next most difficult learning was the processes. The Bank of America processes were a difficult to understand at first - sometime frustrating - but slowly I could see the viability. Same was the case with Citi processes. Anyway, by the end of the project - Tom was confident and I guess he was satisfied as well.

NEW YORK: To be continued.