It was the morning of 16^th August 2003. Just yesterday the flag was hoisted. As usual I was late in reaching and missed the speech that the director had been reciting since years. I did miss the Laddus too.

Today I was on time. Today did another firm Birlasoft, want young budding engineering undergrads in its squad, for which the whole country has been the best know for: “The Software Services.” There were a large number of students wanting their name to be announced on the select few lists.

It was time for the PPT (Pre Placement Talk). The two gentle men dressed in formals were introduced by the placement officer and we felt at ease after knowing one of them was our great great…. grandfather at a senior position in the firm. Actually the immediate seniors are referred to as fathers in the so-called technical jargons of an REC/NIT and the two-year senior batch as grandfathers and so on.

The written was over. I could somehow make educated guess and answer the DBMS, C and other software related questions. Then came the GD and I spoke a lot for some time and shut my mouth realizing I had spoken enough. Then came the final rounds of interviews which went cool. We were called. The result was announced and yes, it did have my name. 

It was the bumps time. Caught badly, thrown up by friends, pockets emptied at the Nescafe outlet. And I said to my self “Welcome to the corporate world.” We were to join next year 5^th July 2004

The year went by and we happily bid farewell to each other, the mind-numbing lectures, the “Canteen wala Taau”, The Nescafe outlet, “the thadi wali mai”. I am sure the chain smokers would still owe her money for the sutta.

Waiting for the 5^th July to come and yes it came and passed by. I was still enjoying the vacations. The joining had been deferred to 16^th August. One of us received a call from HR. But wait, what did I hear? 16^th August? Yes, that was exactly a year after the auspicious day, the day I was selected for the Squad.

Here comes the rest of the story:

Name: Rahul Ganesh

Date of Joining: 16^th Aug 2004

Designation: Associate Software Engineer

Emp Id: 50802

And last but not the least: The Team: ESG Presales (Had just been awarded the best team. I doubted its future!!). I was to work under my Great great….  Grandfather, the one who had mistakenly inducted me in the squad a year ago. J

Just the next day I had over a 200 page EOI (Expression of Interest) in my hand and a 10-day deadline. At this juncture I said to myself “Welcome to the right size firm: Birlasoft”

I was on an “On job training”.  A lot different from other firms that train you on some technology and end up putting you in another.

It was an Australian tender and I had never ever rapped the Aussies so much, not even the Australian Cricket Team. But it was the best way to start a Presales job and we learnt a lot of technical keywords that we had to use on the job. 

The best part was a day-to-day interaction with the onsite sales. Some had made me Guru and some a friend. With them I learnt how to not to tell a lie but how to hide the truth. That’s important to remain alive in the battlefield.

The right balance between the Sale’s and GBD’s “You name it, we have it” approach, which no doubt has worked and our real capability had to be taken care of.  Its not easy for a mid size firm like us to enter into the market and just say, “Hey we are there too.” We do have to tailor a lot of things in the responses. Not that we cannot do things but when asked about past experience it can be a bit dicey cause we might be new to the technology and there are already N number of firms that have already done it.

Another such incident I remember is when I had to respond to our capability on Supra, Mantis and Easytrieve (all mainframe technologies). The answer was simple:  No one has done it so a No Bid in the Kintana entry. But wait there was a day when we had not even known Protean and Coda and today we have a major client the “Sun Chemicals” and it’s still growing. I was now a part of a team that had turned it from a suspect to prospect to a full-fledged client even before I had joined.

Man, I still wonder how they did it. There are certain approaches: make them realize we are the right size firm. Our customized application development is better than some other firm’s out of the box product customization. We won a US client and defeated one of world’s largest software firms.

Days went by; I learnt FPA and estimation techniques. I was appraised and became an SE from an ASE. I was approaching the rotation policy and was to be moved to delivery to taste the real software development. I chose to be in the New Initiatives Group that had laughed Asset Management and now was launching the Content Management and Portals as service offerings.

Meanwhile came the third 16^th August and the anniversary. The day went by without any celebration. That no doubt made me realized life had changed. Everyone was busy and we were really into “The Corporate world”

The self learning continued for quite some time at cost of no projects and today we know how to integrate a portal server BEA Aqualogic Interaction (Plumtree) to Content sever (Documentum) which we are awaiting to take as new service offering to the market. The ITT industries has its portal being maintained and configured by my team. Now with hands on into a cross platform portal (Dot Net and J2EE), I want the learning curve to grow exponentially in the sphere of Portals and Content Management.

The learning wont stop cause, I believe there’s”LOTS MORE TO COME”.

These were the golden words I used for over a year to unlock my PC every morningJ.