Wednesday, August 11, 2004

these cheese balls...

recently i got this mail from my batch coord, who was nominally in charge of my batch during training last year. Yes! It's been a year since I joined tcs. A coincidence that I am posting a mail from my batch-coord on the day I joined. Guess not.... try reading it.....

Dear T30 friends,
Hope this mail finds you in the best of spirits. It is almost an year/six months since you have left the training centre. The debates, the interactions and of course the arguments we had in class are still fresh in my memory. I do remember some of you especially because of your very communicative silence! How are you doing in your project? What is your current assignment and responsibility? Who is your PL?

Our team is trying to collect information about the effectiveness of the Initial Learning Programme. I on behalf of the ILP team invite you to help us in this initiative. Your feedback would definitely help us to align ourselves better to your need as well as the company’s need. Now that you have acquired knowledge and experience to look back at your ILP in an objective manner we value your feedback all the more.

Do respond to this mail and let us maintain the contact we have made now. In your reply please include the name and mail id of your Project Leader. We plan to obtain feedback about the effectiveness of ILP from you as well as your PL. We will send you the feedback form when you reply to this mail.

Cheers to you all.

this mail was sent on 7-8 and it reached me on 8-8. yes. it takes email a full day for travelling the distance from trivandrum all the way down to chennai... hoo... boy.....

so i wrote her a reply....

Hi Preetha,
Nice to hear from you. Yes! It has been a whole year since we attended training. It was quite a pleasant time. In fact, the most pleasant time that I realize in retrospect, you could have in TCS. Ah! Trivandrum! There we were, all assured that life was bright, and nice, and full of intelligent people and software that worked. Of course, this was before we met our PLs, MLs and most of the rest of TCS. Or used Lotus Notes. Lots of our PLs are bright, but Lotus Notes is another story altogether. The mail you sent me, took 24 hours to reach me. Yes!!!! 24 hours. For all the cost of setting up a mail server at your end, another mail server at my end, giving you a comp, giving me another one, TCS could have given you a plain Indian Postal Service Envelope, and hey! job done. ;-)

Yes! TCS is a great place to work in. How great? I am actively enrolling my detractors in the buddy lao-kush-ho-jao scheme. My motto has been to take them down along with me. ;-). No. But seriosly. I do enjoy working. It's a treat. It's a dream come true. Of sorts....

Trivandrum was great. So were the permanent faculty there. The visiting ones were... truthful. But what act of courage prompted an organization like tcs, to actually put a group of youngsters in one place all together and impart some kind of training? Seeing that on an average, the age of the TCS workforce is 35. Yeah! Atleast in my office. Amit (who was most popular student, as you may well remember), is in my office. We spend our spare time, trying to figure out what we will look like when we are old.

Well well well... chatting aside. I mean I am a proffessional now. With the panopaly of office a ff and a ss in the proffessional. So to return to more pressing matters.

How am I doing in my project? Great.

What is my current assignment and responsibility? I could tell you that but that would be a violation of the Tata Security Policy and also an oath that I took at my GL's knee.

Who is my pl? Manish Pinge

How effective was ILP?

What do I reply to that. You people did a great job. That was the best time I will ever have in TCS. But other than the Personality Development Class, I have yet to utilize even one skill that was taught to me at ILP. It seems to me to be the silliest thing ever conceivable, but really, to work effectively in TCS you don't need to know C. What you need to know is how to fill timesheets. Software engineering is a farce. And I trill all over when doing the supremely intellectual pursuit of IQMS. Bull! What I do is run around and ask IDM why my mail client/ server/ donkey's ears aren't working. Oh! provided IDM is there. Otherwise I call up extension 2179 and wait for them. I also do stuff, like Centre Level Activites, in order for my rating, which is something undocumented at ILP, or elsewhere.... Or as scheduled on every friday, when I wait for ultimatix to open up and it does, only to say your session has expired. Feel nostalgic then, I mean, remember in ILP if we wanted to check our mail, we had to open up eenadu.net. Oh! and how is Mr. Lalitha Prasad. Do convey my regards to him. I have yet to get his Address. Tried to forward mails to him, but Lotus notes... ah... Lotus notes.

So sure Prita. Do send in the forms, and all that. Its been great hearing from you. A bright sliver of sunshine during dreadful monotony. You can figure out my address from this mail. My PL's is: PL's Name: Manish Pinge PL's ID: Manish Pinge/DEL/TCS
Cheers,
Ramesh Ananthakrishnan

P.S.: Have you ever wondered what a cheesy email client Lotus Notes is. I mean I always thought of you as Preetha Thomas. It's right now destroyed another fond memory and made you Preetha Rajiv.

P.P.S: What is your email id btw. Doing reverse DNS lookups on Lotus Notes is certainlly not my idea of fun and games

P.P.P.S: Do you require young idealistic faculty, to inspire your students into the vision and mission of Kohli. I can recommend a few people.

P.P.P.P.S: I just figured out that the only thing worse than Lotus Notes is perhaps the food outside the Karyavattom hostel



2 Comments:

At 9:58 AM, Blogger Bhars said...

:)))

Come on, only the company names differ. At the end of the day, all software enggrs. do only _browsing_

Did ya tell something abt lotus notes? Couldn't agree with you more :)

 
At 8:06 AM, Blogger JC said...

Boy! it is the same story @ TCS also. Is there no Ideal company at all........

 

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