Next Time you waste your food, remember this

Egos at workplace

It's been almost 10 months working here and believe me, in this time, I have learnt more inter-personal skills than any classroom or training sessions could ever teach. I have dealt with the some of the most hardworking ,creative , cheerful and also as I found out last week, some of the most egoistic people you can ever find. More on that later though.

Last week, I had the first Performance appraisal of my career and was pleasantly surprised to get a very decent rating (For those of you who wonder what this is all about, appraisals are done in all companies once or twice a year. Based on the work you do, your boss lists out your strengths, weaknesses, areas of developments and rates you based on your contribution to the Project.)

While basking in the glory of my appraisal rating, I also got the shock of my life. My boss called me aside and told me that he had received some damning feedback against me. I was like what the F#$# could that be??

Guys and gals, hold your breath!! What's ahead may or may not much sense to you (at least it did not make to me!!).

It was then that he revealed that one of my fellow team members had complained against me about the way I work. According to the complainant, "I bully all others, do not listen to them, always try to dictate terms, never involves them in discussions, keep bossing around blah blah…………"

When I heard my boss telling me all this, words did not come in my mouth. Not that I was terrified or something. But just could not control my laughter. Coming back to senses quickly, I tried to understand who this complainant was!! Once his / her name was revealed, I understood the whole funda, and then explained the actual truth to my boss. I guess it was an eye-opener for him as well

I don't want to wash dirty linen in public, but getting angry at me just because I take the initiative to "get the job done" and in the process ask team members to stay on for 15 more minutes in office to complete the job, this behavior is crazyand childish. Anyways if someone has any problem with me, they should come and tell me and not my boss.

My Current mood: Oh my gawd! When will they ever learn!!

Hyderabad Defined :)

What else can one say. This sums it all :))

It's Official now !!

Yes, I am now a certified Tam- Brahm.

My upanayanam ceremony was held last week and I along with my bro became the latest members of this club. Dozens of relatives had come over and I had a whale of a time.

Will write more about the event from office. By the way, if anyone is interested is looking at those photos, here it is

Tada !!

Desi gyaan for videshis

Had less work today, so was just browsing through some company's internal sites, where I stumbled upon this.

The following are the advices given to the foreign employees before they come to India. Twas quite amusing to read them. Some of the gems are below :)

Behaviour at Office

•Supervisors generally prefer that workers come to them for assistance with tasks rather than completing tasks on their own. Indians are very team-oriented and will often work on tasks as a group, not individually, unless they are given explicit instructions.

•Indians may not acknowledge small favors and may not use words like “sorry,” “excuse me,” or “thank you.” This is not a sign of rudeness – quite the opposite … Indians simply may not be accustomed to the use of these polite phrases in the English language. It also indicates that they feel comfortable being “informal” with you, since Indians reserve such acknowledgements for formal situations and for people who are not friends or colleagues.

•Supervisors and workers generally do not socialize outside of the office unless they have known each other for a long time. There are very few project team parties.

•Office privacy, size and location are symbols of status.

•It is advisable to be punctual to appointments. Indian executives prefer late morning or early afternoon appointments.

• Business lunches are preferred to dinners

• Hospitality, such as tea and small talk is a part of conducting business.

•Offices are reserved for management. The person of highest authority or rank has the largest office. Employees generally work in open spaces. Cubicles are limited to a few.

•It is common for employees to decorate their work space with personal items (plants, photos, artwork, etc.).Indians tend to have less expectation than US natives for personal space in public situations where crowds or groups of people are present. On streets or transportation or in similar environments, some jostling or similar contact should be expected

Language Usage

•Never, ever shout to be understood. Speak humbly and remove hyperboles such as “great,” “fine” and “terrific.”

•Avoid word pictures unless they are literally what you mean (e.g., “run that by me again,” “walk me through this,” etc.).

•Do not use “Baseball English” (e.g., “ballpark figure,” touch base,” “pinch-hit,” “home run,” “off the wall,” etc.).

•Avoid negative/positive questions (e.g., “You aren’t coming are you?” might be answered “Yes (I am not coming),” where you might expect a “No.”).

Other 'gyaan'

•Public displays of affection are not acceptable within any of India’s ethnic groups. You should avoid hand holding, hugging, kissing, or any other physical contact other than a handshake while you are in public. However, you may notice a man with his hands around his male friend’s shoulder. This does not indicate sexual preference.

•Never touch an Indian (even Indian children) on the head. The head is considered the holiest part of the body

Vaccinations

The following are immunization recommendations when traveling to India:

• Hepatitis A – Recommended for all travelers

• Hepatitis B – Recommended for all travelers

• Japanese Encephalitis – May be recommended if spending more than 30 days in rural areas

• Rabies – Recommended for expatriates and long term visitors. This is also recommended if

quality medical care may not be available within 24 hours of being bitten or scratched by an animal.

• Typhoid – Recommended for expatriates and long-term visits. Recommended for most travelers.

• Yellow Fever – May be required if coming from an infected or endemic country.

• Polio – Recommended for all travelers

• Updates recommended for all travelers for Tetanus, diphtheria, measles and varicella (chickenpox).

Have you ever realized that we, Indians are actually immune to all these diseases now

States I have visited in India

Encounter with "firangees"

Working in MNCs like mine, one unique thing a person can experience is the sheer number of foreigners working along side you. I for one never knew that these many foreigners actually existed in Hyderabad, leave alone a single company I was initially overwhelmed, when I actually spoke to one of them for the first time. However, once you get over the initial jitters, you would realize that they are normal people just like you and me, and the “aura” around the firangees disappeares soon.

Yeah ,we enjoy the way they speak and try to imitate their accents within our peer group. The look of confusion and amazement in their eyes when they see an old person(Amitabh, actually) running around trees , Sharukh dancing in front of an American flag (Kal ho na Ho), Oye bubbly ads etc on the TV sets at the cafeteria makes one go ROFL

Most of them are actually a nice bunch of people. They always smile and wish you while traveling in the lift. If you are walking behind them and you approach a door, they actually open it for you and ask you to go through it first In fact, one of the ladies came to office yesterday wearing a sari

To top it all, this

Granma is Back !!

Grand mom had come home last week and she will would be staying here till june for a function at home (will write about this function later). With her arrival, the daily gyaan session has started again.

My typical day, now consists of knowing that how keerai (Spinach) is good for the eyes and why chewing gums are harmful for the body and why I should try to get a government job as soon as possible. Compared to her, mom now seems to be angel :-D

YSR Sucks !!

My office building also houses Google. They started their operations recently and had invited the AP CM Y.S.Rajasekhara Reddy to do the inauguration. Just a couple of days back he inaugurated the office for INFOTECH, another company in Hitec-City. About a couple of months ago, he had inaugurated Microsoft’s new building. Why I am writing all this is because this is the same man who used to make fun and criticize the then CM, Chandra Babu Naidu, when he was trying his best to ask all these companies to set up bases in Hyderabad.I don’t know with what face he goes to these inauguration ceremonies when he used to oppose the very reason of existence of IT companies in Hyderabad till a few years ago.

Heard a couple of days ago that YSR is going to renew Hyderabad’s bid to Formula-One races. I mean what sort of a person is he??. I remember a couple of years ago, when Formula One Boss Bernie EccleStone met ChandraBabu and almost finalized Hyderabad as the venue for F1 races. YSR raised huge outcry at that time. I remember watching the Live Proceedings of the State Assembly on TV one day when they were discussing the same topic.
The then CM ChandraBabu was reeling out statistics as to how Formula 1 would help the city and the state. To this barrage of stats, YSR replied and boy did he speak like a prospective CM?

I remember this very clearly and I translate this from telugu. “Arey CMji, You have removed the Prohibition Law as soon as you came to power, now liquor flows like river in this state. Now you want to get racing to this state. If anyone wants to watch racing they can surely satisfy themselves watching the Horse-Racing at the Malakpet Horse Course. So we do not require Formula One”. Bull Shit!!

Equating Formula 1 racing to Malakpet racing shows the intellectual vacuum of this person. Now he talks of renewing the F1 bid. Does he think Formula One people are fools and would be waiting for him.

Don’t know where this guy was, when god was distributing Common Sense!!

What's my work ?? Read on !!

Many people have asked as to what my work “actually” involves. So for the benefit for all those eager souls and also for the people who want to work in the IT industry or those who don’t want to work here but want to know more, read on.

Usually, if someone is working in an IT company, they would be working in one of the following fields.

1. Mainframes
2. Open Systems
3. Enterprise Applications <-- I am here

Mainframes: AFAIK, Mainframes are huge machines which can store and process large amounts of data very safely and quickly. These are machines built mainly by IBM and are a bit “antiquated” if I can call it so. But many institutions like banks use mainframes to get their daily jobs done. Once a person learns how to work with the machine (in other words, coding) this job becomes a dull routine. Training for this course costs a lot if one wants to learn outside and therefore people who have the requisite knowledge are paid decently.

Open Systems: Heard of Java, C++, .NET?? Well, all these things come under this category. These are highly specialized languages as in these things require a fair amount of logical thinking and practice to get the optimum level of comfort in work. Most companies in India which come for Campus Interviews, recruit students and train them in one of these technologies. The work here is more interesting and people have decent opportunity to go abroad after gaining some experience.

Enterprise Applications(EA): Home territory, baby :-) The main purpose why companies use EA in their factories and offices is that because EA actually increases the efficiency and the quality of decision making in their organization. EA integrates the functioning of all the departments/shopfloors of a company and the CEO, with a click a button in his office can get all and any data in any format about any previous or prospective future company sales/purchase orders and take decisions with real time data. Hope u understand that ;-) There are three major Enterprise application in market today. They are:

1. SAP
2. PeopleSoft / JDE <-- I am here
3. Oracle

All the three above are three different companies producing softwares with the same names.

SAP is the big brother among the three. I work in the PeopleSoft EA.

When companies decide that they require EA to be installed in their organizations, they contact the consulting companies like mine. Then the guys in my company who have the required experience and knowledge go to the client office and finds out how exactly EA will help them and what are the modules they require to use. (EA softwares are very very big and companies use only a few relevant modules).

Once that is done, he gives instructions to the guys offshore (people like me:-) ). This instructions will include the technical specifications of the work to be done. In simpler words, what we actually do is to customize the existing software (JDE in my case) to suit our client needs.

People like me(who do the actual work) are called “Technical Consultants”. And the people who have the industry/domain expertise to advice the clients on their requirements(These are usually MBAs or technical guys with 4-5 years experience) are called “Functional Consultants”

Again, training in EA is very costly and very few people can learn it outside. Only few lucky ones out of all the people recruited by the companies through the campus recruitment get allotted to this field. These people are the lucky ones ;-) Why? Because they are the best paid in the industry. That’s not all. Working in EA gives person great insights about actual workings of big companies and that experience is very unique and useful for the future.

Chalo, that’s all for now. Hopefully I have shed some cobwebs after not posting for a month. If this post was in any helpful to you or you have anything to correct or add to my post do drop in a comment.I wud appreciate that very much :-)