George @ MindSay

Today I'm going to talk about Some special moments in sasken:-

It starts from the day one in Sasken :- Oct 3rd 2006. Sasken was a dream company for me when I got through in college. Apparently some 29 people were selected out of probably more than 5K in kerala.
I still remember when we were about to enter inside Sasken, it was a bright sunny day. I distinctly remember that scene. And, probably I'll remember it forever. The first day at work.

First day was scary. New place new people , its always intimidating.
But as the days passed by Sasken became more and more familiar, and a nice place too ; and you know what ? The interesting thing I learned ? People are the same everywhere. There is always a blend of beautiful and ugly everywhere. There is nothing like a NEW PLACE in this world . You just need time to fit in.

The Person I am going to describe today is Gauri . She is there on the top of the list because of many factors. One, because She is the one who has influenced my career...a lot .Second because she is good looking. And good looking people get an unfair advantage in my blog.

So the story is, After training, we were on bench for almost 4 months. There was no work. The managers and other senior collegues were consistently showing their concerns saying " You should not feel bad that there is no project for you all . You people will get nice projects". It used to work pretty well.

Fact is, If you tell a 2 year old child that 2+2= 5 he'll surely say yes if he doesn't know mathematics. And we really were children in the corporate world.
Things were fine for sometime.We were involved in a CDC project.but very soon we realized that we ARE on bench and other are into projects( there is a gross difference in knowing and realizing things; we realized :- Its when the inner agony takes over).

So, when we did realize that we are on  bench and there may be no project for us for days or maybe 3 or 4 months, we were demented. Just then out of nowhere came Gauri. I don't remember how she came in my team , or was she properly introduced or something , but she was a part of the team suddenly. The team as I say was of some 15 people who were all in bench at that time + Gauri .

So let me describe gauri. She is a short heighted ,Very fair, and good looking  I must admit. To those who are reading for the first time or do not know about her. She was my team leader.
Have you ever come across those charming women , who have actually seen life and are completely Bindaas ? These woman will never curse life, and little do they know how amazing it is to talk to them,With these people you can talk anything and really enjoy it. My judgement is solely from the perspective of people of her age group. Of course, with me things will be different , given that I am like 10 years younger to her.But, surely the opinion I promulgate above, would be the one of HER friends.

Why I so admire her is because despite of all this she was technically pround ! Its like a perfect corporate girl you can imagine. Looks, words and knowledge, everything was there.
She is the one who guided me to take this project under which I am working, which I must admit is really nice one !

In a very stoic life of mine, which continued until the end of my college days, I never put any credence in Inter-personal qualities of a human being. To me, it was as if Virtue and results speaks for itself, and it really doesn't matter much how you talk or present yourself. In fact to a Hardcore techie, thats absolutely correct . But what I failed to realize was that I was not a Hardcore Techie.

To me ,Simple Human qualities like talking and behavior always appealed more than The "C" code that prints something without a semicolon !!! (Don't go and try it)

I don't blame anything for this unawareness, but probably thats true for so many engineers across the country.

They don't think beyond technical stuffs..Sometimes personal abilities and Individual power is transparent to them.

Gauri was an engineer too, but the very moment she joined my team, It was pretty clear that She's far better than an ordinary engineer. She actually used to live through a project. When she is around working on a project, you can feel her. That's something difficult to put forth in words, but sometimes when you meet such a person, you'd know it too. When she talks about XYZ, its not just XYZ ....... its Gauri telling XYZ.  Being on bench for 5 months is really really frustrating. and the only reason I got through it was because she as a team lead guided us really nicely, showing us the truth of the IT world at each step. After 8 or 9 people went for the IMS project there were eventually 4 people remaining. Me George Suja Seithal. Our fate was :- We would be on bench for a month and a half more. She was also out of project. This phase was bad, because we had a one year bond, and there was very little could do, in terms of leaving the job. In this phase, more than anything else you need is someone to tell you that life is not so bad as it looks ( Which is true given that freshers in bench are really unreasonably frustrated ), and you can actually make a lot out of the time !!.This is where she she stepped in.

She had some 6-7 years of experience, believe me more than technical she knew how to handle people, and precisely that was needed at that time.

It was so interesting. When gauri used to say "take it light ... project mil jayega" we actually used to worry less. Had it  been someone else telling the same things , things may have become worse. Talking nicely is an art !! Many people may have it. But talking cogently in order to convince others, is something which very few have.

The way we were under her was very different. It never felt like being on the bench. We used to study UMTS. There used to be presentations. and she personally used to teach us UMTS like a teacher teaches in a college. And despite of all this, it felt professional.

Whatever be the reason, maybe style of her speech,or experience it all worked in one direction, to take you through that day. I know that she might have been told by her manager Mukund to make sure freshers like us don't get agitated. The time and commitment towards the same she put in was unimaginable. And probably that is the sole reason why whenever I go to FAC-W(My old office), I'm still reminded of those days because those days were different from today. It feels like a corporate home. The beginning of a New life.

So eventually after our bench days we were pulled into projects I went into Anite along with Suja and Seithal. and George went to IPAccess.We were into project in march. We probably were the only ones in bench till that time. In a normal company with normal manager, frustration would reach such a height, that I might have resorted to something outrageous and desperate. But for me, whatever I studied in those 5 months really emblazoned in my memory, because of the interest generated while studying.

Let me digress now to a philosophical perspective.

People never remember what you said, but they do remember how you made them feel.
Its been one year, the last time I talked to gauri was probably in march., but I still remember how we felt during the BENCH TIMES, and frankly....no regrets. I'd love to go back to those days anytime.

Being on bench is equally frustrating for everyone. But you know what I learned from her was, how to conquer the regrets, and just enjoy what you have and make the most of it.
I have discussed with Gauri everything in the world that a person can discuss with another person. Bears ,Girls, Switching company, Sasken plus and minuses, you name it its there. And considering she was a team lead. Its a real big deal. Because you don't see people with so much verve and energy at that level.  Its all about the kind of person she was . I've seen the corporate world for 1 year now. I think I know the intent she had. It was one very simple thing.
To really live through with what you do. And thats why she had such connections with us. She might have had concerns too that she is not in any project( she was waiting for some Airvana thing ; so effectively on bench), but she never let it take over her , and more importantly, because of her, that thought never took over us too. 
There might have been someone else, who would have cribbed for entire 5 months when on bench and missed some of the most wonderful moments, and knowledge too. But fortunately the four of us were not that. We were actually happy to some extent that there is no work , and being happy was a gift to us !! Trust me, you hear many things, you read many mails, about how to stay happy and keep yourself lively through the day. But when its comes to really doing it, Its pretty difficult. And in such a case, the environment around you matters a lot.

This is what I think of Gauri as a person and a Team Lead.

Come to think of it , the key special thing that gauri had was inter-personal skills. Maybe this is the quality that makes her what she was. She always brought life to work.

I think, if you begin to delineate life and work, it probably will not work out. Life and Work are not two separate things. People keep telling, keep your work in office and live at home. Don't bring work to home and vice-versa. But after being under Gauri for 5 months, my thoughts changed. You can actually live with your project as well !! You don't have to put boundaries in work and life !!! It is possible to do them all together. And once you do that, It doesn't matter whats happening around you, you'd always enjoy work.

Corporate world is really not about your knowledge only. What an engineer fails to understand is , there is more to Business than just your technical knowledge. What the IT industry does, is not coding, its doing Business. If your Business in down, however good technically you be, no-one would probably give a damn. And again, if you have the knowledge, and you don't know how to show it to the world, and all you can do is only wait for the right time till you're Virtue speak for themselves, You'd probably fail too .On the other hand, If you have the ability to impress people, influence them, It really doesn't matter how much you know !! Its one of the most unfair thing you can tell to a dedicated engineer. But everyone learns it one day. Consider my Job, I'm in the telecom industry.We make Phones and sell it to people .Eventually, it is the consumer who has to like what we have in store. He/She does not care how much effort went in preparing the product, what matters is, how much he/she likes it. Eventually looks , aesthetics, and belief which is influenced by advertising drives any business. The truth of the business world is that it does not matter how much work goes into a product, the only thing that matters is whatever you do, people must like it, or it should have a business value. This is the top layer of business. What lies below it is the  engineers who create these products. If you don't have life in your project, its simply worthless. And if you don't have it in you while working,you as a person can never bring life into a project, and if your product succeeds, it means, all you did was what you were told to do and someone else brought the Life in your project. Look around you ! That person probably is the most famous person in the team, even though you're the genius. And that person deserves more credit than you, even though you are more intelligent/hardworking.

Eventually you as an engineer are a part of business, and your company who's paying you money for your work, is not paying you because you write brilliant codes.Its paying you only because your codes are important today in the Business world. Your employer is also doing a "Business" with you. So for you to succeed, you need to understand to some extent how to do business far more than how to write codes.

Unfortunately( I say coz i used to be a Dedicated engineer too), If people have faith in you, if you have that charisma or talent to "make believe", and you know how to use it, you can succeed in any organization ,especially IT, despite of not being not so good technically(Not referring to Gauri as she was technically very sound too). Because if you know how to get work done, You are the most important person of the organization !! And I'm sure we all agree to this.

Now let me point out the power of "Inter-personal Make Believe Characteristic"

To a fresher like me when I was on bench, things could have been worse, I could have been a rebel saying I want a project, or else let me out of this place. If it was not for Gauri probably it would have been that, and probably landed in some shit !

Now see the irony, Gauri was , in an ingenuous way  slightly more enthusiastic and charismatic, than an ordinary Team Lead. She was a picture of liveliness in an adverse situation. She used to really enjoy work. This is who she was. She never tried to console us that we are on bench. We were automatically cooled down by her presence.

Believe me , I'm not exaggerating, to Sasken a person like her would be far more important than a tech genius. If its time for appraisals, she'd have an upper hand over the tech genius. If Sasken is throwing out employees The tech genius would be the first to go out and People like Gauri the last.

So I throw the question wide open, who's the better Engineer ?

In my opinion to become something like Gauri, all you have to do is, just be yourself at your workplace, and enjoy what you do. Because by default people want to be happy, and if you can bring this happiness to your workplace,and work with it you will succeed in whatever you do. And if you think, smiling or being happy at your work place one day might be a deterrent to your success or concentration, it means you're already dead. You would probably write the best code in the world, but Right in front of your eyes, someone else would win the trophy.

Trust me, (if you can) he/she deserves it more !! That is what personal qualities are all about.

Maybe some part of it I learned from Gauri.

Or.... Maybe it was the time for me to learn that,even without her, I don't know. But whatever i took from those 5 months was really big.

This is me, as of now. But as I again said, a lot in life depends on people and things around you, whether you like it or not. So you know, I might change in coming days. Till now, I must confess, the effect of those bench days is still there in me, and it still reflects in my life ( I distinctly mention life and not activities ).And I must thank Gauri on behalf of all the four of us, because we learned a lot from her!!