Saturday, September 17, 2011

My Engagement with MAQ Software

Its been a long journey of 5 years, at least relatively compared with other colleagues, with MAQ Software. This was my first company and gained lots of technical and pressure handling capabilities and more importantly I found my life partner here. Yes, let me introduce her. She is Tanuja, joined this company one year later to me. And also I found life time friends also (Vijay and Naresh among few). So I have decided to blog about my experience with this company.

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How did I get through this company?

It way way back in 2005, where I was in final semester of my b-tech education. I was attending different campus interviews like Infosys, Satyam, Wipro etc., but I was not able to get through around group discussion round. Frankly it was because of poor speaking capability and general knowledge. I still remember one of the topic was “Should India be given permanent member in UN). With very less knowledge, I was just supporting other guys (like the way Venkatesh did his group discussion in movie “Aduvari matalaku ardhale verule”). Then MAQ Software came and I attended. Luckily it didn’t have GD as part of their process) I did very well in two rounds of technical interview and have been asked to come down to cyber pearl office. I had final round of interview with director of this company. Everything was going well in this final round until interviewer asked me a question for which I didn’t have an answer. The question was “What is memory size of your mobile”. Then super idea came to my mind – will he really going to verify my mobile memory for what ever answer that I would say? May be I thought he is expecting confident answer rather than correct answer? then I told some 500MB answer and then interview was done. Two days later I got call saying that I was selected. (I just mentioned some funny experience I had here, but obviously I faced some real tough questions related to programming)

Training – Boot Camp

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It was first day where I have been told that I and along with other colleagues who joined with me, that we will have to under go boot camp training of two months. Frankly I didn’t know why it was called as boot camp training and what is the meaning of boot camp. I was thinking two months of training and I was happy that no work, just learning all the way for next two months. But this assumption that I made is wrong for one reason – boot camp was all about learning and more importantly exposure to pressure handling situations. Yes, there was so much of pressure that I was literally thought of giving up this offer. But my patience helped me. In fact, I have learned to show more patience rather than getting frustrated. In this two months of boot camp, yes we learned technical topics ourselves, shared within ourselves, and daily projects. Added to this, we had weekend projects also. Phewwwww. I can surely say that once you are through this boot camp training, you will be ready for any pressure situations – not just in projects, but also applicable to your life.

Mumbai experience – Train chasing, missing and my first flight experience

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For one of project requirements, I, along with Vijay and Naresh, were asked to travel to Mumbai office. Though this project was test automation project (because in those days we, being developers, were feeling low because we got put up in automation project), I have gained project leading skills from a very good mentor. Yes her name is Vijaya Gowrishankar. Thanks to her. We three used to stay at guess house for about two months. We used to have every day chicken at night. Apart from this, we had very good horrible life time experience in Mumbai. Why? this is because, none of us knew Hindi. For sure I’m being close to nil – Naresh was better than us. We were travelling back to Hyderabad. We are supposed to catch Hyderabad train that is supposedly to leave from CST station. Along with us, two of Mumbai fellows were also supposed to travel to join same train. It was 5:30 evening and train was scheduled at 9 PM. As usual again we thought of having chicken drum sticks before leaving to station. So we have ordered from guest house itself. Delivery was late, I think that delivery boy turned by 7. We thought, it was already late, so we thought of leaving by catching a cab. Unfortunately, we couldn't find cab and asked auto rickshaw. May be because of our poor Hindi, the auto wala took us to wrong station. It was already 8:30. We then realized we need to travel for another 1 hour to reach the correct station. Gone, we missed the train.  Actually, we were supposed to be in Hyderabad office because our CEO is going to be there and a meeting was scheduled. So we have decided to catch the train some how. We took a cab and travelled to other station from where local train takes same path as that of actual Hyderabad bound train. We reached to nearest station and boarded into local train. We were told that if we are lucky, we can go till “kalyan” station in local train and catch the actual train at that station. We were also in touch with Mumbai fellows who are in the actual train. We asked them to check when it can reach kalyan station. Luckily we were told by them that train was halted in some station for more than 15 mins. So we had good chance of reaching to kalyan in local train much before the actual train reaches. We are still in local train, holding three luggage's – one on left hand, other on right hand and other one is back pack. On top of this we were also carrying our chicken drum sticks. Train was fully crowded that the chicken drumstick pack was carried away by crowded people. Sad smile(((. For nearly about 40 mins we reached kalyan station, and we came to know that the actual train is in another platform and was about to leave. We got tensed, carrying all three bags and on top of this we didn’t had our dinner and chicken drumsticks. We got down from local train, two of them took direct path via track to reach the other platform(they had worst experience, stamped the dungs on tracks). We were in hurry that we didn’t find ourselves. I realized that I am alone, I took the stairs way to reach other platform – carrying three luggage's and dashing everyone who is coming along my way. Then by the time I reached, train left already just few seconds back. OMG, that was really horrible chasing but at the end we were not lucky enough to catch the train. We fell down on the platforms because of tiredness (as station was crowded at all places) and we were thinking what next?? Should we catch one more local train and chase till pune?? this will be more risky?? Then we had decided some how we need to reach hyderabad the next day and only way to do this is to catch a flight – WoW, this will be my first time experience in flight. Yes, we took flight next day early morning since this was first flight experience for all three of us, it was a rememberable trip

US – Seattle:

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It was 2008, I travelled to US – Seattle for my onsite assignment. Here its more of client interaction experience than personal work experience. I had to gather requirements, do participate in development work and get other portion of work done from India team. Everything was good except for social network/ personal network. People over there do their job and go home. Its not like in India, where people interact with each other a lot even at work by having healthy and funny conversations. I had colleagues over there, who were from North India and but I am not quite comfortable may be because of language barrier (Hindi). But good thing that I learned cooking. Yes, for the first time I cooked for myself and learned to cook variety of south Indian dishes. I used to take pics to capture my dishes and send it to my friends and family to show my cooking skills Smile with tongue out

Post 2009:

This was the period where I was in India back and learnt a lot of things both technically and leading different teams. So much to say that I have learned all technologies under .NET and also MS BI..

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Aug 19, 2011 – Last day:

Finally for my best interest of my career, I have decided to move on. I will be relocating to Bangalore soon later this year. Thanks to MAQ Software – For sure this is the best company to have it as first company in the career.

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Post MAQ Software?

I have moved to a new company called Neudesic. I’m happy to be part of Neu Family – I will continue to blog about this company in next post.

 

Here is the small video clip gifted by tanu on my 4 years completion:

https://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=412015999330

9 comments:

  1. Never saw such big blog ever and that too with nice pics and video... Very nice to see your blog... Now be active blogger and share ur experience to ur followers

    Keep blogging :)

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  2. Nice to read your blog especially Mumbai episode part, it happens once in a while to everyone :-)

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  3. Beautiful blog.. Thumbs up for originality. Keep us posted on your findings. You have earned a follower for your blog :)

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  4. Can you please tell me contact information for Vijaya Gowrishankar ma'am

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