Confessions of a Campus Grad-1

SMS-read in as the erstwhile Symphony Marketing Solutions now Genpact-SMS

It was on 16th July, 2007 that I started my corporate career with a so called desi company serving the business needs of American firms.. Much to our joy first few months consisted of solid entertainment sessions which corporate jargon coins as training sessions.. As they say, dessert is the most delicious of the menu and so our training sessions acted as the dessert for our student life..

At the end of the training sessions I came to know that I'm going to join a team lead by a person called "Sreekanth Menon" and the manager of the whole R&D unit is "Arindam". Best thing about Arindam is he recognizes talent very soon. (coz its he WHO selected me in the campus ;) :P). 

By virtue of being a  100% gult (who eats curd rice with extra curd) I searched for my gult brothers in the team. Seeing two gult names I patted myself thinking that gults are going to be the majority over there :) :) :) 

Anyways, when I first met this so called Menon, he was busy chatting in google  talk and somehow found time to introduce me to the rest of the team.. where in I recognized one more face who visited campus but did not bother to remember his name. Had I known this person as my future boss I would have memorized his name and also ensured better food during the campus.  Rest of the team was even more interesting with no two people having similar profiles. First thing that struck me was the unity with which whole of the team used to go for coffee to the ground floor and they do that every day..

Slowly but steadily I started working going through a never ending chain of materials and did a good number of experiments in SAS.. only I know how many files I created with names test.sas,test1.sas,tt.sas,tt1.sas and the list goes on!! Incidentally the first project I started working was the similarity project for which I defined the problem in my own way and started working in a weird way.. however as a typical IRI tradition that was kept on hold and a new project was started which I call "Manus tool". This, unarguably is the most challenging project I did so far.. phew!! dimag kharab hogaya tha!

Soon the analytics wing of SSC is segmented as SMS and we moved the new building on the ring road. Here started the real fun for the people as I started sitting along with the remaining team.  people like Chethan, Pandeyji made a prototype hell out of me but the bigger culprit was Nirav the predator who is always on hunt for bakras and many a time that hunt used to end with me as the prey.  

By Feb 2008 I became a full time member of the MSciE Team, and the problems I am dealing were matching with the uniqueness of my clients.. absolutely no similarties between the problems as well as among the members of the client team. As time progressed things became very interesting with mails of different colors and not all of them are memorable..

For the first few months I relied on Sreekanth for almost everything.. doubts in ppts to project expectation but later it was Pandeyji who suffered big time.. I dont think I will irritate anyone the way I irritated him.. but thik hein, after all I'm his first subordinate and I think I'm entitled that privilege.  Apart from these, the ones who I generally bug are the mainframe Mozarts. Both Annayya and Madhu did help me big time solving all the crappy errors mainframe threw at me.. 

By the mid of 2008, I started taking calls with the client all alone and this was quite a boost for me because I know my batch mates who are not even allowed write their own mails to the clients.. Considering them I was on cloud 9 for the team's modus operandi. In the mean time Abhisek joined the team and till then our team happens to be the only team which had no Genpact alamnus.  However, this statistic doesnt carry weight as whole of SMS became a Genpact subsidiary now. 

Later it was all amazing fun with me, Abhisek, sumita settling in our grooves and work life never seemed to be much different from my campus.. By Jan 2009 Kashyap joined us. Even he was a tailor made suite for the kind of crazy team he is into! Many many cherishable moments in just two and half years of time.. but if I have to name the best moments with my team it will be Madhu's bachelor's party.. though a shirt of mine got spoilt it was like a picnic night for us.. laughing screaming shouting... what not that we didnt do on that day?

On a whole the best thing about my SMS work life is the team I worked with.. Starting from Arindam, all the people are really fun loving and truly professional. and because of these guys that my work life looked as a logical continuation of my campus life!!

Thanks a million to everyone of the team!!

will be continued in the next post as well..

Sarvejana Sukhinobhavantu

-Karthik