My journey in I.B.M…

My journey in I.B.M…

“All content on this blog is my personal thinking, thought might be prejudiced, fictitious, sarcastic, inferred, need your rational thinking to filter out good, and most importantly are not meant to hurt anybody in any way possible.”

Chapter 1: My Interview- the smallest interview ever.

It was May 27, 2007 a morning not very cold but cold enough to get ready by 7 am and reach SA building specially on Sunday. Where I was asked to attend interview, thankfully I reached there on time, we were in a big meeting kind a room. The speech was delivered by Ajit in its full professionalism, Vivek added point or two. The last sentence was “I want to see you all on board, good luck”. I thought my selection is confirmed now; how innocent, I didn’t see any of those faces in training.

The name IBM was ringing in my head so I raised hand to go first when it came to go for interview. I took left door that was the only time when left was right to take, where Vivek was sitting with consultancy representative. The interview started Vivek asked me “How do you trouble shoot if sound is not coming”. I answered “I will check if I have speakers or not”. I think he wanted to know about my knowledge on drivers, but for a guy like me computer was an entertainment box which we use for playing movies, listening to music and playing games. Who will break head to know what is running inside? Technically I must have done bad, but worse was the salary part.

The question “How much do you expect?”

The answer “Anything you give me, I get into IBM that’s more than enough.”

The question “Will you work for 2 thousand?”

I can’t tell you what happened next because salary matters are pretty sensitive especially in CSC but it shocked me.

I didn’t know how the interview was but my consultancy fellow came to me while going out saying that I was selected, to confirm he will give me a call later. That it …!!!!

When I got a call from him I felt like somebody had given me hall ticket to watch the show and a big one “IBM”.

I am grateful to Vivek for selection.

Chapter 2: My Training – The honeymoon period but in a small room and under strict rules.

I reached late on very first day, it took some time in parking and all, but Vivek needed no excuses, so it was scary feeling when I faced him, he entered something in excel sheet and warned me not to be late, then after I was the first one to enter the meeting room and last one to get out of it, in training.

I was a dumb fellow (still I am) from Mechanical background, for me IT was Income Tex (which is not at all applicable to CSC), and we believe in solving problem with hammer. My first innocent question about IT was to the great Naveen Shelkey “What is Server?”

And the answer blew my mind “It is simply a system yar …”, then why the hell we call it server, I said in my head.

My next event was a mail which I wrote to Vivek, within 3 days of joining, stating I would be interested to give presentation about BCG, ITCS300 etc for new batch, instead of it I was told to present on lotus notes. Trust me to present it in front of Lokesh (who fires form eyes) it was like not only to understand rocket science but to make one and show it to Abdul Kalm itself. Somehow my confidence of all awards I had won in debate and presentation till date made me stand there and paid off when Vivek announced me as upcoming trainer in next team meeting. But it took me CCNA, MCP. 20 IBM certificates done, and 20 months to become one. I knew nobody in team but everybody knew me, and some used to crack joke about me “This is the fellow who wants to become trainer in 3 days”, after that event.

The training was over in 10 days or so, I still can feel the smell of training in meeting room 10 and Lokesh roaring in there. Once he took us for call listening, I took 18 calls after listening. I was too curious soul..!!! The most foolish and maximum questions ever asked to Lokesh would be by me.

My sincere thanks to Lokesh for being such a great trainer to bear me.

Chapter 3: Level 1 CSC engineer- A curious soul jumping around.

Finally I hit the floor, I sat on a system may be the slowest system I had ever seen and under the direct hit of AC, I never missed my native, it was the same cold here. From starting I was on the hit list of Shiveta Raina the quality then and supervisors, Sweta of course for my mistakes specially my way of talking “The accent” and “casual” (Users are not your friends!!! Her words) , and SCIM I would never get it right, I planned to transfer the call but user would say its resolved , and I would close without change in “How to” instead of “Service”. I feared her more than death. If I saw her getting up from her seat I had to be prepared for 2-3 sentences in defense, often by the time she reached my seat, issue would be resolved and she would say “Prakash’s magic” but I would say god was listening to my prayers what I did during her arrival. Supervisors had only one issue with me, they would shout “Prakash how may time I say, don’t hold”, and I wanted to learn everything on the call challenging myself to solve that.

My hit list was all the supervisors for ticketing and all, all cds engineers for transferring call, Manjula for all process, Srinidi the poor neighbor, all were helping souls. Manjula would say why you don’t read your mail box it is all red, I thought in head if I waste time in reading it, Ranjith will take more calls, so no opening mail box. Ranjith my friend and rival in call taking, we skipped breaks, took only 15 minutes for lunch just to top the chart and got appreciated too…. “Oh !! What a wonderful time …!!”.

An event was, I sent one mail to leads with idea for asa reduction, and was noticed, it took me far. I went for CSAT in CSC-B, a dream of a L1 engineer- very special people were transferred to CSC-B felt lucky to be one among them. But felt blessed when somebody noticed and told me that I am in the heaven surrounded by angels, O really!!!. I was literally surrounded by girls, Shylaja, Harini, Hema , Deepika in front of me, Lakshmi to the right , Sonika to the left, Rachna , Ten, and Sweta just behind me, I may be missing any names but …ya they were really angels , they will get you out of any issue. Sweta Sneha sametime spoc, Ten spoc for everything, Rachna lovely lady never say no to any calls just one word transfer without worrying about the issue. Any TL’s name Sonika is there, but my first point of contact Lacchu (Lakshmi) for all issues. Once I transferred call form Madhavi Masna (old guys know her, if I remember her correct) to Harini when she was firing on me, Harini saved me.

I am indebted to all the angels of CSC who helped me, who took my calls, and to the technical gods, and supervisor who where there to pacify my inquisitive soul.

Rebiha & Vijay my oldest neighbors and great friends I can’t forget the fun we had in the first bay, thanks for all that.

Chapter 4: CSAT “A record making”

Few months on the floor jumping around and pushing thing to limit, I was told to get into CSAT a drive to get customer feed back and standardize team. I saw hard work being appreciated, and jumped in right away. Initial days calling somebody and disturbing them and cajoling them to participate in survey was a real challenging job, with lots of weird experiences like girls saying “Who gave you my no? / I m his wife we are in holiday anything urgent” later it was kind a computer game where if your car crashes you get another one to start all over again.

We had five members in the team and I being default topper in calling and highest was 175 calls a day. A member Mr. A was after my record and one day he geared up to break it, which I didn’t know because he was in CSC- A and I was in CSC-B, during lunch hour one of my friend and well wisher informed me about it, which I couldn’t digest and sat on for making another record. I made 215 calls highest ever and he landed upon 190 or so and was pretty happy until he came to know about my new record. It was quite fun that day but next day we both suffered from throat pain.

Thanks to Babu &Ajit for being so motivating.

Chapter 5: Level 1.5 -The remote support- A real learning time.

I was dying to become one, after I got I started digging in all the issues, troubleshooting, collected patches for so many thing, TAP, wiki , global campus became regular sites to visit. People used ask me what I would do in the issue while transferring call, I didn’t want to disappoint them saying “I don’t know” , but I really didn’t know what I was going to do, I knew that I would do something that would solve issue that’s it. I became kind of client location call SPOC, if somebody got client location call they would hunt for me, trust me I hated client location call more then you did.

Two interesting calls I remember one positive and one negative, one fellow escalated for me to my manger in lotus notes issue, the bloody LN 8design was not getting updated trying any hard, and he had 10 gb archive, any mishap with it would have cost my job as well as his, on the top of it he was a big pain in a**, would never be on system when you take control and do some R&D when you are not working on his system. Somehow I fixed the issue next day under a huge pressure from MGMT for answer. He blamed me for being not supportive, technically unsound and helpdesk a just not helping desk. The point of being not supportive hit my ego, I had supported after office hours, Orkut , net-meeting etc, if somebody requested politely ( you please don’t do that!!), how could he say so. I wrote big mail to him and explaining the points to MGMT, a real nice piece of writing, which tagged me as angry, stubborn, childish fellow but I felt relieved doing so.

Next call was from a direct reporte of Anwar, they were not letting him go until he gives the database commands to successor, he was in boiling situation, his ticket fell into loop , csc –desk side- DNARCHADM- csc- desk side- DNAR..…He escalated in mail and I got the call, checked it, it was nobody’s mistake desk side didn’t know about databases, DNARCHADM.. did not action because it was local database. I took control and solved the issue, thanks to “Project Automation” (hard work never goes waste), he appreciated me well for that, and it was real nice feeling to be able to help some body who many couldn’t.

Chapter 6: Project Automation: the absolute fiasco

It was my early days when the feeling of being appreciated lifted me to 7^th heaven; I had just been informed that we need to have a database for quality team and need some developer for it. Wow what an opportunity; I went to my all software mates and made one document to go about it, when I presented , was again appreciate for initiation but it was kind a swimming class where I needed to cross English Channel without any practical experience. I presented the first model for the database but not the one could be a database. My story ended there I couldn’t move further and the opportunity was given to others. This was the first taste of failure so was a bitter one and I couldn’t handle it and lost a good chunk of confidence.

Chapter 7: Fun@Work : Memories to cherish forever

When I presented my idea for fun@work, I was just proposing an idea I never thought I would one day conduct it and it will become part of me. Anyway my idea got selected and I got a comp off in reward, which I wouldn’t have used though. When I was told to take up fun@work I think it was to test some of my skills, but for me it was a great chance to prove myself after debacle of “Project Automation” which had taken its toll in terms of confidence.

The start was really a lukewarm one, the first fun@work I prepared a little and went in, I thought its easy, when I saw Shetij there I was half dead, how to make people laugh playing quiz!!!! and on the top of it Shetij gave a good hand firing me with acrid sarcastic remarks, it was no success. But I had to prove myself so I collected my enthusiasm again and tried with “Collage Competition” it was a success. Which boosted me up and I planned for out door activity “Badminton Championship”, I prepared mail and put some photos of fun@work. I didn’t know that few photos could sum up to 40 mb, as I send the mail, it capped many people’s mail boxes, and people still curse me for that.

And tournament went “flop show” only two people turned on at the venue.

Things picked up and we conducted “Ethnic Day” the day to remember, it would definitely be one of the golden days in CSC history, in three days guys made CSC like a heaven and workplace a worship place and guys and girls were no less then gods and goddess that day, every face was having million dollar smile, every heart was filled with life and spark, and all self financed. Everybody participated in voting for awards and to make it huge. The awards I still remember … the

Paradise Bay ( Best bay )

Kings Station (Best workplace)

Dazzling Diva (Most beautifully dressed lady)

Dashing Hunk (Most nicely dressed gentleman)

Sizzling entry (guy/girl less than 3 month)

Funky Chunky ( you imagine)

Sparkle of the event

It was a huge success, I felt like all failures were washed then.

Fun continued Friday became the celebration day, when you learn to laugh, all faces are smiling around you, there was no pain, people waited for Friday it was proud feeling that I was part of it, it was a epitome of utopia.

One touching incident is, when I didn’t have enough money to conduct fun@work that was “Fun with food”, all the people volunteered and we brought so many things that we couldn’t finish.

Some crazy moment like Syed’s Arabic dance like Mallika, Divya and Amiyos fight …Nisha’s Singing… Shaheen’s shouting ..Rahul & Roy moderator… Rumi’s and Pavan’s Dance ..Debasmta’s laugh…. many more. And Srini ..my successor and a good one…

I bow my head before all you people who added all those beautiful moment in my life.

Chapter 8: The trainer- A dream come true!!

I had done CCNA, MCP, 20 + Global certifications, and it had been more than 18 months, and conducting fun@work for nearly a year I was same, taking calls. But one day I was told to present on a new topic. Shashi and I were testing Shinoj’s tool TSD, after our ideas of TSD got rejected (though people liked it and used), I thought to present that tool itself. I presented the tool, Shinoj described technical nuances, was an ok presentation. But Shitij and Manjula drilled me on that (thanks I learned lot by that), I regretted on our release of TSD, I missed lotus notes a lot that time, it wouldn’t have put me in such hard. After that I was told to give another presentation on networking preparing in 10 minutes, which I did , again ok, don’t know how they thought of it, but well I was told to train process on the floor.

After a month or so I was told to take an assignment ABB training, for CTS engineers. Topics were soft skills, ayudame and usual cds stuff, everything was ok but “Soft Skills..???”. I had only two days to prepare for that. Thanks to all my trainers/ teachers before IBM, who gave me soft skills training, and Global campus, which helped me to execute the training smoothly. And the day came when the mail was finally rolled out for my becoming a trainer.

I have many good events but some are great in training, like my surprise birthday celebration, thanks to batch 48 & 49 for such a moment to cherish, farewell trip for both the batches to Devrayan Durga, and the token of remembrance I-pod, it’s always with me and it’s a big pain killer.

Batch -50 the biggest batch with Sumathi & Maris form MITS, what a crazy one. Latest batch Adarsh and his questions, I remembered my early days, and Ravi a killer silence complete paradox.

The Thursday nights, The interview, the linux, the half boiled egg at dhaba, the gym, the photo session, the party, the systems … a lot more .. Muttu, Ranji, Atanu, Lok, Kavitha, …..new rulers of Manyta MK, Naveen.

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Chapter 8: The hospital (personal corner): A slaughter house for human

It was big light over my head, I was laying on the operation table, stark necked after my complete body hair removal ceremony by a third party even from the dark recess of my body (the most awkward thing I ever got done; I feel shy doing that myself) and ablution. The masked women around me were staring at me like vultures, I asked in head don’t we have any man doctors in here. One big fat lady started introducing, this is Ms. xyz and team , and one by one all names, I again said in head idiots remove your masks than introduce, even that wouldn’t have helped but incase my mind could remember. Then she started asking tick questions,

Ever operated ? no

Any major disease ? no

Diabetic ? no … so and so many questions at last she asked.

Ovary…? I innocently said no ..and everybody giggled I felt more comfortable dying of pain than being an object of operation theater jokes.

I don’t know how things went there but I was alive next day, and was happy that Lokesh & Kavitha came personally there and cracked MGMT jokes (they are particular about BCG so no racial jokes) to make me laugh, which could have made my intestines come on the bed if I wouldn’t have pressed my tummy and stitches by my hand. But finally many friends called me form CSC felt great about it, when my family was not there they were there.

Things I couldn’t do or half done…..

Introduction of V&A and soft skills and typing training.

Introduction of welcome trip with key people and just senior batch in csc for new joinees.

Knowledge Café on weekends.

Fun@Work next level

And many more…….

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Things I liked in fact loved in CSC- *All intrinsic- gives you real happiness*

The people-

All the beautiful minds and lovely hearts of csc. They are there when you need them. Sometimes they go wild especially the powerful ones but that’s their job.

The freedom-

Freedom for searching in Google, experimenting on systems (workgroup concept).

We had common repository, many servers, made out of systems, for Ex. The boka-boki server.

The Work- It is always a happy feeling if you help somebody, one should be grateful if he gets to help as many people he wants and get paid for it, and thanks to Shinoj for developing the tool where you can see which beauty is going to say thank you at the end of the call.

The learning- Third value- “Trust & personal responsibility in all relationship” have given enough opportunities to the employee; even contractors have access to the priceless information or knowledge. Global campus, wiki, TAP, get-abstract, Red books, cattail, books 24/7, and many more …what else you need to learn. Trainers and some intellects are there to discuss with you.

The growth- I was a dumb fellow that took too long nearly 20 month to become trainer, but there are ample opportunities for young mind to grab, according to new IJP release I see you can become L 1.5 in 6 months, Quality in 6 months, Trainer & Supervisors in 1 year, TL I think you can join without any experience, that was not mentioned there, jokes apart you have chances too. You can walk on the road like a king and say “Hay get out of my way I am the supervisor / trainer / TL in IBM, or call your dad for the same. But don’t ever utter any word about your salary otherwise beggars my put some coins in your pocket..ha ha .” Seriously what else you need form a job then such a great learning and rapid growth. But you have to be person with intrinsic motivation.

Things I like a little less in CSC– *All extrinsic- is a bad motivation don’t have it *

The money- It is below than government’s minimum wage standard. You have to depend on your parents at the age you should be supporting them. Your parents will doubt on you whether you are taking drugs or boozing around with your money of I.B.M.

The systems- I was training external people (ABB) with R-50 TP, was telling we support wireless with the think vantage but I can’t show it on my TP. We support louts notes 8 but if I install it, I can’t work on my system its 512 mb and got while we were digging in Haddapa and Mohanjodaro for our ancient civilization. I have heard csc system will be replaced by 3 gb systems, and all new tps, may be positive step indeed.

Some policies- Like leave, I regret for not taking all leaves in first year. If you have to go out with your parents who have come all the way from Kolkatta or Himalaya, whatever, you need to go to the doctor first to make medical and then you are allowed to see them.

No Award / Reward- Eureka…Eureka … !! We are world no 1 third time in a row. So what..!! you are suppose to , that is why you are shopped form vendors, which rule book says you cant milk a cow if you don’t feed her on festivals.

I owe my Job to Vivek.

I owe my growth to leads- Babu, Ajit, Manjula, Vasant, Shylaja & Shetij.

I owe my CCNA to Asif & Harini.

I owe my MCP to Lakshmi.

I owe my technical skills all my friends like- Raj, Shadab, Ranjan, Vijay Munis and Shandilya, Srini, Srinidhi, Partho, Ranjit , Atanu, Bhavya, Ten, Rachna, Sweta , Shinoj, Shashi, Sanju ….many more ….

I owe my process learning to all Supervisors (Suman, Suddi, Psat, Chandru, Raj, Hemant, Renjith.. ) And quality (Shiveta Raina, Rebbi, Pramila, Prabhakar, Shadab, Bhvya, Joby, Vijith) .

I owe I don’t know what but something greater of all to my fiends who where there in my hard time Kavitha, Lokesh, Sonika, Mrutyun, Sathish, Atanu, Ranjith…..

Last but not the least ..I owe my around 25 IBM certificates & learning to Global Campus…and my trainees.