The difficulty one faces in quitting a job at IBM

Hi all,

If you are a reader of my blog you would have heard that I am to join an MBA college soon and I have also given some notice to my present company(IBM) to inform them of my plans, infact I have filled in info on the tool that is used for separation from IBM and requested may 3rd as my date of resignation. Little did I know at 1st that this would be a big issue as I had made it quite evident that I was seeking a change and after my good grade in the entrance test, I did feel that most people around me did know this as well. My Peoples manager(PM) too, whom I did think was ok with my leaving{ as he had helped me out with some guidance and a lot of knowledge about IBM and Wellpoint (our customer)}has not yet approved my request as according to him, the DM(delivery manager) is the one that must give him a go ahead before he can approve my request. I have also spoken to the account head, who said that it would have to be my duty to be more proactive in persuading my DM to take some measures inorder to find a replacement for me.

That’s the one good thing I did feel after being a part of IBM for over 19 months now: with regards to job security it might be considered one of the best ( as they require 3 months of prior notice period which employees are expected to give before resignation-works the same way when IBM iniates ur resignation ie:3 months-hehe) . In my personal opinion I do feel that this 3 months period is inexplicable as no company would wait for an employee for a period of 3 months, also as in my case I do have my joining date in 2 months which might be a problem,( cllge starts on 21st June for XIME).

Sometimes I do find it har to decide which of the 2 is more easier here- getting a job or quitting a job. Im sure a lot of factors do effect this and thimin is essential.

Speaking more on this- our country seems to be doing well and seems to have recovered from the recessiondue to which jobs were hard to come by last year(2009), and there are plenty of companies that are hiring at full scale, IBM too has increased its strength as it has been doing over the past years in INDIA which it seeks to exploit for its enourmous base of skilled and cost effective resources.



I did read up a site on IIT millionaires recently wherin I did get info about the greats like Narayanan Murty and Nandan Nilkani( INFOSIS), and also Vinod Khosla(Sun Micro) who seems to be one of the first Indians who ventured into the IT field when he co-founded Sun Micro. Today abouit 10% of the companies in Silicon Valley(considered as the the leading high-tech hub in USA) where many enthusiastic youngsters often dream to be. But I also did read about how these leaders after being trained in the prestegeous IIT( which offer subsidised rates by the gove and fees are about $200 for the 2 years of college- greatest ROI in the world..I think-)look at the course as just a means to make money by going abroad and offering their services and sound training and minds just to be exploited by being underpaid by the west- to make it worse these people have exploited theie country by outsourcing jobs to INDIA by offering salaries which are far from comparable to the salaries offered to the much less hardworking citizenzs of the west, I do feel that they are anxious to leave partly because they hope to live a normal life in the US where there might be a decent proportion of females to males in their daily life…lol. Unfortunately many social sites do get a lot of responces which clearly state their dislike for indians, I would think the reason for this is 1) Jealousy- as they are losing jobs to people who are not from their own country. 2) Racism- though the world has grown a long way there always will remain some discrimination between the white and brown race, 3)Lack of proper social life in India-Most of the Indians (to my knowledge) look up to USA and other European countries and see the open culture- for years they have been living in a culture where emphasis is given to respect for elders and their work is of great significance, for eg: in Bangalore by law all restaurants,shops and pubs must close by 11:30, No smoking in Public places as well as in restaurants. In spite of such buisnesses losing out on massive business due to these laws the owners do not have much say in the policies. The younger generation too look at foreign countries as a way out of this and to a normal life, where hand in hand walks and small public displays of affection are common. In India there are Parties like the Ram Sena, Shiv Sena which are considered very much pro-hindu and pro-marati, to such an extent that their members roam around in a gang on days like valentines day for instance where they announced that they would forcibly marry any couple which was found roaming together on that day!(they roamed around with priests to implement the same). Infact I have heard of a story where they mistakenly took a brother and sister and forced them to marry without listening to reason in Pune year 2009. The effect that these negative closed minded executions has brought about a generation which does not easily mingle wioth the opposite sex, where virginity has a value in some minds, and where the people are afraid of being themselves and having fun like they want to , primarily out of fear from family and society. Where arrange marriages are still common in the 21st century and cases of dowry and female foeticide are in abundance.

I think I have written enough for the day and perhaps it would be better to spend some time to reflect and come to your own conclusions and possible solutions to these problems india is facing

One last interesting fact, courtesy Wikipedia
Silicon Valley has the highest average high-tech salary at $144,800.
The region is the biggest high-tech manufacturing center in the United States

My GD/PI Experiences after CAT

Hi All,

Sorry for the delan in updating my blog, a lot has happened since the last time I did update it and I was wondering where to start. I guess ill start with the highlights, hehe.

I got my CAT 09 result about a month back and was really happy with my score of 96.34..yeah baby...:). However as I was dreaming during the time when I should have been applying to colleges and only managed to apply to IMT-Gaziabad,TAPMI,XIME,BIM-Trichy and welingkar(WE-School)(apart from TAPMI all application dates were after the CAT result..Lucky me..:)). For about a month now I feel as though my life has taken a turn in the more serious direction as I have been keeping myself updated with current affairs and reading the paper regurlarly, for a person who had to make up for a lifetime of ignorance this was a leviathan's task, and I have to admit that a lot more work remains to be done, and a lot more knowledge to be gained.

As of now I have converted the call which I got from XIME, I did find this a bit surprising as my GD/PI experience didnt go particularly well, I spoke only once during tthe GD(group discussion), and my interview too didnt go well. A member of my panel was an IBMer and I later found out that he(Mr Anil Philip) was the VP of the ITS(integrated tecnology services) division of IBM, perhaps one reason why he might have had a soft spot for me.

During the interview I do remember being unable to answer several q's like "who is th ceo of NOKIA?"

The interview started off on a bad note I would say as I did say that I was an IBMer but when asked who the MD of IBM was I was unable to give an answer, after some help from Mr Anil I did manage to utter his sir name (annaswamy) correctly.( I was 1st hinted the starting letter of his 1st name ie S and then I requested the starting lettetr of his last name...lol...which was A).

The next question was on the advertisements of IBM which were aired on public TV, this was something big happening as IBM's smarter planet initiatives have been, I firstly mentioned green planet and then said that I did not have much info of these initiatives. (I might write more about these later as I do have knowledge of this now)

Once I was asked about myself though I did get a little more comfortable and did tell him about my 2 years in gaming, I also remember telling him that in the 45 mins during a game, we had to be impulsive and needed qualities like teamwork,leadership and co-ordiniation inorder to succeed, also mentioned that we did take part in WCG(world cyber games) for 2 consequetive years and travelled as a team to bangalore during the tournament times.I did forget to mention about my robotics project which I did feel was one of my main plus points, as I did attend a course in robotics before my final year to gove me an insight into robotics.

After that a few questions on NOKIA- CEO, competitors( I said sony,samsung..but I think they were looking mainly for the iPhone as it's market has been expanding rapidly, with its easy to install apps.)

Then a few questions on microsoft, competitors, thank god he didnt ask me the CEO as I bet ithat I would have said Bill gates at the time{ current CEO is Steve Ballmer- BIll gates has moved on to more of his philantropic works (probably for securing himself a place in heaven in his afterlife...no offence meant...but if I remember correctly it is said in the bible that" It is more difficult for a rich man to enter the gates of heaven, than it is for a camel to enter the eye of a needle")}. I personally dont believe in this as I dont feel that the meaning of rich necessarily means money alone( Bill Gates was announced richest man in the world on more than one occasion!) ,other factors that make a man rich would be family, kids,work and freinds(in my world).

Anyways I think Ive mentioned enough about the XIME interview, but ofcourse I did feel that I did give satisfactory answers to questions like "why MBA?", " why grades going down down down?" ( I did forget to mention my robotics project through the whole interview and wasnt asked anythin on this). But for some reason I did have a good feeling in the end, the feeling which I did not have for my Interview with IMT-G which took place a week later.

My interview with IMT-G started of well according to me, 1stly being asked about my name I gave a suitable answer, the panel went on to ask me about my favorite sub in school, after I said maths they asked me how the distance between 2 points would be calculated, after giving them a decent explanation I was asked about the formula which I did give correctly, this led them to ask me how the distance between 2 stars is to be found?...hmmm..

I did give a suitable answer here as well and told them that using some sonar or radar wawes we would require to calculate the distance betbeen each of the stars and the surface of the earth, and we could also use the angle between the 2 stars at the point of observation to calculate the distance between them, was unable to give them a more detailed answer with trignometric ratios when asked about it,I did feel that with a diagram(or some drawing) I would be able to better explain this more efficiently, they then asked me what was cos hyperbolic to which I said that I dident remember the exact meaning or formual of hyperbolic functions.

"" Explanation of distance between stars""

I feel that I am now in a better postion to explanin how the sistnace between stars can be calculated today as I have had some time to reflect and such questions do intrest me.So I taught I'd take some time and draw a diagram using paint for any1 who might face such a question in the future and who is a reader of my blog...;)..

As said above our 1st step would be to calculate distances E-S1 and E-S2, using some SONAR, RADAR means wherin distance could be calculated as s(speed)= d/t(time), as speed is known to be the speed of light( dont remember the exact figure but i think it is about 3* 10 raised to 7).
looked it up "the speed of light = 299 792 458 m / s."

The next step would be to measure the angle subtended between the 2 stars at the pointy of observation(Earth- E).

Now note that in the diagram we know values of angle E,distance a and b between S1,S2 and E.Also our final intention is to find X(dist betn the 2 stars) .With a small construction extending E-S2 to R, we can now calculate R-S1(knowing b is hypotanneuse of the bigger R-angle Triangle) which would be needed in calculating E-R, then simple subtraction would allow us to calculate R-S2 (by using a)and with this and the distance R-S1 we can calculate the value of X (hypotennuse) in the smaller right angle triangle...

Hurrae!!!

Any Engineer or a person with some intrest in math should have understood my explanation and one can contact me for clarification. If you are a reader, Im sure that u can contact me by some means.""

Now here the bad part comes, I was asked some simple questions like" what are the problems India was facing economically!"

I did say that energy was a concern and just recently there were some new provisions to the 123 deal( nuclear deal). I also do remember mentioning somehow that IBM cloud compution was mentioned in the papre( by this time I did go through a alot of info about smarter planed and wasted to express myself about the initiatives of IBM which I had failed to do in my last interview!). Apart feom that i mentioned water but was unable to elaborate, did not mention more.

Then IT got worse and I was asked who was the CM of karnataka( BS Yedurappa), who's name I could not recollect it at the time( but I did remember it on my own on my way out of the building). Also when I was asked about the problems that Blore was facing I could only mention traffic which was quite embarassing as I had been a resident here for 2 years, did mention water but was unable to elaborate once again, did also mention about the BBMP electons of the start and said about 45 % turnout...quite sad.

At this time the other panel member did see something written on my hand, when asked about it I said the 4 points written were gaming,robotics,Cricket team,violin. All points which I had covered at some point earlier, and was unable to explain that the reason for writting these was that I was expecting a more in depth interview with some topic that I was comfortable with and that if worst comes to worst I would atleast like to mention my personal plus points instead of forgetting something like robotics which I had done in the previous interview.

All in all I dont expect m,uch fromo the interview and am awaiting the results. I do feel that having found out that I have converted the XIME call does put me in a slightly more comfortable position to answer the interviews to come, namely TAPMI on the 20th and BIM- Trichy on the 21st(chennai).

routine ...zzz

hmmm

I have to say that at times life in bangalore can be quiet pleasant. Allthough I would love to have a greater friend circle( which seems to be hard to get) the few friends that i do have are quite like minded. Putting it in simple words " things could be worse"

I really want to just go out and mingle and have fun but somehow something stops me, its either the fact that im broke, or that im alone, or that some idiot friend is just not into the mood.

Sad movies playin in the theatres and i just dont understand why they dont play enough ENGLISH movies here.It seems that the crowd in blore is more drawn towards HINDI(lame) movies.

Well...Ive been workin in IBM for almost a yr now( 10 more days for a yr completion...hehe).
work is OKIE but thats it. I dont find myself looking forward to going to work int he morning but sometimes I do feel that I am starting to be of some value at my workplace....( that is if i dont go a lotta shit happens and I end up getting firing the next day...lol)..but if you analyse the situation I guess that I wouldent have anything better to do everyday if I didnt have work. I really dont know how much longer I can do this though!.. I feel like my life is planned out by some idiot who dosent know my value...(-_-)..and something must be done soon to change my path else i fear a dead end is close by...lololol...(not in a lifethreatening way)

Oh!..I am currently staying with my 2 new roomies at Austin town, my roomies are Chirag from Goa and Saket( soket balaji) from here itself. They are both wuite open minded and all of us smoke and drink together...:)...Saket just started staying with us and he seems to be a nice guy..i think he is the kind that gets senti when drunk though....I found out that Chirag is a cancerian and his bday is on the 4th July....Me a leo hope u all know...Grrrrr....Chirag is also a prity cool guy....yesterday it was prity irritating that he was playing the PSP from 12 in the afternoon till like 12 at night on a SUNDAY..all we did yesterday was go out to eat...I did answer my TIME MOCKCAT but fucked up prity badly this time again.....I really dont see myself getting into a good college with CAT /ZAT and should start to explore my other options.

However I still feel that I still have time to change and that once i figure out what it is that i really want I will want to work towards it...I stil want to do an MBA just so that I have a backup if all goes wrong and also maybe to give a good start to my personal career...( which is currently at a standstill)...

I havent made a lot of friends around my house as of now but I did meet this girl who is a little younger than me who stays just abovew my flat...she seems prity nice and I would not mind making friends with her...[;)]...

Tc for now...I'd better get back to work..

c ya

Missing GOA

Its been 2 month in Blore and im still not used to it. Things have got better but could be better too...lol...They say that "happiness is nothing but good health and bad memory" I wish that were true because for me i want more...lol...

Blore is a big city and the traffic is horrible..it takes a lot of time to get used to the scene here the life is fast and he people faster...no1 waits for any1 or anything..

even then i feel bored ( this is probably bcoz i miss my real goan friends )...

Getting used to this life has been a big change but i am always open to change (or i taught i was)..My main problem with the place is the language...even after 2 months i cant speak a word of kannada...oh i learnt some illa ikda shit off the street but apart from that zero...

Anyways i guess every1 goes through this phase of life that i would personally like to call "temporary work phase"..

AHA..work in IBM

aha!.

there are a lot of questions which one cannot answer in ones life, in my life too i am unable to answer a lot of questions. ...lol...

anyways Ive been working in IBM since the 24th (i think)...dunno my exact purpose but IBM is training me real hard ..lol..actually im supposed to be at work right now...but this is how things work at ibm i guess....they give us enough time in the work place to do our required free timepass stuff like writin blogs...lol

Things are very different here and surprisingly all the employees seem to be happy....its funny to me how that is possible that ALL OF US ARE HAPPY..i hear that we earn the same as a pizza boy abroad..not to complain as we are still training and not having done any work as of now i shd be the last one to complain!!...hopefully when ma training is done i will be able to live up to the ibm standards and start doing instead of talking...lol...

Surprisingly I feel that i fit in here just right...really surprisingly...lol...even though this COBOL language is breaking my head and out rcm test is coming up i feel satisfied in ma current work place....surprisingly...

ofcourse i miss goa my home but who dosent.,,..specially when uve been brought up in a place like goa!...Just cant wait till december when i can oficially go back and visit ma family....lol..