Lost in Transition
Yes its been a long time since my last post, but I think this one would be
worth reading the most. So let me recall what I can recall from these 3 months
of highs and lows at Chennai. I started my journey as an ASE Trainee at TCS
Chennai late last year, precisely 12th of October. All of us the trainees were
asked to gather at the ILP centre sharp at 8.30 am on the first day. Reading the
first official email from the HR while travelling in the Navjeevan Express a
couple of days ago gave a great sense of joy and pride that one cannot forget.
All set, arrived at Chennai railway station, and took the bus to my pg which I
had prebooked on Quickr.com few days ago. Remembering the bus ride, I asked a
man about what would be the bus to Thiruvanmiyur, and the gentleman telling me,
"Boy, there is also an English line over here this side on the left. You
could refer that instead of asking!" I said to myself "Wow! I am
already enjoying this place!" Other thing that I noticed was the humidity
and heat in Chennai, inspite of arriving in the evening. Anyways, I arrived at
my room and took some rest for the next day. The following day, the penultimate
day before the start of ILP, I took my first bus to visit my office for the
first time.
Upon first inspection from the outside,
I felt like, "Well, this doesn't seem to be quite inviting!" And one
could easily see why. I mean, the office where I gave my TCS interview,
Gandhinagar was head and shoulders more inviting than this one. Simplistic
architecture, 7 floors minaret type of structure, devoid of any extra space for
gardens or trees or parking area for that matter! I remember my aunt reminding
me frequently that "Beta, you need to be very careful while choosing your
options" and then, I could see why. I called my dad that day and told him
that this doesnt seem anything like we thought of before. He insisted me that I
could still think over it before signing any bonds. Things seen and while
returning back I had a couple of Samosas at a small shop on the opposite side
that evening and had to recharge my mobile as the sun was settling in to the
night that led to an interesting journey from the next day.
The
next day upon reaching the outskirts of my office, I was bamboozled to notice
around more than 350 trainee engineers standing outside the TCS ILP premises.
We all trainees were asked to assemble ourselves in a line later with our
joining letter and were issued our temporary ID cards. That was a great moment
of joy to receive an official card with a band of TCS printed on it.After that
we proceeded to the auditorium, where we eventually spent the next two days
listening to many informative, although boring at times, speeches and
instructions from our HR, ILP Heads,etc. Ours was CHN20 batch that had trainees
in many technologies, all making up to around 350 in total strength.One very
hilarious activity was done in that auditorium during one the speeches was
that, the HR asked asked us to sit according to our Employee Id. Then he
asked(needless for us to notice!!!) “How many of you are from the North?” And
the entire row I was sitting was of North Indians. The remaining three rows was
filled by people belonging to the Southern part of India. We were given each a
large cover, in which we found ourselves a TCS Notepad, some legal stamppaper
and a Reynolds pen. We were later asked to put our documents later that day,
once we cleared the IRAs. We used to arrive at 8 in the morning and leave at
7.30 or 8 in the evening, but it wasnt as bad as some other writers would write
in some other blogs. We were mostly told about the organisational structure,
domain of work, structure of training in the ILP centre, tentative
schedule(this one makes me laugh looking at it in the hindsight, since it wasnt
followed even one bit!!!), salary structure, but the most important one for
then, was the instructions for the IRAs test part.
So, as
per the received instructions we proceeded to respective labs on 1st
floor West wing(if I could recall correctly!!!) to give the IRAs.I had heard a
lot about it during my Aspire days and the stories of failing in it, but was
pretty confident before appearing for it. We were given instructions for the
same and logging in credentials(which created a lot of havoc for some during
the test) and luckily, I cleared the test. This was followed by dividing us to
our respective LG(Learning Groups) and document checking. After all these
activities, around 8 people were rescheduled, some could not clear the IRAs and
some had some problems with documents. Rest received their original ID cards
and documents on the same day. I had to wait for it until the 3rd
day. On the second day, more sessions with some leads,managers, heads from
different departments like Admin, IRC, Biz Skills and Technology. Later that
day was the sweet part, as we received our accounts from banks. Two banks
visited us, ICICI and SBI, both with equally inviting offers. I went ahead with
ICICI as most of my fellow colleagues did then. We all received each a cheque
book comprising of 5 cheques for our account, an ATM card and some user manuals
for the net banking procedures. I remember for the first couple of days, I used
to simply stare at the ATM card, saying “Wow this is my own ATM card”(Although
it had no money then and very little still now!!!).
Later
that day, we were instructed to report to 6th floor Orange room for
our first introduction session with our Tech Lead and the rest of our fellow LG
members the next day, to kick off, what panned out to be a ride to remember for
a long time. I will write about this and more in the next post, so dont forget
to check it out, because if it was a great one to experience it, it would be more
fun writing about it!
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