40 Months of Life in an IT Industry…
Author :
Shishir Gupta
Blog :TREATISE
Date: 12/1/2011 4:03:52 PM
It’s been verydiffering and variedkind of 40 months that I have had in the IT industry, or I can say that I have what you call as the IT industry (motley) kind of days,as IT industry is known for indifferent kind of ways. At the same time and situation, an IT industry can be at its pleasing best as well as for someone it can be at its chafing worst. I have kind of witnessed but these aspects in these 40 months, through mine as well as my friends’ eyes. As written earlier the first 20 months of this journey was like a roller coaster ride the next 20 months have been the opposite, very clam and serene. In these later 20 months I have been more at bay all the time, and these months have really been fruitful and enjoyable. There have been a few forgettable days, but they been so less in magnitude that probably do not need a mention here. But seeing the nature of an IT life, I tend to get scared even more, as probably one feels that this can be the silence before a big storm. One of the biggest achievements I can boast about is that I survived the unforgiving recession period in here, but that was generally during the first 20 months, these 20 months can majorly be marked as the recovery period from the recession. Another important thing I would like to add over here is that I have managed to complete 40 months in a single organization, whereas many of friend are already into their second or third organization. But most of that was becauseof the recession that took us head on in the very late 2008-early 2009. I was hardly 5 months into the job that I got the first sight of the effects of recession way back in January 09. It was like one of the worst starts of a year, for a blooming career. In fact if I see it through many of my friends’ eyes I can say that it did sweep away many dreams, and it was only afterprobably a drought of one year that things started to get normal.
In my previous post on this topic 20 months back, I covered my side of the journey of first 20 months. My story how I survived till then, and how many of my batch mates lost their jobs or how they quit for better opportunities and other aspects of that unforgiving recession. So now I don’t want to discuss it any further here. And in this post I will try to take my journey forward from there. If I remember correctly, I had stopped in the post around 28thMarch or so, and now I will try and carry on from there.That period again started will IPL and appraisal meetings. IPL was not as fun as it had been during the initial first year, as all the friends by then were very busy into theirprojects, and we hardly got time to meet during the day, leave the opportunity of watching the matches. Yes the appraisal meetings were better, as by now I had somewhat gelled into the new department and the new project well by then.
Then came May 1, the results of our appraisals were announced. After getting an increment last time around (or I can say getting the reimbursement of the salary cut) most of us were not really expecting a huge increase, but to our surprise we did end up getting a decent rise in money. Something the Cybagians were not really used to. I cannot say that it created goodwill amongst the employees, but yes it did reduce the bad feelings to some extent. However, even after this I noticed a very high attrition rate in the organization in the coming months. July, August, and September were three months where I saw almost half the team changing. There was not really anything happening as such in those six months as such apart from seeing many teammates and friends leaving the companyand many new faces joining the team. And yes the biggest thing to happen was as I saw many close friends leave, Vishal who joined the team sometime around February became a real close friend of mine in that period.During that period, my mentor, manager, a close colleague Bharati left Cybage. That came in a more of a shock, not only shook me or my project team, but the entire department and even the client. I took the team some time to recover from that loss, and amidst that the appraisal results for the next appraisal cycle were announced. Once again to the surprise of everyone, we all had monetary increments and that too what we call the decent hikes. But I was even more surprise, when I was handedover my promotion letter by my department head. Well, I am not really sure whether I deserved that at that particular time, but nevertheless it was welcome.Things changed, scales grew higher, and so did theresponsibility with that promotion and finally after a couple of months it led to my project change. Then that was again a big shock (I have written about this here already), as I had been in that project for almost 19 months by then.
And then came the probably the biggest change, I was shifted to the West Avenue location, and that opened a great opening for me. That stint of 5 months there probably revamped me completely. I was not the old Shishir my team knew, or I can say that helped me introduce the actual me to everyone. In that period of time I made many very good friends, something that I had hardly done over the last many months. Also, during this I did attend almost every team outing possible, something I had not done during the earlier period for some or the other reason. But yes all those events helped me bond better with the team.Another thing, that probably helped me bond better was that this time around in the previous few months the attrition rate has been pretty low which meant that I got more time to adjust and interact with people. I believe the biggest reason for this low attrition rate has been the appraisals at Cybage in this period. For the last four appraisals (after every six months) continuously, everyone has received increments probably which has managed to build a certain faith in the organization and can be seen in the low attrition rate.
But as time has passed by and another appraisal cycle has come round the corner, the attrition rate is high again or I can say has come back to normal. Since this time around everyone is aware that there will not be any monetary increments people are probably searching out for better opportunities and definitely better pay packages. It looks like the IT life is again coming back to normal after a very long hibernation.
Apart from all of this another change that happened during this period of 20 months was that our late night coffee meetings were changed to weekend trips. These trips were more fun as well as gave us a lot more time to bond. After the first couple of trips I and Vishal decided to carry out such trips every month, but we have hardly been able to go on 9-10 trips in this period. Nevertheless, all these trips have been highly entertaining and definitely full of adventure. Also, these trips gave us opportunities to go to various unseen locations for trekking and also enjoy the scenic beauty. Suddenly I have found another and a better way to enjoy with friends. Unfortunately the group is not the same, and it is only Raman and me that remain in common. Bhadre has sometimes made an appearance in these trips, but certainly that has been a rare (earlier too he was not really regular to our meetings but did manage to make on more occasions than he has done now). Mihir, who once used to be a regular member of our meetings, has not been able to join once the late night coffee meets got converted to weekend treks. But yes, Vishal has become a very regular member of these trips, and now Achyut has joined the bandwagon too.
Apart from thesethe great moments with my team in the various team meetings, whether they are knowledge sharing sessions (or the fun sessions) or they are monthly birthday celebrations, or they are team lunch outings, or even the Diwali funfair organization committee meetings, all of them have continued to be very entertaining and exciting as they were in the first 20 months period. And all I can say is that the life has been very good so far, except for a few instances when some of my good friends parted ways in search of a better living somewhere else. Lot of my friends left in this period, in fact my fresher’s batch which had 46 of us is now only left to 9 people as we complete 40 months. The latest and probably the closest casualty amongst them being that of Mihir, who left Cybage last week.
Another important thing that has started in this period has been the tie-up between Cybage and SIBM for the Executive MBA course, which I have enrolled for. Now that gives me the opportunity of completing my MBA which I was thinking of last time I wrote this blog post.
So overall I can say that this period of 20 months has been a much better one for me professionallythan the previous period. And as I have said that this period was probably the one where I was sailing through very easily through these calm times, but I surely hope that in the coming months I will soar rather than just sail.
And on this thought and hope I would like to close my post for now. Hope to update on this very soon.
