My First Week

One week has gone by. I am working for one of the big four consultancies. If I talk about any of my projects they might put me in jail for breaking the NDA so, I ll try to talk about things without taking any names.

Office is not exactly what I have expected. Working with PayPal had been fun, with the swanky building, nice spacious cubicles, big pantry and last but not the least foosball. Now I am stuck in a tiny office which is designed as a maze with only one intention of maximum capacity. The loos are so tiny. And the best part, hot seating, that means you can sit on any cubicle. They are not assigned to anyone. But as you know seniority comes first so, I am stuck in a semi-conference room with two more people.

Now that we have the seating part settled, let’s talk about work. When I was in PayPal, I never actually worked per se, I used my week’s work in a day and then spend the rest of the week downloading/ catching up with all my tv series. So, officially this is my first real job.

I thought the first week is supposed to be the transition period where we look at all the e-learning tools and get to know how to work around the office internet blocks :)( Did you know Gmail is blocked but not facebook, I don’t know what these guys were thinking!).  I can’t be so optimistic right? Second day in office, I am pulled into a project (no white paper, no proposal direct project!). And the best part, my manager just briefs me about me and heads out to Bangalore. So, officially I have work to do but I don’t know what exactly I am supposed to do.

Actually they put me in another project that morning which I liked infinitely more than this one. It dealt with technology, and me being a techie (now S, here I give you total credit for whatever geekiness I possess) I so wanted to work on that one. I know, me work sounds funny but seriously, I was actually able to understand all the jargon the guy was using and was able to explain it. How cool would it have been if I got into that one? Well, I am doing a much better job now running around supermarkets collecting data. I am loving it. So not.

The one good part of it was meeting the client and talking to him. I thought he would be some old geezer, where I should suck up to him (that is the impression I had from the trainings we had, we suck up to the managers, they suck up to the partners and the partners suck up to the clients, it’s an suck-up-ecosystem :)). But I was pleasantly surprised. I had a pretty nice conversation about Indian culture and how it affects our buying habits. We talked about Japan and anime. It was fun.

I like the work that I am doing. I am internalizing this(S I am trying I really am). Ohh did I tell you they are sending me to Hyderabad the next week. Don’t want to be there in between the whole wedding madness, but hopefully I will be busy with my work that I won’t have time to actually get to that topic.

Anyways Bombay is growing on me slowly albeit, I mean with a bump like a bruised body from the battle wounds (remember the jumping off the train part) it is getting a little difficult. Verdict still pending on this one, I think one weekend out would solve the problem though :)