I was an employee for 6 months in
Satyam Computers. I even saw Ramalinga Raju once. Everyone at Satyam
said he was a nice man, humble and all that... but I never trusted the
guy. He speaks like a dhongi baba... totally fake.
How I landed up at Satyam is not a very long story. It was an accident, just like my coming to IIML, my joining GSSL, my shifting to Hyderabad from Pune, to Pune from Chennai, and most of my other significant achievements in life, including my life itself. People who say we choose our destinies, either don't understand anything about life, or have not lived enough to perceive how funny (some would say cruel, and are justified in doing that) life is at playing with our choices, and leaving us gaping at ourselves to understand how much we chose and how much was an outcome of a game of dice between confused gods, goddesses and all the genders that apply to gods, if at all they do.
Everyone starts finding faults with a company when it's not doing well. And Satyam, quite a few times now, has put all four of its tiger-feet in its mouth. So I also would like to take the pleasure of some bitching just to get some kaleje-ki-thhandak, though most of what I'd grumble about is true for almost all big IT companies in India.
I was recruited very easily by Satyam... without many questions. I had been jobless for a month at that time, and the job meant a lot to me. Not because I was dying to work or because it hurts when life doesn't have challenges. I don't think I want work or challenges of the kind these jobs offer. Wonder how they really motivate people. They make me sad, turn me off, to be honest (though I always did well in my jobs and was skillful at the work). Money was the only reason I wanted the job. Otherwise I was quite happy taking naps in the afternoons on grass at Vengala Rao Park after movie at PVR and lunch at Ohri's... I miss those days of joblessness. My lifestyle cost a lot of money though, which I was required to earn and keep on earning.
I was sent back when I first went to join Satyam at its Masha-allah office adjacent to Paradise hotel in Secunderabad. I had not completed one of the before-you-turn-up-for-joining formalities. I was supposed to fill up all my details into a website, which I didn't coz I hadn't received the password. I went again 2 days later after finishing the stuff that I'd missed, and the joining process was smooth and quick thereafter.
At that time (Nov 2007), they were recruiting like crazy. There were hundreds joining the company every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. And everyone who joined was put on bench. Satyam is the only company in the world which has an office dedicated to people on bench. In Hyderabad, it was the office in Karkhana area. All benchers reported to the same guy and fell under a vertical called SSU Business Wait. (Don't know what SSU meant). There were structural changes in the company during the 6 months of my timepass there, and by the time I left, there was no 'Business Wait', but many Horizontal Competency Units, one for each technology, like Java, Mainframes, etc. etc. I could never understand those Horizontals and Verticals ka funda. Satyam was obsessed with them.
In many ways Satyam is unique in its sadism, that is somewhat different from those of other IT companies (I've worked in 3, and know people in 100). For example, I've met and spoken to people who had been on bench for more than a year (also came across quite a few cases of close to 2 years on bench). This happened mainly with freshers who were recruited straight out of college and were taken under a bond. (Funny that TCS likes to call it a Service Agreement, saying bond is for bonded laborers. They made me pay a hefty sum for quitting in 6 months. I screwed up, actually. Couldn't abscond like most of my friends did. That story, some other time...). And the nature of the bond was such that they couldn't abscond without paying the bond money, coz they had to pay the money in advance when joining the company and it was returned to them only after serving for 2 years. And of course, if you leave before 2 years of service, your money is gone. So most of those youngsters stayed, in spite of being totally work-less, for 2 years. It's not all that bad though. I must confess that out of my 44 months of work-ex - that I proudly flaunt in my CV with bullet points saying I did work worthy of 100 nobels and claim an edge over the fresh-out-of-college guys here at IIM - about a year of that was spent being on bench. And I think there is nothing better that can happen to you in an IT company, than being on bench. I had wonderful times on bench, had great experiences, met the best people and made the best friends.
But, I think, how much you enjoy being on bench also depends on which stage of career you are in. It is wonderful if you are in the initial stages, when you are single, ready to mingle, and don't have the conservative gulti instincts of saving and worrying about the doomsday, when it's least necessary. It is wonderful also because in the initial stages of your career, you tend to take things lightly for some time since you are just freshly out of college. You are not so bothered about career progression and stuff like that for quite a while if you get a good break (like Satyam) soon after college. So you want to enjoy for some time and bench offers everything to do that well - time, money and people. Bench is also a good way for people with no techy bent of mind, to sail through those initial years of coding, and get to the next levels like TL, PL, PM etc. which are even more timepass jobs, pay much better and give you power to screw people's lives - which is a great motivator to people who have plenty of food and sex, if Maslow is to be believed. (I have another theory, which contradicts Maslow's. Will write about it some other time).
I was amazed by Satyam's propensity to amass enormous amounts of resources without having any use for them. For example, Satyam has tens of huge buildings in Hyderabad ranging from dilapidated structures to modern glass towers whose floors and walls are rubbed 24 hours to perfect sheen by smartly dressed workers. I, along with a few hundred guys on bench, was moved into one such building in Hitech City. It was very visibly a desperate attempt by the company to have some human activity in the newly constructed building. The building had many halls, each with 100-200 new and fast computers, arranged in rows and lying idle. I don't know if I should admire the company for building such excellent facilities or criticize it for wasting capital. It would have done much better if it had paid good salaries and also found work for its employees whose careers were ruthlessly screwed by the company's project allocation policies. I say this because out of all those who joined the company with me in November 2007, hardly anyone has been assigned any work; and a good percentage have been laid off after being kept idle for a year or so. This mess, certainly, cannot be attributed solely to the sub-prime crisis.
However, for me, those 6 months were great. My room-mate used to be jealous coz he had to work whole day, while I barely went to office for 2-3 hours. Satyam paid me well, misled like everyone by my IIT degree. And thanks to Maher, my room-mate, and Habib, my landlord, that I lived in a decent house in the very posh Banjara Hills, not very far from Ramalinga Raju's house, and I was told, not very far from Sania Mirza's house too.
There was once an attempt by the Satyam HR to move me to Bangalore saying there was nothing for me in Hyderabad. I resisted for some time, coz I didn't want the great times in Hyderabad to end. When I finally did agree to consider it, the Team Leader of that Project rejected me, without telling me any reason. I was ready to work in any damn project in any of the offices in Hyderabad, but those guys who called themselves CoRCC (they searched projects for idlers) never found a match between my profile and the available requirements. They used some crap profile-matching software that never found me good for any work.
There were some very smart people around me at Satyam. Some of them were capable of doing the best and the most complex of jobs. There were quite a few highly self-motivated individuals who constantly strived to upgrade their knowledge. And most of them were very frustrated at not getting any work to do. And that frustration often creeped into me too. It is hard to be principle centered when your principles are driven by instincts and thought rather than socially accepted norms. My principles have gained some resilience over time, but they are still looking for a clarity that can fix them firmly into my character.
Some other benefits I drew from Satyam included a lot of internet time to read news and articles that helped me in my preparation for IIML GD and Interview, great email-spamming with my Pune Siddharth Nagar friends, extra allowance of Rs.2400 for 8 night-shifts (300 a night), thousands of jokes and laughing moments with Rajneesh and Sidhu, 20 cups of ginger-tea every day, and an apparently stable job after the failed stint at an NGO.
Quitting Satyam was not a good experience. The HR Managers were all rude, the process was bureaucratic, and nobody asked me why I was leaving, nor did anyone try to stop me. Plus, there was one bad-termpered Manager who did not allow me to serve a 1-month notice and buy out the remaining 1 month (2 months notice was the company policy, and I did not have enough time to serve that long a notice). Interestingly, I told one HR Manager, who was handling my exit, about the other Manager who was asking me to leave immediately despite the fact that I could, would have liked to and had a right to stay for a month. And the HR guy even said 'uske baap ki company thodi hai! Mai idhar policies aur forms leke kya jhhak maar raha hoon?' But finally he had to give in to the kameena Manager who was both senior and powerful, and the rules and policies were compromised. I had to pay the money and leave immediately.
But on the whole, in spite of all the stupidity that I was a part of, it was a good experience being in Satyam. I got lots of time to pursue my personal interests, which also include just sitting and staring into thin air, sometimes thinking stuff that can make sense only to Einstein, and often not even to myself. It's sad that the company is in such a miserable state now, and thousands of its honest and hard-working employees are suffering for no fault of theirs. I wish them all the very best. To a great extent, life is as sad and disappointing as we want it to be. And my dear Satyamites have faith in the ability of the arbitgiri of this world to lead to outcomes which are best for us... be happy, keep working hard... life is a gift, it is great and will continue to be great!
How I landed up at Satyam is not a very long story. It was an accident, just like my coming to IIML, my joining GSSL, my shifting to Hyderabad from Pune, to Pune from Chennai, and most of my other significant achievements in life, including my life itself. People who say we choose our destinies, either don't understand anything about life, or have not lived enough to perceive how funny (some would say cruel, and are justified in doing that) life is at playing with our choices, and leaving us gaping at ourselves to understand how much we chose and how much was an outcome of a game of dice between confused gods, goddesses and all the genders that apply to gods, if at all they do.
Everyone starts finding faults with a company when it's not doing well. And Satyam, quite a few times now, has put all four of its tiger-feet in its mouth. So I also would like to take the pleasure of some bitching just to get some kaleje-ki-thhandak, though most of what I'd grumble about is true for almost all big IT companies in India.
I was recruited very easily by Satyam... without many questions. I had been jobless for a month at that time, and the job meant a lot to me. Not because I was dying to work or because it hurts when life doesn't have challenges. I don't think I want work or challenges of the kind these jobs offer. Wonder how they really motivate people. They make me sad, turn me off, to be honest (though I always did well in my jobs and was skillful at the work). Money was the only reason I wanted the job. Otherwise I was quite happy taking naps in the afternoons on grass at Vengala Rao Park after movie at PVR and lunch at Ohri's... I miss those days of joblessness. My lifestyle cost a lot of money though, which I was required to earn and keep on earning.
I was sent back when I first went to join Satyam at its Masha-allah office adjacent to Paradise hotel in Secunderabad. I had not completed one of the before-you-turn-up-for-joining formalities. I was supposed to fill up all my details into a website, which I didn't coz I hadn't received the password. I went again 2 days later after finishing the stuff that I'd missed, and the joining process was smooth and quick thereafter.
At that time (Nov 2007), they were recruiting like crazy. There were hundreds joining the company every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. And everyone who joined was put on bench. Satyam is the only company in the world which has an office dedicated to people on bench. In Hyderabad, it was the office in Karkhana area. All benchers reported to the same guy and fell under a vertical called SSU Business Wait. (Don't know what SSU meant). There were structural changes in the company during the 6 months of my timepass there, and by the time I left, there was no 'Business Wait', but many Horizontal Competency Units, one for each technology, like Java, Mainframes, etc. etc. I could never understand those Horizontals and Verticals ka funda. Satyam was obsessed with them.
In many ways Satyam is unique in its sadism, that is somewhat different from those of other IT companies (I've worked in 3, and know people in 100). For example, I've met and spoken to people who had been on bench for more than a year (also came across quite a few cases of close to 2 years on bench). This happened mainly with freshers who were recruited straight out of college and were taken under a bond. (Funny that TCS likes to call it a Service Agreement, saying bond is for bonded laborers. They made me pay a hefty sum for quitting in 6 months. I screwed up, actually. Couldn't abscond like most of my friends did. That story, some other time...). And the nature of the bond was such that they couldn't abscond without paying the bond money, coz they had to pay the money in advance when joining the company and it was returned to them only after serving for 2 years. And of course, if you leave before 2 years of service, your money is gone. So most of those youngsters stayed, in spite of being totally work-less, for 2 years. It's not all that bad though. I must confess that out of my 44 months of work-ex - that I proudly flaunt in my CV with bullet points saying I did work worthy of 100 nobels and claim an edge over the fresh-out-of-college guys here at IIM - about a year of that was spent being on bench. And I think there is nothing better that can happen to you in an IT company, than being on bench. I had wonderful times on bench, had great experiences, met the best people and made the best friends.
But, I think, how much you enjoy being on bench also depends on which stage of career you are in. It is wonderful if you are in the initial stages, when you are single, ready to mingle, and don't have the conservative gulti instincts of saving and worrying about the doomsday, when it's least necessary. It is wonderful also because in the initial stages of your career, you tend to take things lightly for some time since you are just freshly out of college. You are not so bothered about career progression and stuff like that for quite a while if you get a good break (like Satyam) soon after college. So you want to enjoy for some time and bench offers everything to do that well - time, money and people. Bench is also a good way for people with no techy bent of mind, to sail through those initial years of coding, and get to the next levels like TL, PL, PM etc. which are even more timepass jobs, pay much better and give you power to screw people's lives - which is a great motivator to people who have plenty of food and sex, if Maslow is to be believed. (I have another theory, which contradicts Maslow's. Will write about it some other time).
I was amazed by Satyam's propensity to amass enormous amounts of resources without having any use for them. For example, Satyam has tens of huge buildings in Hyderabad ranging from dilapidated structures to modern glass towers whose floors and walls are rubbed 24 hours to perfect sheen by smartly dressed workers. I, along with a few hundred guys on bench, was moved into one such building in Hitech City. It was very visibly a desperate attempt by the company to have some human activity in the newly constructed building. The building had many halls, each with 100-200 new and fast computers, arranged in rows and lying idle. I don't know if I should admire the company for building such excellent facilities or criticize it for wasting capital. It would have done much better if it had paid good salaries and also found work for its employees whose careers were ruthlessly screwed by the company's project allocation policies. I say this because out of all those who joined the company with me in November 2007, hardly anyone has been assigned any work; and a good percentage have been laid off after being kept idle for a year or so. This mess, certainly, cannot be attributed solely to the sub-prime crisis.
However, for me, those 6 months were great. My room-mate used to be jealous coz he had to work whole day, while I barely went to office for 2-3 hours. Satyam paid me well, misled like everyone by my IIT degree. And thanks to Maher, my room-mate, and Habib, my landlord, that I lived in a decent house in the very posh Banjara Hills, not very far from Ramalinga Raju's house, and I was told, not very far from Sania Mirza's house too.
There was once an attempt by the Satyam HR to move me to Bangalore saying there was nothing for me in Hyderabad. I resisted for some time, coz I didn't want the great times in Hyderabad to end. When I finally did agree to consider it, the Team Leader of that Project rejected me, without telling me any reason. I was ready to work in any damn project in any of the offices in Hyderabad, but those guys who called themselves CoRCC (they searched projects for idlers) never found a match between my profile and the available requirements. They used some crap profile-matching software that never found me good for any work.
There were some very smart people around me at Satyam. Some of them were capable of doing the best and the most complex of jobs. There were quite a few highly self-motivated individuals who constantly strived to upgrade their knowledge. And most of them were very frustrated at not getting any work to do. And that frustration often creeped into me too. It is hard to be principle centered when your principles are driven by instincts and thought rather than socially accepted norms. My principles have gained some resilience over time, but they are still looking for a clarity that can fix them firmly into my character.
Some other benefits I drew from Satyam included a lot of internet time to read news and articles that helped me in my preparation for IIML GD and Interview, great email-spamming with my Pune Siddharth Nagar friends, extra allowance of Rs.2400 for 8 night-shifts (300 a night), thousands of jokes and laughing moments with Rajneesh and Sidhu, 20 cups of ginger-tea every day, and an apparently stable job after the failed stint at an NGO.
Quitting Satyam was not a good experience. The HR Managers were all rude, the process was bureaucratic, and nobody asked me why I was leaving, nor did anyone try to stop me. Plus, there was one bad-termpered Manager who did not allow me to serve a 1-month notice and buy out the remaining 1 month (2 months notice was the company policy, and I did not have enough time to serve that long a notice). Interestingly, I told one HR Manager, who was handling my exit, about the other Manager who was asking me to leave immediately despite the fact that I could, would have liked to and had a right to stay for a month. And the HR guy even said 'uske baap ki company thodi hai! Mai idhar policies aur forms leke kya jhhak maar raha hoon?' But finally he had to give in to the kameena Manager who was both senior and powerful, and the rules and policies were compromised. I had to pay the money and leave immediately.
But on the whole, in spite of all the stupidity that I was a part of, it was a good experience being in Satyam. I got lots of time to pursue my personal interests, which also include just sitting and staring into thin air, sometimes thinking stuff that can make sense only to Einstein, and often not even to myself. It's sad that the company is in such a miserable state now, and thousands of its honest and hard-working employees are suffering for no fault of theirs. I wish them all the very best. To a great extent, life is as sad and disappointing as we want it to be. And my dear Satyamites have faith in the ability of the arbitgiri of this world to lead to outcomes which are best for us... be happy, keep working hard... life is a gift, it is great and will continue to be great!
