Manish’s Scribble Board

Placement season has nearly ended and many people got their jobs (obviously). One thing which everyone will remember is the unusual reasons company HR’s give when they want to reject someone. I have seen and heard many people being rejected in front of me, only to give a thought what the company recruiters really require actually.

Cisco recruiters said

We wanted people who have hands on experience on real working technology and who can take up challenges. When you people get holidays, do some projects/internship after each semester break right after first year.

Means after each break, we wont go home instead get ourselves tortured in a corporation? Would any first year student get an internship? Would any company offer him? If you are so excited, why wont you provide to some students here?

Yahoo recruiters said

You are not upto the mark!

How is you mark rated? Upside down? Worser the performance, higher you get up on their scale?

Microsoft recruiters said

You were giving too much smile and showing formality. This is not a professional approach.

Next time when I enter your chamber for an interview, will greet you as “Good Afternoon a**hole“

So guys, here is the news. Sorry for being late, I was having my day after getting into this company.

Rolling back to Thursday, the day on which Schneider came to our campus, lets start the story. I was too reluctant to sit in it at the beginning. Since I had my DWDM assignment from 10:30 to 11:30 I didnt feel like writing the test as I had not even attended the Pre-Placement talk.

The paper was really mind blowing, 70 questions total which consisted of 56 technical and 14 aptitude. The technical questions were really above the capability of normal computer science students, most of them unheard till date. A paper called Database was included and it looked that this company is in Database management. Only questions of OS and Algorithms such that we could think of giving a try. I didnt try aptitude much, now its a guess that I had just crossed the minimum cut-off.

The  first technical interview was as smooth as butter Being fully relaxed answers strike your mind at a better rate and that too perfectly. In some questions “Havn’t heard Mam!” , “Dont know” were my statement as nothing else could take its place. Second technical was something I never dreamt of! I couldn’t even understand half of the questions asked. :P  At that stage I was having a feeling of being kicked out.

The last round was HR ( I never expected to clear previous two), where I showed my real talent, don’t know how this talent came out all of the sudden since its my first HR interview. This maiden HR interview was better than all of the technical interviews I have given till date. I really think that the guy was impressed.

I got a job in Embedded Systems department of this Electric company. It has a two year bond which I have to sign during signing of the offer letter. This is completely a new branch for me and I hope to perform my best in the coming days.

Before starting I would like to state that its a flame post, read it only if you can digest properly.

All my fellow readers might be knowing about the much hyped Microsoft internship which was offered to me last semester.I screwed up my academics (to some extent) to get this prestigious opportunity. What was the final outcome of it? Read on…..

When I arrived at the office, I was nearly taken away by the impressive building, the superb lifts, cokes and coffee machines. We had night cab drop and food allowance. Everything looked so impressive! Slowly I came to know that this India Dev Center is just a place where M$ dumps all its useless and crappy work which they think “The Redmond guys” should not handle at all. Its nothing but cheap labour !! We are paid CTC of say 9 lakhs, but look back a little. We are being underpaid badly and that too without an overtime pay. Isnt this cheap labour? (I repeat again) What work is being handled here? Visual Studio Tools, SMS UI, Wordpad UI and product experience groups. This may be daring work to some extent, but not at all core job from any angle. The whole Visual Studio is being build somewhere else, Wordpad is built somewhere else, just the UI testing is over here. IE is built at Redmond, but testing work is sent here. WTF!

I always had thought that India was one of the top countries when it comes to IT sector. Is it really true? Narayanmurthy had clearly said that until we improve out hardware proficiency, we cant advance at all, and I firmly stand by his statement. NASSCOM and all these Indian organization rely too much on foreign companies rather than starting their own business without external help. They don’t dare make M$ angry and this was the reason why they backed OOXML for Indian stand at ISO.

Again once I wondered why all big MNC’s choose India as their destination? They cite “Good Brains, Nice Workforce, Good English Speaking Professionals”. I agree with first and third but not with second. It should be remodelled “Nice Cheap Workforce”. We have lax labour laws in our own country and people are made to work hours and hours after office timings for completing their work. Can this happen in the US and European countries? I can only say that whatever the big MNC’s say, India and developing countries are nothing but a place to cut costs, cheap abundant labour makes it simpler. They would never go out of their slavish mentality and keep all their core development in top-secret centers which cannot be a developing country at any cost!

My last line is “Work for an MNC if you want, you would be lucky if you had freedom and got a prestigous work in real sense (not in sense of salary)”

After a long wait, finally campus placements starts off with TCS first to enter this mighty campus.

Its a three day programme, one day written test, one and a half day interviews and then results. I never saw people preparing more seriously than this event, not even for the semester papers. Aptitude,English and Maths were the three sections for the written test and interview covered Technical, HR and MR rounds. Some people faced only the first two and managed to escape the third.

Short approximate statistics reveal the following (as published by placement dept). Total students eligible for the written test were 720 which included people like me who registered but didnt give the exam. Out of this 470 people got shortlisted, who faced interviews today. Just heard that some 60 HR people came from TCS to interview which included technical and non-technical members. Students of Computer Science and Electronics were the main target and they took rigorous rounds asking deep questions about DBMS, Web Technology and other unexpected stuff.

The HR round consisted of two common questions- “Tell me about yourself” and “Why you want to work for TCS?“. Guess these two questions are not so simple, even simple looking questions become tough sometimes. I just hope that they select some 300 students out of this huge number of 470.

P.S: Sorry for my bad english, am half asleep now

I had heard somewhere that when you are in misery and luck shines “It Rains, and you then desperately need a shelter”. This is what I feel now! In last five sems of my engineering, I did nothing except timepass, orkut, chatting and parties. It was sixth sem when I thought that something really needs to be done to make this degree a meaningful one.

I didnt have anything to write in my resume as any proficiency which I ought to right needs a certi to prove it (which I dont have). I havnt even done any networking course or anything of the sort which others have done. Then in the start of semester I came to know of a golden opportunity, applied for it and I achieved it. I am still short of words to explain the whole experiences.

Even after coming back from Bangalore, I didnt even get a single second to gasp! Assignments, Lab exams, projects etc etc have made my life a hell. I have manged to get outputs in last two lab exams ( ITT- Last Fri and CG-Today) and have to face Compiler lab exam tomorrow. Frankly speaking I dont know anything in viva as I skipped this paper to achieve the *achievement of the semester*.

TCS is coming this Friday,2nd of May. Interviews are scheduled for two days as far as my knowledge is concerned. Everything will be over by 4th May though we are still supposed to show our ITT lab mini project this Friday. Third sessionals are scheduled from 8th May and Semester exams from 16th (which is going to get preponed). I still have to start with S of SE (Software Engineering) and even in Compilers. Too bad situation over this side, never ever faced such in all six semesters of my engineering.

Next update is surely scheduled on Saturday, maybe one even before.

I just want to finish this up in as short as possible. Here is the list of possible companies that are expected to visit the campus for placements during year 2008-2009.

It includes the so called “Mass Recruiters” (MRC) and “Dream Companies”. Though MRC’s are clear to arrive after semester exams, the dream companies will come next semester till the end, We are expected to give names of two companies in which we intend to appear as our Dream Jobs Choosing these two are a great headache as we dont know which company will arrive when and which of them will become open? Lots of tension and confusion is prevailing all around. I am too in a deep fix what to do? Which company? EMC² or Cisco or Microsoft or Yahoo or Freescale or Deloitt? The list is too long and time is less. The worst part is that no one is cooperating. I understand that all of us want a job, but still there is something called humanity. Just imagine someone (not me) who is not able to figure out what to fill in and doest have any idea? What will he do?

Hope, I make up my mind before Monday which is the last date for submission. I have already submitted the academic biodata form yesterday.

And yeah, TCS is coming on 2nd May, not completely sure, but heard. Maybe its true!