Revival: First Day in ThoughtWorks

Now I've been in ThoughtWorks for the last 6 months and lovin' every moment of it. As I feared, I stopped making posts after joining TWs. It was very hectic with work and lot of other activities. The time just flew by.

Now this is my attempt at reviving my blogging. Started off by purchasing my own domain www.keshavnarla.com and redirected my blog to it. I plan to add more content into my website including a professional blog (whatever that means).

So lets start off with a post that has been lying around in my notepad for the last 6 months. I wrote that on my first day at TWs. It is incomplete, but I would rather see it here.

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July 4th, Wednesday, American Independence day

It's sort of an Independence day for me. Independence from boredom, office politics, from insecure people, rules, policies, restaurant lunches and more. This day I joined one of the most coolest companies in Bangalore, ThoughtWorks .

Two months of eager anticipation and expectations has come to this point. so there I was 9:30 am sharp at our Bangalore office all dressed up. Very soon someone helped me get inside and that marked the beginning. I'll skip the basics and get right to the excitement.

Great things on first day
1. Laptop & Mobile
2. Free Food
3. The Beach
4. Policies - Travel, new office keep it small, leaves
5. Environment - toys, guns, games, movies, bats, balls, junk etc
6. Trust - CEO's address, sick leaves
7. Gaming


Crap things
1. Lotus Notes.(I think i can change that...)
2. Lack of parking. (@#$%)
3. NO BEER

The first surprise was the DELL Lattitude laptop, I browsed online about TW giving Laptops (Notebook), but I was not sure if QAs were given and I was never given a laptop earlier. Now you may be wondering whats all this fuss about a stupid laptop, but the laptop is a symbol of good things among the 1/2 million IT work force in India. In most of the companies, it's the leads, managers, support folks who are issued a laptop. So a laptop hanging on the shoulder is message of importance for others, although this is fast changing. NOW having a blackberry is like instant stardom, only the Heads, VPs and other heads of state (company) were issued!

So the IS guy walked in and was talking about laptops, softwares etc and then he said the laptop here is yours. WOW! Now i get a laptop, amazing, wonderful, Heart race increasing and I couldn't wait to brag about it to my friends at the old company. All this time I had this expression of "I mean business" , i didn't want to look like the village idiot who's never touched a laptop.

Lunch Time
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This is the interesting part for most of the people. FREE FOOD. Lunch is provided free and also includes meat, and it tastes good too. Apart from this you have snacks, juices, bread, noodles, milk, cereals, honey etc at all times (I actually have a packet of orange juice right now). So whats missing? Beer!. All the other TW offices across the world have beer stocked, unfortunately Indian gov does not allow liquor in office premises. BUMMER!

So then I was sitting in the dining room and eating, there was this information board and one topic was "What we do well", and there were many cards about great environment, interviewing, policies, culture etc etc. I was wondering why there was


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The text stops there, I don't remember why it stops there. But thats all that is in my notepad.

Trying to continue where it ended...

I was wondering why there was no card mentioning Free Food, Laptop and Mobile. So up goes my card among the "Things we do well"