Sunday, January 20, 2008

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"

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

can you please tell me how will tw written test be.

Kamil Dworakowski said...

:o

varun said...

dude do we get to choose the laptop....they told me it is gonna be a mac pro , true???

Keshav Ram Narla said...

le roi,

Yes!!

Fahad Nari said...

Hi Keshav

I have got an offer to join TW as a BA for there new office in chennai. I would like to know if the learning for a BA is good in TW. Does a BA get to travel a lot in TW? I have also got an onsite assignment for 6 months at NJ from my current organisation. I would like to know if TW is worth joining and ignoring the onsite assignment.

Keshav Ram Narla said...

Hey Fahad,

Congratulations on getting an offer from TW. Joining TWs as a BA Vs US? Yes plz join TWs. But naturally i'm biased towards TWs.

I remember when my offer was ready. I had a H1B from my prev organization. There was no hesitation, I chose TWs. At that time, I didn't know why? But TWs just made sense.

It's now 1.5 yrs and I have not looked back. I had the best time in one year compared to the last couple of years.

But the question is "what do YOU want?
BAs are awesome at TWs, for a BA this would be one of the best places. Because our entire project dev system assumes that a BA will play a critical role

TWs is mostly about the people. You will be working with the smartest, most fun, diverse and Honest individuals.

Now you need to decide if you really want to be in US for 6 months or in TWI.

As for me, I chose TWI over a H1B Visa and there are no regrets.

If you want more info ping me at nkram@thoughtworks.com