From frying pan to fire...Part 2

Foreplay:

Now that we got placed, the next step for companies is to train us, to make us competent enough to handles their complicated projects, to make us well behaved with their clients..Etc, etc. My big company counterparts started their first day at work with a huge gathering addressed by their CEO or founder or one of the big shots with all those motivational speeches where as I was greeted by our sysadmin on the steps and he showed me my work area. You know what the best part, he recognized me just by looking at me that I am the new guy and he already knew my name. I was well surprised. I made myself comfortable at my desk and there were 4 workstations in that cubicle. Rest of the people in my cubicle came little late and greeted me and asked few details and engrossed in their work. Later i asked one of my colleagues if I can install Yahoo messenger and they said there are no such restrictions. I was totally impressed and installed whichever I needed to entertain myself at my work. I remember that first mail I sent was to my sysadmin asking for headphonesJ. Later in the evening there was a small intro session organised in our office penthouse where there were 40 people gathered and started small ragging session. I was asked to sing a song, tell my hobbies etc etc.. It was fun. The day was over and I was yet to know what I was supposed to do and who my boss was, who was our CEO.

My training started the next day. It was an 11day java crash course training with one mentor assigned to me. His job was to take a class room session for one hour daily and then in 11 days I supposed to master java and start working on our product. Simple and clear, though the target is tough at least the objective was clear. My counterparts in large companies stared their trainings with communication skills both written and vocal. I was thinking they are good at communication skills and that’s why they cracked those GDs and interviews. I never knew that was not sufficient for these big companies. Then they had business etiquette sessions, leadership sessions, personality development etc etc. Then coming to technical, one of the batches had, C, C++, RDBMS, OS, UML so on. They train you in all these things because you never know on which project you are going to work on until you are actually assigned on a project (yeah of course you will get another training for the project related technologies and stuff later). This is all one and half month course before they actually put them in pool (in other terms bench!). Bench period can be compared to honeymoon. This is the period just after you join the company and finished training (the marriage) and before you actually work for the company (spending life with your partner). In this period, people had sent me lot of forward mails. The same mail forwarded by most of my friends. I call them the Bench mail stock. Even after 3 years I am still getting the same old stock from fresh joiners. We should not blame them either, it’s their first job and they are much excited to share their ......@someBigCompany.com mail id with the world :)