Day four:
Another mail, but this time to the entire floor. Got a feeling Sandy was atleast partly involved for everyone getting today's mail as a general warning;) As the days go by, things are getting murkier and scarier. Another day to go for this eventful week to come to an end. Dont know what is in store for me :( I am just hoping the mail server crashes for a few days. Then atleast there'll be some peace of mind.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Out-look
The Best
Hi All,
Hi All,
Can we meet some time to discuss about upgrade deck / team?
Jay - I have selected Vinay, Sandeep and Wilson for BI 7.0 upgrade team and they will be working with Murali on Valeo Comp@ss upgrade project.
Ravi - FYI.
Thanks,
And the worst
Hello Sandeep
One of the traits that we would want all our consultants to develop is the ability to take up challenges and to take more ownership. Here was a wonderful opportunity you had to demonstrate these and also to learn and explore new areas. It is disappointing to see the below mail from you and we strongly suggest that you take each and every task that is assigned to you very seriously. The tasks assigned are part of a larger goal and not completing one task means not completing the project.
I would like you to take ownership of this activity and complete this by 9th July. There will no other postponement and so please ensure that the document is complete in all aspect.
Please reach out to the relevant consultants if you need any details
Still wondering how i managed to get both these mails on the same day :)
Significant improvements...
Day three:
The atmosphere has changed quite a lot. Lesser work today compared to last two days. Managed to submit few documents also. So the whole mindset was perfect after a bad start to the week.
Had started another initiative in my office recently. Something very different... something nobody else in our office had tried before. hehehe... don't worry, it is not some patent and all. Just like in school, we were asked to maintain a notice board for our floor:) With lots of articles and some fun stuff relating to SAP and our company etc. Six of us were part of it, with one of our manager's as the head. Started off with hardly anyone even glancing at it. Its very difficult to pull the crowd you see, that too without doing anything outta the box to promote it(our manager wanted us to take a laid back approach). Slowly its gaining momentum and all 6 of us got our first appreciation for this(or thats what i am believing). Got a mail today evening from the same manager asking for our updated resume. He knows most of us are anyways jobless, so if at all he takes any effort to improve our condition then it'll be nice. Anyways will know the facts only tomorrow and hopefully i'l have something happy to update here tomorrow rather than sit and crib again.
The atmosphere has changed quite a lot. Lesser work today compared to last two days. Managed to submit few documents also. So the whole mindset was perfect after a bad start to the week.
Had started another initiative in my office recently. Something very different... something nobody else in our office had tried before. hehehe... don't worry, it is not some patent and all. Just like in school, we were asked to maintain a notice board for our floor:) With lots of articles and some fun stuff relating to SAP and our company etc. Six of us were part of it, with one of our manager's as the head. Started off with hardly anyone even glancing at it. Its very difficult to pull the crowd you see, that too without doing anything outta the box to promote it(our manager wanted us to take a laid back approach). Slowly its gaining momentum and all 6 of us got our first appreciation for this(or thats what i am believing). Got a mail today evening from the same manager asking for our updated resume. He knows most of us are anyways jobless, so if at all he takes any effort to improve our condition then it'll be nice. Anyways will know the facts only tomorrow and hopefully i'l have something happy to update here tomorrow rather than sit and crib again.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Different people, Different perspectives...
Take 1: I am standing just outside my building talking on phone to some hdfc bank guy. One of the manager who's name was in the cc list in yesterday's mail and who had a talk with me about yesterdays issue just passed by. looks at me... a sheepish and irritating smile was there on his face. As though he achieved something great in life. Then he says, "good work yesterday... !0:30 in the nite and all, hmmmm". He just got onto my nerves that minute, but what to do. helplessly smiled back as though i was the big culprit in yesterdays crime and they won the war they had declared against me. I predicted this laugh from their side yesterday itself when i wrote, didnt i?? sometimes my assumptions do turn out right bob :)
Take 2: I am ripping on my bike. Its around 8 30 in the night and two of my colleagues are getting married tomorrow and we are really running late to attend their reception. Suddenly my phone rings and i pull out the phone and give it to amru who's sitting with me on my bike to check who it is. To my surprise, it was the same senior manager who had sent that mail to me. Stopped bike and picked up the call and he inquired about whether i was coming for the reception and when i would reach and stuff. Nothing much at all. But if you look into it deeply, there was no need for him to call me in the first place. I don't remember when was the last time he had called me on my cell. Somehow made me feel that somewhere deep inside he felt bad for what happened yesterday. Felt much better after that. We didn't speak a word about yesterday even after we reached there and were casually talking and having a bit of fun. Had the urge of wanting to go tell him the whole story from my perspective, but somehow could not muster the courage to do it today. Anyways happy my relation didn't screw up on a long term basis with him because of a silly incident. It might have been very difficult for me to face him in office from now on. But that one phone call changed it all. A phone call which otherwise would have been forgotten overnight, will be remembered for a while now:)
Take 2: I am ripping on my bike. Its around 8 30 in the night and two of my colleagues are getting married tomorrow and we are really running late to attend their reception. Suddenly my phone rings and i pull out the phone and give it to amru who's sitting with me on my bike to check who it is. To my surprise, it was the same senior manager who had sent that mail to me. Stopped bike and picked up the call and he inquired about whether i was coming for the reception and when i would reach and stuff. Nothing much at all. But if you look into it deeply, there was no need for him to call me in the first place. I don't remember when was the last time he had called me on my cell. Somehow made me feel that somewhere deep inside he felt bad for what happened yesterday. Felt much better after that. We didn't speak a word about yesterday even after we reached there and were casually talking and having a bit of fun. Had the urge of wanting to go tell him the whole story from my perspective, but somehow could not muster the courage to do it today. Anyways happy my relation didn't screw up on a long term basis with him because of a silly incident. It might have been very difficult for me to face him in office from now on. But that one phone call changed it all. A phone call which otherwise would have been forgotten overnight, will be remembered for a while now:)
Monday, July 7, 2008
The Best and the worst!!!
The day started off brilliantly when the first thing i saw when i switched on my comp was a mail from my Manager, which called for a meeting and surprisingly the meeting was to deploy all of us finally onto a BI project for which we have been waiting patiently for the last 12 months. But the joy of getting a project was short lived when there was another mail within 5 minutes which stated that the meeting is canceled for now and rescheduled for a later time. We were so close to getting that break which we've been waiting for a very long time and now its just a few more anxious days until the verdict finally comes out. we later got to know that the reason for the cancellation of the meeting was because of our new "pool structure" in our organization. Since all of us were part of the north american pool and since the project is based out of the french pool we supposedly cannot be involved in it unless our pools are changed. And changing pools is not that easy a job. So our first project has almost slipped out of our fingertips with us knowing very well what will happen to this project now and it is inevitable. Now i feel it would have been good to get noticed really early in your company for your technical qualities rather than for your sporting qualities.
The second part of the day went on pretty well. Had a small meeting with our "would have been project head" and he really sort of impressed all of us with the way he carried himself(finding a smart knowledgeable senior guy in BI had off late become a really tedious task). He gave us some work to do and we were working on it on a very tight deadline. so devoted most of my time in that. Also moved around with a lot of caution today after we got news that we were getting very bad reviews from our managers(never in my wildest dreams thought i could have been one of the reasons).
But the last third of the day literally killed me off. Got a mail from one of my senior managers asking me to take up work given to me more seriously and finish it on time, and that such behavior is not accepted from any consultant of the company. It also had few of my previous mails attached which was part of my conversation with a senior consultant i was working with. To cap it all it had some of the top managers in SAP on the cc list. So what actually did i do to attain such wrath. Its a long story.
Let me go back in time. It was around ten days back that all of us were sitting around our cubicles and just having some casual talk. Suddenly this colleague of mine, Miss P comes to me with a senior looking guy. She introduces me to him and there started my bad time. Miss P very cleverly made it look to me as though a senior manager(whom i respect a lot till date) has assigned me some work under this senior consultant guy. Even though i was not one bit familiar about the nature of the work, i nevertheless accepted it cos in our present state any work that way coming our way was to be treated like gold. A few days and a few discussions later with this SC(senior consultant) i sort of understood what i am being asked to do. It looked very simple when he put it to me, and even i acknowledged that in the beginning. But i know for the fact that having never worked on Abap in the past one year and my Abap knowledge being almost nonexistent, i knew i had a mountain to climb even though all i had to do was documentation work. But this documentation work required quite a bit of in depth Abap knowledge. Initially i took it up with lot of interest but soon realized that without knowing the concepts behind all that i am doing i am never going to be able to make a perfect document. So after completing four out of the six documents, i shot a mail to the SC stating that this is all i could do and please make someone else do the rest. someone who is well verse with all this. But he reverted asking me to just complete the whole thing since i have already completed most of it and to take Miss P's help if necessary. Miss P, trust me knows nothing. But she pretends as though she heads half the projects on my floor. quite an achievement for someone from my batch. So everytime i ask Miss P any doubt there is only a "this is very easy kano" or a "i've not worked on this man, don ask me" as reply. All that she's tried explaining to me is nonsense and i still don know if she really knows what exactly the requirement is. Over the next two days i tried various means to finish it, even by talking a guy who's well verse with Abap and making my team leaders explain what exactly they want but to no avail. But the final nail was smashed when i somehow managed to complete the whole document and send it to the SC. But after a day Review of that document comes, but from an unlikely source. From Miss P. i was shocked when i opened the document. There were the silliest of possible mistakes which makes no difference to the document highlighted in blue. Do this, do that, this is not there, that is missing and a lot of such nonsense. That really pissed me off. i really wanted to know how qualified she was to review a document which i sent which really needed an experts opinion. i knew my doc will contain mistakes, but the ones she pointed to were mind blowing. So decided not to reply to that mail and told her personally that i don think i am qualified enough to make further changes. in the mean time i finally got some official work assigned to me from the BI side and was very happy to do something on that front. The next day i get a mail from the SC stating that this is not how we wanted the document and you can ask us to take you out of this assignment if you further cant assist us. and replying to that mail in the affirmative was the biggest mistake of my life. never knew that in corporate terms "tell me if u want to leave" means " if you leave u'll have to face the consequences". so this is what led to me getting that mail today. and there were also further activity and discussions among the managers due no my blunder which almost buried me alive on friday evening when i got a call from one of these managers almost threatening me indirectly.
Finally went and spoke to the senior manager in the night after Mr SC and Miss P had left. Appologised to him and asked him what i was supposed to do. he tried explaining to me, but by now i was almost overcome by emotions. just could not believe that the same manager whom i worked with day in day out for almost two months and whom i thought understood me well took this decision to mail without even speaking a word personally to me. I know i am not that good technically, but i never thought after the time we spent in Tech-ed he could ever question my integrity. but he did. dont know if he did it to threaten me or dont know if he did it to teach me a corporate lesson. it did hit pretty hard, and it did hit where it hurts.
Sat back till 11 in the night and almost completed it the fresh document. actually it was almost the same document but just modified and i am pretty sure if the right people check it this wont be rejected. The people involved might laugh thinking how they got this still-fresher to do the work by just threatening him. But thats not the case. I firmly believe that if you are working under the right ppl you will definitely deliver the goods, and any time i work for this particular manager i automatically tend to give more than a 100 percent come what may. But when ppl fail to understand that. it hurts.
The major problem is that we are still not given any official work and many like Miss P know this fact. so we become easy prey to such cheap tricks when they want to outsource any of their dirty work to us. and we being helpless due to lack of work cant show ppl like her the finger. Isnt all this what we call exploitation??? wonder which court i have to go to find justice!!!
The second part of the day went on pretty well. Had a small meeting with our "would have been project head" and he really sort of impressed all of us with the way he carried himself(finding a smart knowledgeable senior guy in BI had off late become a really tedious task). He gave us some work to do and we were working on it on a very tight deadline. so devoted most of my time in that. Also moved around with a lot of caution today after we got news that we were getting very bad reviews from our managers(never in my wildest dreams thought i could have been one of the reasons).
But the last third of the day literally killed me off. Got a mail from one of my senior managers asking me to take up work given to me more seriously and finish it on time, and that such behavior is not accepted from any consultant of the company. It also had few of my previous mails attached which was part of my conversation with a senior consultant i was working with. To cap it all it had some of the top managers in SAP on the cc list. So what actually did i do to attain such wrath. Its a long story.
Let me go back in time. It was around ten days back that all of us were sitting around our cubicles and just having some casual talk. Suddenly this colleague of mine, Miss P comes to me with a senior looking guy. She introduces me to him and there started my bad time. Miss P very cleverly made it look to me as though a senior manager(whom i respect a lot till date) has assigned me some work under this senior consultant guy. Even though i was not one bit familiar about the nature of the work, i nevertheless accepted it cos in our present state any work that way coming our way was to be treated like gold. A few days and a few discussions later with this SC(senior consultant) i sort of understood what i am being asked to do. It looked very simple when he put it to me, and even i acknowledged that in the beginning. But i know for the fact that having never worked on Abap in the past one year and my Abap knowledge being almost nonexistent, i knew i had a mountain to climb even though all i had to do was documentation work. But this documentation work required quite a bit of in depth Abap knowledge. Initially i took it up with lot of interest but soon realized that without knowing the concepts behind all that i am doing i am never going to be able to make a perfect document. So after completing four out of the six documents, i shot a mail to the SC stating that this is all i could do and please make someone else do the rest. someone who is well verse with all this. But he reverted asking me to just complete the whole thing since i have already completed most of it and to take Miss P's help if necessary. Miss P, trust me knows nothing. But she pretends as though she heads half the projects on my floor. quite an achievement for someone from my batch. So everytime i ask Miss P any doubt there is only a "this is very easy kano" or a "i've not worked on this man, don ask me" as reply. All that she's tried explaining to me is nonsense and i still don know if she really knows what exactly the requirement is. Over the next two days i tried various means to finish it, even by talking a guy who's well verse with Abap and making my team leaders explain what exactly they want but to no avail. But the final nail was smashed when i somehow managed to complete the whole document and send it to the SC. But after a day Review of that document comes, but from an unlikely source. From Miss P. i was shocked when i opened the document. There were the silliest of possible mistakes which makes no difference to the document highlighted in blue. Do this, do that, this is not there, that is missing and a lot of such nonsense. That really pissed me off. i really wanted to know how qualified she was to review a document which i sent which really needed an experts opinion. i knew my doc will contain mistakes, but the ones she pointed to were mind blowing. So decided not to reply to that mail and told her personally that i don think i am qualified enough to make further changes. in the mean time i finally got some official work assigned to me from the BI side and was very happy to do something on that front. The next day i get a mail from the SC stating that this is not how we wanted the document and you can ask us to take you out of this assignment if you further cant assist us. and replying to that mail in the affirmative was the biggest mistake of my life. never knew that in corporate terms "tell me if u want to leave" means " if you leave u'll have to face the consequences". so this is what led to me getting that mail today. and there were also further activity and discussions among the managers due no my blunder which almost buried me alive on friday evening when i got a call from one of these managers almost threatening me indirectly.
Finally went and spoke to the senior manager in the night after Mr SC and Miss P had left. Appologised to him and asked him what i was supposed to do. he tried explaining to me, but by now i was almost overcome by emotions. just could not believe that the same manager whom i worked with day in day out for almost two months and whom i thought understood me well took this decision to mail without even speaking a word personally to me. I know i am not that good technically, but i never thought after the time we spent in Tech-ed he could ever question my integrity. but he did. dont know if he did it to threaten me or dont know if he did it to teach me a corporate lesson. it did hit pretty hard, and it did hit where it hurts.
Sat back till 11 in the night and almost completed it the fresh document. actually it was almost the same document but just modified and i am pretty sure if the right people check it this wont be rejected. The people involved might laugh thinking how they got this still-fresher to do the work by just threatening him. But thats not the case. I firmly believe that if you are working under the right ppl you will definitely deliver the goods, and any time i work for this particular manager i automatically tend to give more than a 100 percent come what may. But when ppl fail to understand that. it hurts.
The major problem is that we are still not given any official work and many like Miss P know this fact. so we become easy prey to such cheap tricks when they want to outsource any of their dirty work to us. and we being helpless due to lack of work cant show ppl like her the finger. Isnt all this what we call exploitation??? wonder which court i have to go to find justice!!!
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