First Anniversary, at First Job!

“A true balance between work and life comes with knowing that your life and activities are integrated, not separated.”
- Michael Sunnarborg

July the 23^rd, 2013 - exactly a year since I’ve started at the first real grown-up job of my life.

And as stereotyped as it seems to be when it comes to Indians, I actually do work in IT. Still it hasn’t really turned out to be as torturous as they make it out to be.

Maybe that comes later. I don’t know ignorance is bliss, I suppose.

Anyway. This past one year has been a helluva roller coaster ride; loads of twist and turns, sudden ups and drastic downs. But nonetheless a very exciting time indeed.

Met a lot of wonderful people (AG, KR, PV, RG, TS etc.)

Learnt a lot about the Lone Wolf guidelines (the importance of having a healthy supply of paper soap with you at all times, how to go from full-wallet-rich-as-shit to puny-arse-broke-as-hell in less than a week!)

Had some really great experiences (nomadic solo trips all around the city, rediscovering friendships, and shedding off a few way-past-expiry-date ones...)

As for the things that go on within the office walls. Man, each day is a revelation!

Things seem so different this side of college.

My workplace is in the IT compound of a Special Economic Zone. The best thing about working in SEZs and Tech Parks, where almost always half a dozen big companies set up shop in the same neighborhood, is that you get to meet people from many other IT companies and interact with them. So I kind of have observed some peculiarities and similarities in almost every big MNC I have come across. We are not all that different, you and I. Everybody is just as stuck/fortunate as everybody else.

Yes, I agree I have been away from home since college. So you could say I already know the basics of shacking it out on your own. But college was different. In school you know you are going to have to spend the rest of your time there with the people around you. So you find the most compatible ones and choose to have them around you at all times.

In a corporate, you don’t have that option. You don’t get to choose. You have to make do with what you get because you will have at some point or the other get something done by or for them. Most people won't be so hard to handle or like. As always it depends on your luck, and how much they know the good parts of you (if at all there exists one) and how much you get to know them.

I’ve seen the sense of putting in an effort or time to actually get to know someone is absent here, may be that used to be there a couple of decades earlier in our father/grandfather’s offices; when people that you work with, somehow ended up becoming your best of mates and your child’s god parents. It sure isn’t happening these days!