Welcoming Challenges with Hopes - Experience of a fresher into an I.T company and lessons learnt.

There is a famous quote in English... “Water Water Water everywhere!! Not a drop to drink!” in The Rhyme of the Ancient mariner.  Least I imagined in my tenth class when I came across this quote for the first time that I would have the same scenario in my life later. Here I am, to share with, my sufferings, experiences and even Lessons which would be a heads up for the rare and worst cases in the industry for the fresh faces stepping into I.T. industry. With so many campus recruitment offers for the I.T Majors, I thought I should share my experiences as Lessons for my fellow mates in the industry. 

I am a fresher with just 11 months experience into one of the biggest I.T companies in India. Lucky, I felt initially to be a part of training period with an awesome start given to my career and I felt even more luckier and privileged when I entered into a Project on the very first day I came out of training. Initial days of my project were very good with a splendid, motivating and mentoring Project Manager who took special care on grooming fresh minds into his project. It was a mammoth and big enhancement project which was given to the 10 new trainees. With such a project manager mentoring with his fullest enthusiasm and charm, it made me even more active to take up many initiatives apart from the actual  Project work.

My Team lead for this project, who is a star performer and a person with such a passion for the Coding, technology and Business, wanted the project to be completed with high standards. Known for his perfection and ambition to be the best always, he is such a great hard worker who has spent several nights and days continuously in office. There was ample time in the start wherein the policy makers of the project thought spending much time in training the fresher group was a useful investment. No doubt it was, but only a few got highly benefited.

There came a Quality Assurance(QA) lead who got promoted as a testing (QA) lead which she rightfully deserved for her experience and patience. But then, too much of involvement into her volumes of work, she had little time to spend on People Management. She was delegating works and handling pressures since she had to answer on-site calls and stuff. But then, the improper planning and her way of handling things made the Team members forget all her positive aspects.

I felt the team had the motivating think tank in the form of my Program Manager, who was later made to work at the client location. Now, there started the issue. There was no motivation, not even a light moment for everyone to share, nothing recreating and even a smile on the start of the day was misinterpreted. All that was there were a new offshore project manager and QA manager, loads and loads of works. Weekly status meeting turned out to be an inquiry session wherein the TL and Managers turned out to be the Ring Masters. 

Adding insult to injury was the problems I encountered in my personal life as well during these times with health issues & career cross-roads. Those times, I thought to myself about the above-said quote. I had everything around me. A Program manager, who can counsel everyone over phone to keep the spirits up and a TL who is a tech savvy guy and a team that toils day and night. But still, results’ producing was not up to the mark. What really lacked was found out when I observed my neighboring team. A rapport and ease of working was present uniformly with All Team members!! I compared my team and laughed to myself. A simple example goes like this. A defect raised by the QA team over my fellow friend who is a developer was blown up big and was closed “strictly as per the process” and when I pointed the defects over one of the fortunate guys in the favoritism band, the defect was valid and it was handled informally.

When I pointed out to my team lead that working for prolonged time curtails one’s productivity, he argued with me that only performance should be the Aim without understanding that one cannot deliver 100% always and in all times. I was even accused of “playing politics” within the team once for an open communication.

Many examples and illustrations popped, on what were stopping people mentally. A fresher, given a complex application to perform Quality Assurance testing and another fresher with a straight forward application were rated equally for performance and obvious things happened in the final appraisal. Then, I decided that If can’t change things presently which I observe, I need to play smart and put in my skills where that would be of some reach.

I am not that great a tech minded guy and nor a sheer hard worker on par with my Team leads who spend weekends in office and casually working for 14 hrs a day.  I feel that I would perform well in talking with people, business analysis things. Hence, I decided not to take things beyond the threshold and I started doing things that I liked much, which I had paused for few months in between as my mind was preoccupied with this project.

Now that I have faced a real time example, I wanted to incorporate the following things when I lead a team tomorrow. I wish to set up a team with the following aspects.

• An open place and platform for exchange of ideas and discussion of issues with a motive to arrive at the solution than to pin point others for a blame game
• A big project with expected rush at its end and the significance, if communicated as it is to the entire crew well in advance, the entire team would be entirely prepared to handle all unexpected things mentally as well as in work. Bottom-line: Planning and communicating the need of Toil well in advance and a small assurance that the toil would be of some recognition later
• A healthy competitive spirit between the members aiming at symbiotic growth and also for the wellness of the Team
• Better degree of mental ease wherein everyone is made comfortable to work with and coordinate with each other for the real learning and sharing
• Mainly, the phenomena of prejudice due to some unacceptable reasons would be avoided. Though it is too impractical in a workplace to be done, it would be a dream come true motivating factor when everyone is given the same race to run
•   Encouragement to enhance individual’s skills, irrespective of its use to the present project. This will make that individual feel motivated and it will again reflect in performance, indirectly. A small appreciation brings in tonnes of positive spirit
• I would make use of what someone is good at and explore the possibility of using that for the Project instead of loading them with works which they don’t like doing 

Truly, experience matters and this one year of significant learning, for which I am really grateful for. This article is not aimed at showing the dark sides for fresh minds.  There are much more things to see, and the hopes of seeing better things drive me. Me, the fellow fresher just wanted to make the new joiners anticipative and aware of the all the sides. No doubt it’s a race for every individual. But then, I wanted to make that a Team one so that even the losers are taken care of by the winners.