A wonderful day on first job

I believe the first day at work is one of the most memorable days in one's life. Yesterday one of my Brother's very close friends Siddarth has started his career as Software Trainee. Somehow I started recollecting memories of my first day at work, Infosys Technologies Limited at Mysore.

Before I start, let me share my experience till the main door of the company. I am a mechanical engineer by education. IT has been really good in at least one perspective that it gives opportunity to Non-IT background graduates/post-graduates as well to be a software engineer. I am one of those. Infosys gave me a chance to be a software engineer through Off-Campus selection process. I definitely owe a lot of respect to the company for this.

I received the joining letter from the company within few days. And I reckon it was 21st of Nov 2005 when I was asked to join which allowed me to have few days to enjoy with Family before I become a different man. Before I could realise, it was already 19th of November.

I left from my home at Kannauj on 19th. I had asked one of my classmates, Sushil Kumar, to make reservation for me from Delhi to Yashwantpur (a station in Bengaluru). The train Sampark Kranti is one of the fastest in the business but still the journey took almost 40hrs. It appeared like I had been travelling for ages. I took a bus from Bengaluru(formerly known as Banglore) to Mysore and then an auto rickshaw to reach Infosys Mysore. It was the evening of 20th Nov.

As soon as I got out of the auto rickshaw, the first word that came to my mind looking at the campus was "wow". Till that day in my life I had never thought that I will get to work for a company with such a marvellous campus. I wasted no time in considering myself a genius for getting an opportunity to work for Infy (P.S. Infy and Infoscion are the synonym for the company and her employees).




Infy provides golf carts to commute the trainees from the main reception to the residence of their trainees. It was again a very good experience. In fact for the first time in my life I rode a Golf Cart. I reached my room and again I was not disappointed looking at the room. It was best in class to say the least. I had to share the room with Akash, who still is one of my best friends. We, all the trainees, had a session to attend on the same night before we start on the very next day. We were all told about trainings etc. etc.

I woke up early on the first day because of all the excitement. I got ready within some time.  I reckon wearing a black pant and white shirt with a nice looking tie, can't recollect which tie it was. I left for the breakfast. Even Mysore in southern India but there was north Indian breakfast available in all the food courts (synonym for canteen in Infy). I had Aloo Paratha with yoghurt (curd) and pickle.

As it was quite a big campus I had to take one bicycle from food court to the office. It took as much as 10 minutes to reach there. I parked the bicycle and was heading towards the meeting room where all of the new joiners were asked to reach at sharp 9:00am. Now I was all set to face the "First Day" in IT career.

The meeting room was a big one with a capacity to seat 400 people at one time. There were desktops in front of each seat. There were induction documents, one notepad and a set of black/white pens. We were told it will be more or less an induction session only for the day and training classes will start from next day onwards for almost 4 months.

There was a video song played on a big screen titled "This is my Infy". It was such a good feeling to hear that song on the first day. I think it's a good idea to have such thing for new joiners for any company. This makes to feel a sense of pride to work for the company. In the lunch time there was a session for opening of bank accounts with various banks like ICICI, HSBC etc. The induction session continued for the day long. It was equally interesting throughout the day.

The day ended with converting a few colleagues into friends with whom I am still in touch with. I remember to have a good sleep on that night after so many sleepless nights. That was definitely one of the most significant days of my life. Through this blog I really want to thank all those people making that day so important.

P.S. It has never been my intension to hurt any person or institution through my blogs.