Roll the drums.....
Blow the trumpets ....
Clap your hands ....
I have finally left Ajeeb-O-Gareeb!! I cannot even begin to express my feelings. Unlike NIIT I will never be a junkie for A. Towards the end, that place sadly left me with the Stockholm complex. I hated the place, the toxicity, the useless tensions and stress that was all made by stupid, incompetent, egoistic people!
Have you ever joined a place and then the place morphs into something totally different? Then the reason why you stay on is just inertia ...You fool yourself into believing that things will get better, all other places are the same, it's all in your head, you are in control of things, you are just being restless.... well I did all that and more.
The first sign that you've outgrown a place is when you don't wanna go to office any more and start looking and finding excuses for not turning up at work.
In my case that happened a while back and then I forced myself to focus on only the positives. Then things changed and I would have stayed on in A only if I was forced to undergo a lobotomy or maybe even then I would have moved on.
All that constant restructuring, people who couldn't be bothered about anything except themselves, layoffs of the people who worked, promotions of people who were hiring disasters!
Imagine living with local management people who get off on playing mind-games, have HUGE egos, who are delusional enough to believe that they are beyond reproach, can't take feedback or criticism from anyone... the classic "my way or the highway" sorts... the entire team had changed many times over in the ~4 years I was there but I guess I was naive enough to think that I could change or accept and continue to live with things the way they were.
One side of reporting was perfect and then the fact that you get along with the US people more than the local powers, gets you in bad bad bad books. Imagine managers focusing on people they dislike rather than focusing on projects doomed for disaster! It's because of this disconnect between the US way of managing (supporting/nurturing) and the local way of managing (controlling/smug) that I was stifled. I joined when A had some great managers, the best actually. Indians who had spent YEARS in the US and were fighting a lot of battles to get work to the Indian companies.
But nah! the change from the blunt-jovial-devil-may-care person to the politically-correct-self-sacrificing-parvati wasn't happening and in any case the disenchantment had gotten far deeper than the surface.
So when I finally reached my threshold of not being able to put up with things anymore, I started looking. And finally reached a place where I could have been 4 years ago!! But I guess que sera sera.
The last few days of the decision were tough but I am so glad and relieved that they are behind me. I have some people to thank for that - how do you say thanks to people who have had faith in you when you seem to have completely lost it?!
To make life worse, when I served my notice, reporting changed and we were all reporting the bestest pubs manager I ever met. The same person who was about to get laid off 2 weeks back!!! So no layoffs - complete restructure ... but it was too little too late for me.
Things had been done for which there was no undo and life needs to move on ....
So the bullet in my resume describing my current employer, got an end date.
For the first time, I looked for a job aggresively - interviews galore - then got a job thru an ole pal, who I bug like questions.exe! I pinged NIIT and they were more than happy to welcome me back but sadly, it wasn't about to happen. There was no going back ... maybe some other time. Maybe never ... Maybe I was meant to join this place, this is probably as good as it gets. I found the old NIIT culture here. Maybe because barring 1-2 persons, the entire team is exNIIT!
This one has been a sadish one I know ... but then change is never comfortable. I was sad to leave my friends and that way of life. I will be back to my normal mode soon .....promise :-)
~R
(I started this post on 23 Dec and am published it on 13 Jan. A lot has changed since then.)
