Manish’s Scribble Board

Tech Tatva ‘08 is back with a bang, the most awaited event of the year. Whether it be people who want to show off their skills in technical field or be people who want to enjoy half days, Tech Tatva caters the need for all.

As usual there are many categories in which events are being organized. One of them PARAM which contains events in Computer Category is being organized by Shubhendra. It contains 4 events most of them new or redefined to meet the needs of changing time. Here are some of the snapshots of the posters prepared for the event. Credits goes to Abhinit and Aavik.

I have been given the responsibility of organizing CodeBytes which is a classical coding championship. It will contain one screening and a Lab Coding round. Screening round will contain debugging questions in objective and subjective format. The Lab round will be more of code efficiency oriented with more stress on code efficiency and optimality rather than just solving the problems by hook or crook.

The NiteOut event has been replaced by Jour which means Day in French. In this event people will be asked to prepare a fully fledged application for realtime practical use rather than just solving puzzles. The 6 hour restriction has been relaxed to 18-20 hours. Take your time and give us something productive!

The last but most important event is MobiVision is a unique event in itself in the whole country. People are asked to present ideas to make our mobile more intelligent, useful and productive. We are even organizing a Pre-TechTatva workshop for teaching the participants about Mobile Programming. Two platforms are being picked up right now - PyS60 and Android.

So guys, here is the news. Sorry for being late, I was having my day after getting into this company.

Rolling back to Thursday, the day on which Schneider came to our campus, lets start the story. I was too reluctant to sit in it at the beginning. Since I had my DWDM assignment from 10:30 to 11:30 I didnt feel like writing the test as I had not even attended the Pre-Placement talk.

The paper was really mind blowing, 70 questions total which consisted of 56 technical and 14 aptitude. The technical questions were really above the capability of normal computer science students, most of them unheard till date. A paper called Database was included and it looked that this company is in Database management. Only questions of OS and Algorithms such that we could think of giving a try. I didnt try aptitude much, now its a guess that I had just crossed the minimum cut-off.

The  first technical interview was as smooth as butter Being fully relaxed answers strike your mind at a better rate and that too perfectly. In some questions “Havn’t heard Mam!” , “Dont know” were my statement as nothing else could take its place. Second technical was something I never dreamt of! I couldn’t even understand half of the questions asked. :P  At that stage I was having a feeling of being kicked out.

The last round was HR ( I never expected to clear previous two), where I showed my real talent, don’t know how this talent came out all of the sudden since its my first HR interview. This maiden HR interview was better than all of the technical interviews I have given till date. I really think that the guy was impressed.

I got a job in Embedded Systems department of this Electric company. It has a two year bond which I have to sign during signing of the offer letter. This is completely a new branch for me and I hope to perform my best in the coming days.

This time it’s chance of Jharkhand to enjoy the taste of political instability. Multi party system was introduced in India to give the representation of the whole country, since national parties were felt to be inadequate. This could have been a good theme at the time of Independence but not at this time. We have seen so much of unrest in last few years such that it makes me think twice.

Most of the political instability is faced in states which are small in size of have very small seats in Assembly. Since these states have limited Assembly strength, according to an act passed some years ago, these states should not have more than 14 ministers. This is the main cause of unrest in most states though I strongly support that act.

Jharkhand is a state which has made news to some very unexpected developments. Once the Governer called up Shibu Soren to form the government even though it was clear that he didn’t have to majority. Sometime an independent becomes the CM of state. This was the first time in history of India. Shibu Soren has asked Madhu Koda to resign to make way for him. Shibu Soren is facing punishment for massacres, still he wants to become the CM. I can only say WTF!

Years passing and watching all these political drama, I have become more staunch supporter of two-party system. It can stop bribes, cash-for-votes like scams and many more dirt privailing in our current politics. Buying an MLA/MP for cash has become a common news even though anti-defection rules are in place.

I dont have much to say, this post was just to bring my heart out on the feeling which I cant express. Having lived in Jharkhand for so many years, only god can save it one day.

Before starting I would like to state that its a flame post, read it only if you can digest properly.

All my fellow readers might be knowing about the much hyped Microsoft internship which was offered to me last semester.I screwed up my academics (to some extent) to get this prestigious opportunity. What was the final outcome of it? Read on…..

When I arrived at the office, I was nearly taken away by the impressive building, the superb lifts, cokes and coffee machines. We had night cab drop and food allowance. Everything looked so impressive! Slowly I came to know that this India Dev Center is just a place where M$ dumps all its useless and crappy work which they think “The Redmond guys” should not handle at all. Its nothing but cheap labour !! We are paid CTC of say 9 lakhs, but look back a little. We are being underpaid badly and that too without an overtime pay. Isnt this cheap labour? (I repeat again) What work is being handled here? Visual Studio Tools, SMS UI, Wordpad UI and product experience groups. This may be daring work to some extent, but not at all core job from any angle. The whole Visual Studio is being build somewhere else, Wordpad is built somewhere else, just the UI testing is over here. IE is built at Redmond, but testing work is sent here. WTF!

I always had thought that India was one of the top countries when it comes to IT sector. Is it really true? Narayanmurthy had clearly said that until we improve out hardware proficiency, we cant advance at all, and I firmly stand by his statement. NASSCOM and all these Indian organization rely too much on foreign companies rather than starting their own business without external help. They don’t dare make M$ angry and this was the reason why they backed OOXML for Indian stand at ISO.

Again once I wondered why all big MNC’s choose India as their destination? They cite “Good Brains, Nice Workforce, Good English Speaking Professionals”. I agree with first and third but not with second. It should be remodelled “Nice Cheap Workforce”. We have lax labour laws in our own country and people are made to work hours and hours after office timings for completing their work. Can this happen in the US and European countries? I can only say that whatever the big MNC’s say, India and developing countries are nothing but a place to cut costs, cheap abundant labour makes it simpler. They would never go out of their slavish mentality and keep all their core development in top-secret centers which cannot be a developing country at any cost!

My last line is “Work for an MNC if you want, you would be lucky if you had freedom and got a prestigous work in real sense (not in sense of salary)”

I landed on Manipal on 28th last month and since then just running pillar to pillar. In these last two weeks I didnt leave a single stone unturned to get a job but alas!

As I reached Manipal on 28th morning around 11:30, had a bath and rushed for Sungard exam, but didnt expect much in such a hassle. As usual rejected. Next aim was Cisco which was on 30th. It was very much shocking to see how people madly sat for this company and only 27 got shorlisted for interviews including me. The interviews were worst and all kinds of hardware and weird questions were asked (maybe to reject me). When result were announced I was sure not to be in the list.

Next was Juniper on 1st last week. The written paper went quite well except that I didnt get much time for apti section where I didnt attempt more than 4-5 questions correctly, rest all were guesses. This was one of the exams where I expected much and papers went perfect, still not chance of hope.

The biggest one of all - Yahoo came on 4th of this week. I cleared the written round which contained 20 questions plus one subjective question. Next milestone was a coding round in lab. This was the place where I performed the worst when it comes to output but best when it came to algoritm used. This round cleared and we were advanced to 1st technical interview on the same night. When my chance came, the interview lasted some 40 minutes where I was drilled on UNIX for some 25-30 minutes. Now we 6 people advanced to final round next day. The 2nd technical interview was more than an hour in span where the guy asked me lots of questions but less of PHP,MySQL,UNIX and those stuffs. He liked puzzles, book questions and theory. I tried my best to cope up with such bookish knowledge and succeeded to some extent. At that time my expectations were quite high. Result were declared after an hour and the only word which came to my mind was “Which is the next company”. I have faced 5 rejections in 10 days, its a record in itself

So Folks! Interview results are out! Kicked out in the first round itself, though am not surprised ( had performed badly). Well leave it, no point discussing the same thing. I was told that am “Not Upto the Mark” as per Microsoft standards.

I was supposed to give a demo at 2PM today in Conference Room about my work which I did for the last two months. The presentation was for around forty minutes out of which I presented for around half an hour and last ten minutes were left discussing about the various design issues. I had made a small power point presentation to make the show a bit lively hoping that it can add interest. I had thought of many things which I would be telling only to find my mentor picking up the questions and answering them.

When I came back to my machine, I tried writing a funky but proper “Last Day at Work” mail. This is what I had written.

Hi everybody,

I would like to inform all that today is my last day of work at MSIDC. I was working as an intern in this group.

I would like to thank each and every person for the love and affection which they have shown during all the eight weeks which made my stay a really memorable one. I am very excited to return back to college with a tag of being a MS Intern. This really counts.

I would like to wish all of you best of luck for your future and would surely love to be in contact even after this internship.

Briefly describing myself: Am a student at Manipal Institute of Technology, Manipal , Karanataka. Well what more to say of academics? I have decent grades and good reputation, but what I felt was that grades don’t matter in life (personal experiences).

My personal e-mail ID is manishsinha27 {at} gmail  {dot} com .

Regards,

Manish Sinha

My mentor called me up in his chamber to brief about the review and say some parting words As he thinks my strength is that am Committed and Hard Working. These two words gave me a great shock! I never came to office before 12:30-1:00 in the afternoon and never reported him on time after completion of work. Another strength was that I “never crashed in the work which has been assigned and somehow finished it howsoever unusual it ought to be”. This I can agree to some extent, though its the thing which made me work patiently for last two months.

Now coming to weakness… “I don’t have communication skills!”. Okay! “I don’t test my code for all test cases and half of the time its not running even though the algorithm is quite good”.

I would be leaving for college tomorrow night. Its actualy a break journey from Hyderabad to Banaglore and from there to Mangalore. There is also a 10 hrs gap between both the trains, which time is quite difficult to pass. Going back to college, I would be sitting for most of the companies including Sungard which is coming on 28th-Monday, Cisco on 30th-Wednesday, Yahoo on 4th-Monday, Toshiba on 7th-Thursday and Philips Innovation on 11th-Monday. No! I have no intention to take all, this list is only for those which I have registered.

See you in Manipal soon. Now wish me a Happy Journey!