First Year Experience

I started my professional career a little more than a year ago.(I started working for Tessolve on 1st August, 2007). Its been a mixed bag at this point of time. In the last one year, technically I guess I learnt more than what I had accumulated(mugged) in the whole of engineering but I cant compare the present life to the amount of fun I had in engineering.

During college I used to get less than 1000 bucks a month and that used to be enough for all the fun we used to have. Now although I get around 20000 every month , and I don't have the time to spend it but still I am not satisfied with my salary. I really don't know the reason why?? It could be because money was never an issue then and now it is.This is probably the first change after I started working. I wouldn't be an hypocrite and say "Salary doesn't matter".

There has been a transition from college to office, friends to colleagues, subjects to projects etc. Before this I never understood "Monday morning blues", as in college everyday used to be the same but in office its not so. In office it some how happens that no one waits for a Monday morning to get back to work and that for all of us the most awaited moment of the week is Friday evening. Actually speaking the Friday evening never repeated more than once or the Monday morning never disappeared in any week but still that feeling always stayed every week.May be this is what we call "Human tendency". Its not that the colleagues are not affable or the work place is clumsy but there is something about college and friends which is absent in office, I am yet to figure it out.

Highlights of the last one year :

1. Goa trip with the gang : For some reason we had to drop the plans of Goa as the college trip and had to settle to Gokarna (No regrets though). Last summer along with the bunch of college friends had been to Goa. We went around places and didn't even think of work even for a single moment. It was like the college Goa trip was fulfilled. I wish all companies make a rule where each employee should go out some where for a vacation for one week in a year where he doesn't have to receive any calls from office or check mails. I wholeheartedly believe this refreshes the employee and he can give better once he comes back.(It happened with me).

2. Current project: In the last one year I worked on a board design of a 40GHz multiplexer and then the other one is the broadband receiver from customer. I really enjoyed doing this project for two reasons a) I got to apply most of the concepts we learnt in engineering. I get a satisfaction that my four years of engineering is not completely a waste after all. Initially, I was skeptical if an engineering degree was required for me to do the work I am doing because we had the best instructor who taught us electronics, DSP etc used in our work in the simplest way but only later did I realise that I could understand what he spoke because of my engineering knowledge. Its really a great feeling to apply concepts like FFT in work which we just mugged equations without even knowing why its being used.

b) The chip for which we are developing test program is a low power broadband receiver which can receive AM,FM and VHF. The chip could go in to the next set of Nokia mobile phones and in navigation chips. So the next time some one is using a posh phone it could be that the chip in it was tested by the test program developed by me. Its a nice feeling to work on some of the latest technology.

Probably, this is what they call "Job Satisfaction".

3. Tessolve Annual day: On the 26th of July, Tessolve celebrated on entering the 5th year of operations in which it had grown from 10 to 370 people. Pande(engineering friend and present colleague), myself and couple of others were asked to handle the cultural programs on the annual day. The show was organised well and the program was a huge hit which had dances, singing, fashion show etc, in between these we played videos of interviews with our CEO,VPs and Directors but the highlight of the evening video compilation of photos of the Journey of Tessolve compiled by us. Be it the shooting of the interview or the preparing the video we really enjoyed working for this event. I read somewhere that "Journey to success is more enjoyable than the destination". We have always experienced it be it the annual day or Phase Shift - telecom fest or the freshers party we used to work for during college. I also agree with Steve Jobs that " One can only connect the dots backward". We definitely feel that we could easily organise the cultural functions of the annual day is such short span because of the experience we had from Phase Shift or the freshers.

We enjoyed engineering because we had fun and I mentioned the above were the highlights of the last year because these were some thing which I did in engineering, something which was fun for me. I believe having fun is the most important part of life.

Hopefully there are many more fun filled events like these which will keep life going.....

Luv,

Sri!!!