My journey in Infotech-Part 1

 
For whatever reasons, call it a lack of focus, ambition, my career, and life has often taken a direction by default than design. This 2-part blog is a small story of my life as related to the field of Infotech.

Sometime in 1981-82 as I was finishing engineering, we didn’t have campus recruitments and were left to our own efforts to find jobs. I have no clue why but felt would like to explore opportunities in the Computer field. It wasn’t called Infotech, but we said – I want to do Computers – whatever that meant.

When I broached this subject the unanimous feedback, I got was this was a field where career aspiration at best would be to become stenographer to the CEO/MD of a company because computers meant highly glorified typewriters.   

The main names those days were Wipro, Microland, Hindustan Computers Ltd (HCL) and I was thrilled to receive a call from HCL to attend a selection process. Savera hotel in Chennai was the location and we assembled in the morning. The motley crowd had engineers and graduates with other backgrounds. The first reaction of friends was no organisation would recruit engineers. But a friend Srinivas Desai and I, persisted on trying anyway.

The day was hectic with written tests, followed by group discussions in a cycle and as the day passed the numbers dwindled. Me and Desai spent more time flirting with an attractive hotel receptionist who had jumped into the fray. By late afternoon we were 6 or 8 folks left. 3 of us engineers including one from IIT Chennai and the rest other graduates. We were to go through a 2-stage interview process.  

The first interview was with a gentleman called Paul and his boss; a lady called Mrs Singh. Apart from some casual talk the lady would fish out a lipstick from her purse and ask us to sell that to her male colleague. He in turn stonewalled anything you said. My friend Desai was so frustrated after having referred to mother, sister, aunt, wife who could use the lipstick (we honestly then didn’t even know about other sexual inclinations) and being stonewalled by Paul that he finally burst out with – “your girlfriend would love it and if you don’t have one, you are not a man”. That ended his interview and despite knowing what would happen I fared equally badly. Finally, 2 girls, general stream graduates were selected, and friends and family said – we told you so.

I then got a call from ITC Infotech and after being made to wait for hours, late in the evening, a tall young gentleman with long hair called Ramakrishnan met me. He introduced himself as the head. He sat in a glass lined cabin and proceeded to ask about my family and finished the short interview with – you don’t need a job, you come from a good family. Having waited for long, hungry, I was furious and as politely as possible reacted angrily at his illogical comment. Unruffled, he said something along these lines – “Turn around and see that large cabinet? That’s a computer. For all I know there is a buffalo sitting inside. But I can connect two cables and it does my work. I was the first computer science graduate in India from IIT Kanpur but today when I go recruit students, I realise I know nothing about the subject. People working here and old enough to be my father, ask me to help them study further and learn this subject. You are young, from a good family. You don’t need a job; you need to go get a post graduate degree and then come back to meet me”. With that said, he promptly booted me out of his cabin before I could ask why the hell, he called me for the interview.

Fate and Father ensured I tried for and was selected to do Post Graduation at IRMA. I was thrilled at the then state of the art connected network of computers at the National Dairy Development Board. The main frame used to be in one room and all the workstations in a big hall. A young IIT Kanpur Computer Graduate, Prof Gulati was our teacher and given my interest co-opted me to help him in helping others during the practical computer sessions. One of the things I enjoyed was to send messages from the main frame to someone at a terminal which would pop up as instructions or insults and it was hilarious to see their reactions.  

Halfway through the course, in 1984, I got the opportunity to do a project on “Computerisation” at the Uttar Pradesh milk dairy federation (PCDF) in Lucknow. I was to work for the MD, a Gent named Brijesh Kumar who later went on to become MD of Air India. Prof Gulati visited me to assess and guide my work and took me to visit his alma mater IIT Kanpur. Bewildered and excited by the array of computers, including one in colour and another, on which one could play chess using software someone in the college had developed. The head of the department as he showed us around stopped in front of one computer and explained that whatever buttons he pressed the thing would just not boot up. As I wondered at this, he whacked the computer on its side and the thing booted up. While the two laughed their head off I felt foolish since I thought it was a feature of that computer.

The HOD heard of my project and offered that employees from PCDF could attend a 10-day course on computers for a small fee. Even as we took that offer back to the MD, I was desperate to also do a course there on programming with COBOL. It cost about Rs. 900 which I could ill afford. I requested the MD if he would fund me, and he said no. But he was gracious and said PCDF would pay for my travel, stay but on the condition, I did not use the 10-day absence to delay my project. Luckily listening to all this my parents agreed to pay the fee and I landed up at IIT, Kanpur.

IIT, Kanpur:

Those 10 days were sheer bliss, the excitement palpable, energy infectious and in 1984 the experience was like a science fiction movie. There were dozens of terminals and we needed to book our turn in 30-minute slots on a computer that was outside the room. One sometimes ended up with 2 half hour slots in 2 machines that were far apart. So even as the next chap pulled me out of my chair I would run as if my life depended on it to the other terminal and pulled that chap out so I could sit. However crazy it seemed, I soon got used to it.

Trying to finish assignments, totally frustrated as error after error message popped up, there were occasions when I would give up. Sometime in the middle of the night would shout eureka and run to the computer centre, book a slot, sit, and finish the assignment. Those couple of midnight visits were a revelation. Only the top brains, nerds, obsessed folks sat through nights working on software development in graveyard silence. Anybody making any noise would attract the choicest of abuses from others who hunched over terminals like mad folks possessed. The atmosphere was electric, and you could cut it with a knife. During the nights it was a different world out there.

Finishing the project, and as I graduated – I just did not get any job I wanted. Somehow the industry was such, they still preferred to focus on my engineering degree for a job, except maybe, paid me a little more than others. A computer job just did not come my way. Disappointed, I took whatever I got, and had reconciled to the fact that maybe this computer thing was not for engineers. Maybe I was incompetent was a thought that did not occur to me.  

2 years later a friend and senior from college then working in Wipro offered to get me a job there. He said it was a done deal. Excitedly I attended an interview that went like a breeze and seemed a formality. Finally, George, the HR chappie, said since my classmates were already ahead of me, he would get me a job in a small computer company and after I had worked there for 6 to 12 months, he would take me into Wipro equal to my friends. I didn’t exactly tell him what I wanted to say, but instead, I walked out and never again tried to think of a job in the computer field again.

Incidentally my first friend at the start of this journey, Srinivas Desai also ended up in the manufacturing sector like me. But fate had its own games playing for me.

Part 2 - https://rvasisht.blogspot.com/2022/12/my-journey-in-infotech-part-2.html