Oy, oy, oy... that's what happens if your internet doesn't work for a couple of weeks, your sister comes to visit you, you get shifted to a new location and you decide to extend your stay in India... You totally ignore your blog. :)
So this was the short version of it. For whoever is interested in some more details, here comes the longer version of the two latter points:
After many moments of frustration, fights to get a definitive answer, following up on relevant and irrelevant people, TCS transferred me with 1 week's notice to Chennai (earlier Madras) in the state of Tamil Nadu, in South India. As part of the Janus Program I am in, I got assigned a new role and responsibility: I am now a Business Analyst for the Technology Team. Who would have thought that I would work in the IT team? :)
My task is threefold: 1. I need to understand the customer's requirements if they want some IT application to be developed by my team. I understand it, put it on paper and then coordinate between customer and the developers to make it happen. Why me in that position? Because I have a non-technical background and am able to understand and communicate with the customers on a more general level than the technical people. On Friday, I had my first customer meeting with an internal customer within TCS and one little challenge became quite obvious: I have absolutely NO idea about IT (my near and dear ones can attest that) and my customers knew more than me... and at the end of the day I'm still working in an IT company and EVERYONE has an idea about IT! :) Ya, that was fun. I think they had a good time too... The other parts of my task consist in analysing a set of IT applications/tools we have and finding some gaps to make them more user friendly. Again, the target is to make it fool proof for non-technical guys in order to increase their usage... so I fit the role perfectly. The last part of my role is kind of a marketing campaign for the same applications. Again same factor helps: if I can understand and see the benefit of using this... everyone else should also get it. :)
This role is very interesting for me because I am getting exposed to a totally different aspect of work: I am in customer contact, get to use my analytical skills and can focus on my communication skills as well. Seems perfect to me and so far I am enjoying it. Also my new boss is somehow much... let's say... he actually communicates with me, gives me some rough guidelines and ideas about what I should be doing and gives feedback. In two weeks I already feel much more comfortable here than in 10 months in my earlier role.
And Chennai... oh my god Chennai! It has bars, clubs, actual restaurants you can just chill out, it has the sea and a nice beach, many places to see. It’s an amazing contrast to Baroda. But it is hot, humid and dirty here! Honestly, how can such a large population live in such a place? I'm dying if I'm not in a room with AC. It's around 40-45°C hot, plus around 80% humidity which makes it a huge sauna of 5 million sweaty people, smelly streets and smog as much as you can imagine. It's not really recommendable in the summer season I can assure you. But it has a beach and places to go, so I’m happy !!! :)
Oh yeah, and another important update is that I decided to extend my stay in India. In July my 1-year traineeship is ending and I have accepted an employment offer with TCS. This means that I will come back to Switzerland in July for 1 month, enjoy my family, my love and my friends, pure air, comfortable life, good food, nice landscapes and of course Spitzer’s BEACH’N’BBQ on July 24th !!! After that I’ll come back to Chennai, continue in my role for some time and then possibly take over a third assignment as part of the Janus Program which is ending by the beginning of next year.
