I remember vividly. It was a scorching summer afternoon in Chennai back in 2003, my friend and ex-colleague Sangeetha called me up. She just moved into TCS, a dream IT Services company for many Indian engineers, not just for the career prospects if offers but also due to its highly regarded and prestigious parent conglomerate, the Tata Group. Though TCS was a large Indian IT services firm, it was not in the limelight then as it was not a public listed company like its listed rivals like Infosys, HCL and Wipro. Sangeetha told me that TCS is starting a new project to digitize the clinical functions and operations of a world-famous Ophthalmology Research Centre in Chennai including the patient medical records. The chosen technology platform was Microsoft .net and the solution includes the Microsoft Tablet PC interface. They are hiring Development Engineers and Lead Engineers to join the team, which sounded so lucrative to me as I was a big Microsoft admirer and have invested the initial years of career in honing my coding, designing skills on Microsoft technologies. I went through the interview process and got into TCS as a Tech Lead. I made so many friends while working through the project. Though I had few years of IT services experience by then, this was unique working and delivering to a domestic client in a client facing role.
As I wrapped up the
project, the excitement, and the lucrative financial rewards of pursuing an
overseas opportunity was all over my mind and it was to the extent that I cared
less for the roles or technical skills required but the location of the
assignment and I preferred Europe or North America. I landed up on a project
with public sector – Healthcare in the UK. Though my role in the project was
not anything new from what I have done before, the sheer excitement of being
abroad motivated me to pursue it further. My wife and daughter joined me later in
London, UK, this was their first journey abroad. We lived in a London suburb
called Slough. I had the opportunity to work with multiple partners and clients
including Fujitsu, British Telecom, UCLH (https://www.uclh.nhs.uk/). Though the work was unpredictable and included
multiple months of waiting in anticipation (natural at any new client account
in its formative years), it was the first European client facing work experience
I had. Within a brief period, I got two assignments one was a sub-contract work
with Fujitsu who as a primary vendor for the National Health transformation
program and a contract with BT who was another vendor. My office was at the
core of London city’s commercial hubs and trained and tubed (underground train
service is called tube there) my way back and forth from Slough. This is the
period when terror attack and London subway terminal happened, and it was in
the very same route that used to take, and I escaped the attack (rush hour) due
to my early morning commute habit.
My NHS assignment ended,
and we briefly returned to India for a short visit post which I got another
opportunity to work with Prudential UK and this time, the assignment was in a
remote Scottish town of Stirling. It was about 45 mins drive away from the
Glasgow airport and when we got there, there was just one hotel in the town
which had no rooms available. Some TCS colleagues contacted a town resident who
was also an Indian temporary foreign worker (that was how we were tagged) who
worked for Wipro but for the same client. He went back to India to get married,
and he magnanimously agreed to let us use his apartment for a few days until we
find our own apartment. My time at Prudential was awesome, delivered some
projects working closely with the clients. Prudential colleagues Maggie, Nicola
became incredibly good friends. Fiona Forrest was the Project Manager from
Prudential was so immensely helpful and friendly. My work their included enhancing
their insurance advisor facing portal to transform the means in which advisors
where compensated and some relational database migration, which I thoroughly enjoyed
and most of which I single-handedly delivered. The assignment was sweet but
short as Prudential was a Java shop and the scope for Microsoft engineers was
limited.
After my Prudential assignment,
found another opportunity to work for Boots (largest pharmacy retailer in the
UK) but we had to relocate to Nottingham which was my fourth relocation within
UK. Boots gave us the opportunity work on some technically complex assignments
and gave us to the opportunity to work closely with Microsoft partners. My
super-star wife took care of my toddler daughter and the household stuff
meticulously so that I could remain focussed on work. After delivering a couple
of projects, Boots chose another Technology Services company as their vendor
and the large TCS team that we had assembled had to be dispersed. My boss at
that time Veera (able delivery leader from whom I learned a lot), was assigned
to new account in Ontario, Canada and he was also forming a new team and he
asked me to join him there. Though I dreamt of going to America some day, I
thought Canada will take a me a step closer. Started my visa process while I
was still at Nottingham and then wrapped our Nottingham life and moved back to
India. My brother got married and I took a brief sabbatical (leave) and
focussed on my health (I had to undergo a minor surgical procedure) and my
brother’s wedding. Then before I moved to Canada, I had to report to TCS India
for few weeks and that was my second and the final offshore assignment in my 18
years long career in TCS.
October 2007, at the
onset of autumn season in Ontario, was when we first came to Canada. From the
airport, I was dropped at a budget hotel in Markham, the city where my client’s
office was. Joined my first Client in Canada, The Nielsen Company(at that time
it was called so, now it’s split into multiple entities), the world-leader in
Retail and media measurements, research analytics, had a Canadian product
development team who had developed a product portfolio (multiple applications
of the same product family) with rich feature sets like their own relational
datastore and a database drivers etc. The assignment turned out be one of the
longest client assignments that I had in TCS, and I ended up spending 7 years
in the account. I had an opportunity to work with some extra ordinary talents
both at the TCS side and at the client side. In the middle of the assignment my
boss Veera went on to take up a larger role within the account, handing over
the reign to me. I had multiple promotions professionally and established as a
known figure within the leadership team’s purview. During my tenure at Nielsen
was when personally we felt that Canada was offering the best of what Europe
had to offer and the weather pattern of North America, a multi-cultural social
fabric to raise and grow our family and the long-term avenues to even bring our
parents here. We decided to apply and become Permanent residents in Canada and bought
our first home in Markham, Ontario, which was 15 mins drive away from Nielsen’s
campus in Markham. The mindset was that my Nielsen assignment was indefinite. One
thing that struck me was that I foresaw that the growth potential and the
longevity of the assignment were uncertain. I thought at some point I will be
forced to either relocate to the USA or look for other assignments within
Canada. Instead of waiting for a forced exit, I thought I should proactively
make an exit path and pursue some other assignment in Canada within TCS’s
financial services group. My then boss Mr. Badrinath was planning to move out
of Nielsen, and I took his help to find a way out. My friend Vipin Nikam, who
was a very mature and a no-nonsense colleague, helped me find an opportunity
within the Banking space in TCS, Canada.
The client was one of
Canada’s largest banks, CIBC. They were looking for some one to drive a
Technology Transformation program for the bank. The program which was started a
while ago was not progressing well. I learned many such programs face execution
hurdles as they were enterprise-wide programs but sponsored and executed by one
group within the bank. I was asked to come to the CIBC’s office at downtown
Toronto for an interview. The room booked for the interview was at the 12th
floor of the towering building, overlooking the ever-active Dundas Square. I
liked the environment and ambience. But the shocker was that the interview
panel had 3 Senior members of CIBC leadership team which I did not anticipate,
as I was told that the interview was with a Sr Director. But it was a good
discussion and they wanted to have a larger panel as there were multiple
predecessors who were donning that role, but none were successful, which scared
me and invoked self-doubt and apprehension on my abilities. I was selected for
that role except that I had to work out of their mid-town office and not the
fancy downtown building. I had to drive for a good 40 mins each way to get to
the office and parking was expensive. I was introduced to all the program
stakeholders and while everyone wished me success and none of them failed to
caution me about the awful state the program was in and my success in program
will be nothing short of a miracle. Of course, with a lot of sleepless nights,
nervously done leadership presentations and a lot of demanding work, I was able
to turn that program around and make very good headway to impress the
leadership team. Before I even finished delivering the program, I was assigned
to help with another large program that the bank has undertaken. I found this
as a huge acknowledgement and pat on the back from the clients for my work thus
far. But a huge slap on my back was the TCS performance review and ratings I
was given was not the best. TCS followed a comparative performance ranking model,
and this indicated that there were high and better performing peers in my cadre.
The program’s scale and size were huge which did not scare me as I had the
background of dealing with NHS program in the UK. This program’s mandate was to
deliver an innovative technology platform for forty-one different lines of
businesses within the bank. The bank by that time realized that to run such
large programs that cut across the enterprise, they need to build a team and
capability. A modern technology group was formed, and I was rolled into that
group. I made more friends within CIBC than from TCS.
My role was hugely
successful and gave the necessary limelight within CIBC and within TCS Banking
group. Soon after delivering the program, I was offered the Client Engagement
Manager role to manage Delivery and Sales for CIBC’s Wealth Management group. I
was able to successfully establish myself there and soon after that my
portfolio grew larger, and I was asked to also lead Digital and Contact Ctr
technology groups with CIBC. My portfolio suddenly grew over 200+ members. I
was recognized for my performance several times by both the clients and the TCS
leadership. I ended up staying with TCS – CIBC team for more than 8 years. But
within the organizational hierarchy, I was in the same position that I was 8
years ago. My growth not only was stagnant by may remain stagnant for the
visible future. TCS as an organization was full of opportunities, I never felt
that the opportunities were lacking. I always thought there was something wrong
in the way that I was navigating my career within the organization. But I
questioned myself that shouldn’t the organization guide me and handhold me? I
never found answers and gradually I made up my mind to take the extremely hard
but “what I thought was right” decision. It was not about my long association
with the company that made my decision harder, but it was the fact that all that
I had materially were accumulated during my career in TCS. My younger brother,
cousins had their career blooming in TCS. It felt like it is a firm that we were all
indebted too. So, what should I do, when I am at the crossroads of life, we all know
what we want and which path we want to take? All we need is a
logical or political justification for it, don't we? I found it in this famous
verse from Thiruvalluvar.
துன்பம் உறவரினும் செய்க துணிவாற்றி
இன்பம் பயக்கும் வினை
Meaning: Though it
should cause increasing sorrow (at the outset), do with firmness the act that
yield bliss (in the end)
Thus, after 18 years,
11 months, 7 days, I ended my tenure with TCS, leaving a long and mutually
rewarding association with one of the greatest Indian Tech success stories with
a career stint that was full of learnings, rich experiences, life-long friendships,
and amazing mentors. What remained in my mind was simply an extraordinary sense
of gratitude which I will hold through the remainder of this life.
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