It has been quite a while since I last posted to this blog.A lot has happened since then.
Perhaps the most important is probably my decision to quit my previous job and join a Software Services company.
For the last 6 years I worked in a small product development company, based here in Kolkata.
Working in Connectiva Systems was fun, but as with most good things, there is always an end….
So this time, while changing jobs, I decided to try out something different.
One of my motives was to go to one of those large consultancy firms, and learn and understand their processes
and the way they deal with clients.Make no mistake, working in a product development company is fine, but what
you miss out there, is direct interaction with your client and users.
In a services company on the other hand, provided your project team is small, you get to interact with your
clients directly.I had only heard of CMMI, ISO:27001, Six Sigma and other quality buzzwords, but I wanted to
see first hand how a company having all these certifications, implement and adhere to these quality standards
on a daily basis.So I ended up choosing to go to one of the biggest consultancy firms of them all. IBM GBS!
This is a company where, just to get the keys to your drawer, you will have to send a mail to somebody,
and wait for some else s approval, for the process to complete.So how has the transition gone?
Not bad actually.For starters, I get to use IntelliJ my favorite IDE, and considering IBM’s Eclipse fixation
that in itself is quite incredible.
Our client is Getty Images, and they have out sourced the development and maintainence of their “Media Manager”
product to IBM. This is a small team of around15 people, most of whom come from a product development background.
Though we don’t get to use Spring,Hibernate or these fancy new J2EE development libraries, the fact that
I don’t have to deal with beasts such as EJB CMP, is a real plus for me.I have learned quite a few quality
processes, estimation and root cause analysis methods, and I am starting to learn how to deal with and
adhere to the bureaucracy within IBM.I am in the SMB sector, and I hope IBM sees Kolkata as a place where
they can grow their J2EE practice.
I would love to see more J2EE projects coming to Kolkata and hopefully participate in them, so as to fulfill
my long term career goal of becoming a software architect.
