My Days as a Trainee

Life gets pretty routinue when you start the workforce. It's pretty weird not having to think about when school starts up again, but I guess I experienced the same feeling with the Infosys joining date which was August 6. Training started a week and a half ago each day is very similar in terms of structure. Here's an example of a day for me:

8:00 AM: Wake up and brush my teeth. I have two options after that: Go to the floating restaurant for the breakfast buffet (75 Rs.) or staying at home and eating some dry Corn Flakes (90 Rs. for one week). Lately I've been going with the second option because 1.) the training center is closer to my room than the restaurant is and 2.) I don't end up eating too much.

9:00 AM: Report to the training center in the JP Morgan classroom. All the rooms are named after famous people. The fast track is in the John P. Morgan room and the slow track is in the Steve Jobs room. From 9:00 to about 10-10:30, the professor begins with the day's material ususally in Powerpoint format.

10:15 AM: Coffee/Tea Break #1 for 15 mins

10:30 AM: The professor continues lecturing. This part can get boring if the teacher isn't that exciting.

12:00 PM: Lunch Break. We usually head off to either Food Court 1 or 2 because they are the closest. Food Court 2 has meat selections, but the food at Food Court 1 is better overall such as the Fried Rice and Vegetable Noodles as well as the bakery. The bakery is probably the best part about Food court 1 because of the doughnuts they offer. Usually after I finish lunch I return to my hostel.

2:00 PM: Report to the training center for the afternoon session. If the current module is theoretical, we go on with more lectures. Otherwise, there is a lab where we complete programming assignments. The slow track (it's actually known as "Long Cycle") averages about 6 assignments per day and the fast track gets about 12 because we have experience. The first assignments consisted of copying code to learn the Infosys coding standards, but later assignments were more about debugging and writing your own functions. It's all in preparation for the end of the module which is the gorup project and the module test, both of which I will explain some other time.

5:00 PM: If we finish our assignments, we are free to go starting at 4:30. Some people stay later to finish up because C isn't their first programming language. I usually return to my room to change out of my work clothes.

5:30-6 PM: Frisbee or something else sports related? I could also be doing laundry at this time because the lines is short on weekdays. Basically, this is a period of free time that I have.

7:30 - 9:30 PM: Dinner - Indians start serving dinner at 7:30 because they usually eat later. I guess I know why Anand eats at 8 PM now... After dinner, I usually just hang out with my friends somewhere.

10:00 PM - 12:30 PM: Return to my room to shower, check up on the stock market (opens at 7:00PM closes at 1:30 AM) and usually that ends the day for me.

Weekends are a different story usually...

Have a nice Labor Day. I'll be at work wishing I was observing the U.S. Holiday.

Location and Salary Wrapup

The location situation gets cloudier while the salary situation is nearing a conclusion...finally after one big question and answer session today. First, I want to clarify the notion of my base location being Plano, Texas. The locations as far as I know are permanent, but there is a chance that I can still change it if I give the proper reason to my Integrated Business Unit Department manager. It is also possible that I may never set foot in the Texas office, even with my location being Plano, Texas. Even with the location being permanent, managment still has no idea where we will be going. Here's my understanding of the U.S. location.

Plano, Texas is simply my "base loaction," therefore I will report back to the people in Plano and they will handle all employment details that pertain to me. As a technical consultant, I will be working in different offices belonging to the client on a multi-month project. So the place I'm going to depends stictly on the business projects available in different locations and my willingness to take the opportunity. The opportunities are not limited to the Texas area. So theorectially, if a project opens up in the Bay Area, I will not be required to move anywhere. This is why the IBU representative told me that he had no idea where we will be in six months because the business projects available in December are not clear as of this moment. So, all this talk about location is stictly about base location and not necessarily the actual work location. I will refrain from posting about my location until more information works its way out, meaning the only thing I can do is stay patient and wait. I am still attempting to change my base location from Texas to Seattle and I will definitely post an update if something happens.

The U.S./U.K. Batch is Very Demanding

The U.S. batch had an interesting discussion today with the Infosys team that handles our taxes. As I mentioned in previous posts, we are getting paid exclusively in rupees. The 3 basic questions we had for Infosys was:

1.) Why are we deviating from the original contract?

2.) Are we gonna have to pay taxes in both India and the U.S.?

3.) Is Infosys compensating us for the possible loss in salary due to the exchange rate?

Here are the answers as I understood them to mean:
1. and 2.) We are getting paid exclusively in rupees to avoid being taxed in the United States and India. Getting paid only in rupees means we are taxed only in India. When we file taxes in the U.S. we will be credited with the amount of taxes we paid in India off our U.S. taxes, and the credit is available for deduction for up to 10 years. We cannot be paid exclusively in U.S. dollars because since we're working in India, at least some of our money needs to be paid in rupees, which is why the original contract called for a split in our pay. The problem with splitting up the pay in rupees and U.S. dollars is that we'll be taxed in both countries, so the full salary will be taxed in India and the U.S. dollar portion would be taxed in the U.S., meaning the U.S. portion is double taxed.

3.) No, this is essentially going to be a gamble. We have to hope the Indian government tries to strengthen the rupee in the next 6 months because if the dollar keeps climbing, we're gonna lose. The exchange rate used in the first month will be 41.6 and the subsequent months will be 43.5. The first month's salary is pro-rated, meaning my salary is retroactive to August 11.

So hopefully, I'm not gonna write about my salary again because during the session today, I noticed that the salary situation had gotten out of hand. Someone asked a question about dual taxation and the Infosys representative gave his answer. But because as a group, we were all so cynical due to past experiences, we didn't believe him and basically most of the people were requesting that a U.S. third party tax expert answer our questions in order to make sure the facts were correct. I feel the salary situation is important too, but I was satisfied with the answers and was ready to move on, but some people continued demanding more answers and I felt like the salary situation was getting out of hand. I almost felt sorry for the Infosys HR people because if the number of demands we were making. I'm sure they are not used to that since they are used to different cultural norms. At least we got some answers and for now, it looks like the salary thing is winding up. I hope this is the last time I post about this.

So... How is this Possible? Did I do Something?

Let me get this straight because it's so unbelievably stupid.

20+ people are going to Seattle. Seattle was my first choice. Boston my second and Chicago my third. Statement from Infosys: "We will try to honor everyone's preferences." I'm going to Seattle!!!

WRONG

Instead I now face living the next 1-2 years of my life in... Plano, Texas. It has to be the most random assignment ever. It's gotta be one of my 3 least favorite places to be deployed to. So how am I in Texas? I don't know. I felt sucker punched as the everyone else's assignments were announced. Most of the west coast residents got Seattle, except at least 3 of us. We got screwed by the company and it makes no sense at all. I detect only one pattern. All 3 of us went to school in Davis and all of us live in the Bay Area. This killed the entire day. Hard to be positive about this one. On to other details...

ES stands for Enterprise solutions and people in the unit will be using either SAP, Oracle, or Microsoft (something) technologies and we will be specializing in one of 6 different categories, none of which I remember (Sorry, I was still making shaking off the Texas thing). Starting September 12, we will end our training in Mysore and resume training in Hyderabad, India So I won't be in Mysore anymore for those interested in visiting. I will be in Hyderabad from now on. I should be there for up to 6 weeks until I get my first project. From then on, I will either stay in Hyderabad or move to Bangalore. 10 Fast track people leave September 15, about 15-20 slow track people will go on October 22.

Let's revisit my predictions. Check on Hyderabad, but big miss on Seattle. One thing about the U.S. location - they're projections, but I'm not sure how accurate the projections are. The ES people who assign us to clients were saying that they had no idea where we'd be in 6 months. He also said there might be a lot of travel around the base location area. To get my location changed, I'm supposed to work it out with my department manager whom I'll meet in a month or two I suppose.

Until then, I'm gonna go back to thinking about how my life's gonna suck for the next 2 years.

Tomorrow 4:00 PM, I Will Know Everything

All the questions I've been asking earlier... will be answered Tuesday at 4 PM.

Scary.

It's scary because the information passed to me tomorrow will likely determine my future for the next 2-3 years. Will I get my first choice (Seattle)? Or will I experience a miracle and stay in Fremont for the forseeable future? Here's what's at stake: my integrated business unit, U.S. location, Duration of the India Stay, and location of training from Sept 12 and on.

For the training portion, here's the scary proposition: half of the slow track and 10 out of 30 of the fast track kids will receive the IBU known as ES (Enterprise Solutions) and that requires a move to Hyderabad on Sept. 12. So those kids will fly out to Hyderabad and continue training there, essentially splitting the U.S. batch in two. The decision will be made based on our assigned U.S. location. Speculation is that the West coast kids will receive the ES unit, which would be me.

Rumor has it that most people have received at least one of their top 3 preferences which means I will likely end up in Seattle, Boston, or Chicago. I woould welcome Seattle but moving to Boston or Chicago is going to be a pain.

We will also receive a rough timeframe of how long we will be in India. Our batch manager mentioned December or January as likely targets. We also should be receiving more information on the salary situation, so tomorrow is going to be an action-packed day, and did I mention that I still have to finish a 2-day group programming project by 2 PM on Wednesday? It's gonna be hectic...

My Prediction: IBU: ES meaning I will go to Hyderabad. U.S. location: Seattle Mood: Mixed

Stay tuned tomorrow...

I Struck it Rich!

At least in India I have. It's Saturday morning and I have nothing to do, so I decide to search for all the ATM locations on the Infosys campus. I may have mentioned this before, but I've been low on cash for the past week because all the ATMs here accept only Visa cards and I have a debit card and a credit card, both with Mastercard. I have been trying to live off 1000 Rs. for the past 6-7 days (that's $20). As of this morning I was down to 30 Rs. with 3 USD left and the prospect of not being paid until at least Wednesday when either my parent's package arrives in India, or the ACH transfer completes. So that would be 3 days without money. I was feeling pretty desperate.

I go to Mastercard's ATM locator and I find that there is an ATM on the Infosys campus that accepts Mastercard, but where? All the one's I've seen are Visa. I knew there was one by the food court that I hadn't tested out yet, but that one also said Visa. Plus, the address listed was different from the one on my badge, so it was in someplace specific that no one knew about. I asked the reception desk and they had no idea either. Then I went to the ICICI bank branch near the ECC and asked if there were any ATMs on campus that accept Mastercard. The teller said no, and pointed me to one outside of campus. That would cost at least 80 Rs. for the ride in a rickshaw. I wasn't sure about spending the last of my money on a risky rickshaw adventure. So, feeling a little defeated, I decided to exchange the last of my $3 into 122 Rs. So I head up to the food court to get some pastries from the bakery when. I pass by the ATM and I decide, What the heck, just give it a try. I shove my debit card in and... weird, there was no sad face! It asked me to enter my PIN. The stupid thing actually accepted my card! But still feeling suspicious, I withdrew only 1000 Rs. ($23) and I got my receipt which showed me my balance. By that time I was a little stunned because I just went from being broke to feeling rich in the span of seconds.

But there was still $300 missing. Later I found out that the ACH transfer was deducted from my bank account already. But if the debit card works, I shouldn't need the ACH transfer anymore. Well, tough luck, I couldn't cancel it and now I have money moving into my Indian bank account. The only problem with this is the exchange rate mentioned earlier and the difficulty with moving money from India to the United States. That's a different story and a different problem which will be addressed at the end of the year. I just gotta hope the Rupee strengthens to make the ACH transfer justifiable.

I did the conversion on the ATM transfer and it turned out to be 43.35 Rs. per Dollar. Looking at Yahoo Finance, the current rate is 43.475 Rs/dollar, so the conversion was really good. The Rupee has weakened from 42.25 to 43.475 against the dollar in August alone. That's good for transfers from the US to India, but bad the other way around. But whatever, it's great to have money again!

Solar Stocks

Solar stocks have shown signs of recovery lately and I have been fortunate enough to hold two stocks that have benefited from this rise. I will probably hold until the middle of next week up until Solar Fun's earnings announcement. Hopefully the share prices continue the rally.

Dinner Out in Mysore

After clocking out of training today, 15 of us decided to eat out in Mysore tonight. It started during our lunch break when we complained about the food in the food courts and how hard it would be to survive 6 months off of it. So Amjat and Alex come up with the idea of eating out in Mysore. I was short on money, but still willing to go and so were the rest of the guys at our table (4 of us were eating Dominos btw) and pretty soon it evolved into a 15-person adventure.

At about 7:00 pm, we each split up into groups of three to ride in these 3-wheel cars called "Ricshaws," basically a very small vehicle (probably smaller than a Volkswagon Beetle) that seats 2 in the back (although 3 can squeeze in most of the time) that runs on 3 wheels. If you haven't ridden in one before, it's hard to describe the feeling you get when you're inside. First of all, I felt cramped and the top of the car was really low, so I basically had to lean forward the whole time. And the driving is crazy in India, not only to you have to watch out for oncoming traffic swerving into your lane, but the road is littered with speed bumps that are really hard to see. That made for a roller coaster like ride and a lot of the time, I felt like I was in a really cheap race car because we frequently would swerve out of our lane to pass buses and trucks.

We ate at a nice hotel. The menu had a variety of dishes from Indian to Continental. Most people ordered two dishes each, other decided to split dishes together and get 3 dishes. I shared chicken pan-fried noodles, lamb with green peppers and some naan. Alex and Jackson got some Tiger Naan which looked really good. I would recommend the Tiger Naan with the lamb as dipping sauce. The noodles were okay too.

The Infosys curfew time is about 9:30 pm. We all got back at 9:30, barely making the curfew time. I'm not sure what would have happened had we not made it. The meal was about 250 Rsm for me and the ricshaw was 200 Rs. roundtrip for 3 people. Not bad considering where I come from.

Contract update

During the night, more details came out about how we're gonna get paid and let's just say it's so different from the contract I signed that HR is gonna make us sign a different contract in class tomorrow. The dispute: whether we get paid in U.S. dollars or in Rupees. The conflict: the exchange rate and the high Indian taxes. We'd be paying more tax if we were paid in Rupees. HR wants to pay us our entire salary in Rupees for the duration of training which is in direct violation of the contract I signed which states that we get paid about 60% of our salary in U.S. dollars. Infosys plans to use 41.9 Rs./Dollar as the exchange rate. Checking the currency markets now, the exchange rate is 43.415 Rs./Dollar. So we're missing out on about 2 Rs. per dollar and if you know my salary you can do the math. The Rupee continues to weaken against the dollar which doesn't bode well for the exchange from Rupees to U.S. Dollars when we get back to the U.S. It could go up to 45 which means we could lose about 3-4 Rs./dollar in our salary. Of course there's also a chance the Rupee could fall to March 2008 levels which was around 40 Rs/dollar, but the point is, I'm not interested in playing the currency market with my salary. I want something static. So I'm extremely unsure of how things are going to work out with the location and the money situation. Morale is low here amongst the U.S. batch and it continues to deteriorate as the frustration grows towards the Infosys's system in India. Could it be culture shock?

So far, 80% of the promises they made have not come to fruition. I'm low on money, the location situation is weighing on me, and the salary situation isn't looking up either. But I should look on the bright side. At least I'm in fast track. Short term that's a great thing because we are actually working on relevant material. It could be bad in the long run because the fast track path may influence the IBU and U.S. location for the bad.

Word on the Street: No Jobs in California Due to Previous Batches

The story gets even more interesting with the prospect of landing in California at the end of my 6 months. Apparently, jobs aren't being offered in California because of a... lackadasical effort by previous U.S. batches that almost resulted in Infosys losing an important client. The rumored client happens to be Goldman Sachs. The previous batch felt like they were treated as less than employees by the company during their training in India, so as a result, they never attached any loyalty to the company, which resulted in a lazy effort on the parts of new employees specifically in the California locations. This of course is just a rumor, but I do have to admit that I am very suspicious of why jobs in California are so inaccessible.

Also, I have to agree that the HR department in India is pretty disorganized and the way they conduct their business shows that there is little order in what they do. The process of filling out forms during Orientation was painful at best and I frequently find myself having to verify my passport on a number of redundant situations.

Another thing that may impact our final U.S. postings is the stream we get (banking, energy, manufacturing, etc.). Some people have been assigned energy already and will be relocting to Hydrabad, India after training. The most likely place for energy is Houston, Texas and that may take precedence over our preferences. I don't want energy and I don't want Houston. But we don't get to choose... another thing I find suspicious. Why don't we get to choose what we do? No choices make disgruntled employees (especially the U.S. batch) and disgruntled employees is not a recipe for building loyalty towards a company.

U.S. posting update:
Seattle 30%
Other Location: 40%
Fremont: 10%
Boston: 10%
Chicago: 10%

Observation #1: Time Moves Slow in India

The United States is predominately made up of people who like to move fast. Americans are always late for something and it shows in the way they walk. We like to hustle to our destinations... at least in most big cities. Here on the other hand, people like to take their time. Take the Infosys trip to the Police commissioner's office on 8/14 for example; we leave the campus at around 2 pm and return at about 5 pm. Here's what we did in the 3 hours: rode the bus (towards), sat outside the commissioner's office, sit in the conference hall, returned to the bus and rode back to campus.

We were in the conference hall waiting for the commissioner to show up (he never did) and the Infosys HR decides to collect our passports to put with the forms we signed the day before. 30 minutes later, he passes the forms back to us to carry into the conference hall. Another 30 minutes pass and HR (or it might have been the police commissioner's assistant) takes a look at our passport, returns it, and re-collects our folders. That's what I call "efficiency."

Word on the Street: No Jobs in California

I've been finding a common theme with this company. They like to keep us waiting. Naturally, the waiting allows many opportunities for rumors to form. One I have heard recently is that no one is allowed a job in any of the California locations (Fremont, Lake Forest). This rumor again contradicts what my recruiter and what Myra said about the California locations: that there should be job openings in those locations because they get a lot of business there. That's another theme I've been seeing here: there are a lot of contradictory statements which leads to many questions. Is that a good sign?

Location Chances:
Seattle 50%
Fremont 25%
Boston 20%
Chicago 5%

And by the way, Fremont's not listed as my top choice anymore. I'm trying to get this fixed if possible.

India: The 2-Day Journey - Part 2

Night out in Atlanta

During the check in process, each Infosys trainee received a $25 gift card to be used at any time in the United States. The card only being valid in the U.S. comes into play later on.

After the dinner at the Hilton, I was feeling a bit tired. There was one final activity for the night and that was a night out in the Virginia Highlands. It a place with some restaurants and a bunch of bars. Most of us ended up at an Irish pub, where I ordered a Guinness. Later, a couple of us went to the Darkhorse Tavern where we ordered a sandwich and some cheese tater tots. The portions were pretty big, unlike some restaurants I know. The Atlanta trip concluded with a breakfast buffet the next morning. it would turn out to be the beginning of a grueling 30+ hour journey to India.

Atlanta to Mysore, India

The next day turned out to be the first of a long time of waiting, flying, and sitting to India. We arrived at the Atlanta airport at 1:30 P.M. Once we cleared customs we had about 3+ hours to waste until our 6:00 flight. Me and a couple of guys decided to buy 2 large pizzas with our leftover American Express cards for a total of $31.00 The pizza was New York style and one of the best I've ever tasted. The cheese, crust, and sauce were in perfect proportion and it was a good start to the upcoming flight.

The trip to Bangalore consisted of two-nine hour plane rides in Lufthansa Airlines, a German company. From reading their webpage, it sounded like a pretty good airline especially with the new "thin seat" technology that they touted would give economy class passengers more leg room. At the very least I expected that... and I didn't get it. At 6:00 pm I boarded flight 445 to Frankfurt, Germany, found my seat and sadly, I saw no TV monitor in front of me and no way to sit in my seat without my knees touching the seat in front of me. Another bad break was the passenger in front of me (a fellow Infoscian) that insisted on reclining even though my knee really had no where to go. O well, I let it go. It's only for 9 hours right?

Looking down at Frankfurt from the plane, I notice that the city has a lot of forest land with patches of houses carved into the trees. Some houses look very similar in shape and are packed closely toegther much like in California. When the plane landed, we basically had 3-4 hours to kill. Most of the time was spent shopping along the shops in the airport and marveling at how expensive everything was and realizing how far the dollar has fallen in the past several years. A MacBook Air cost 1699 Euros in Germany.... that's 2888 U.S. dollars!

The flight left Gernany at about 12:00 pm Germany time and touched down in Bangalore at about 12:00 AM Indian Time. The flight was also abotu 9 hours long. I spent a lot of the time on the plane sleeping surprisingly, but by that time I could have slept anywhere. I had been up for about 29 hours and I still had a shuttle ride to take to Mysore. The shuttle seemed to go pretty slow partly because the roads were a bit weird. It seems like the road is littered with random speed bumps, which would cause the bus to slow down alot. Near the middle, we made a stop at a random coffee shop for what was supposed to be 15 mins. 45 mins later, we started back on the road. Suring the shuttle ride, we saw some stray dogs running around the road. Along side the road would be some rundown buildings, some looked like stores, but of course since it was 2 in the morning, there were no people on the streets and none of the stores were open. Finally, at about 6:00 am, we made it to the gates of Mysore. We tried two times, but we finally made it! (The first gate we went to was not the main gate and we were rejected). At this time, I was awake for about 34 straight hours with a spotty 3-4 hours of sleep mixed in at various points. That's 34 hours without a shower, without brushing my teeth, and most concerning was without changing out my contacts. So instead of taking us to our rooms, Infosys treated us with a little breakfast after we all checked in. This would be the beginning of a day that I can only describe as crazy... but crazy fun too! Yea, the weekend would be like this: playing sports, meeting people, and getting used to Indian food. More to come later.

India: The 2-Day Journey - Part 1

I didn't expect much from the Delta Airlines flight from San Francisco to Atlanta since the airline has been flirting with bankrupcy the past couple of years, but the onboard experience was pretty good. Each seat was equipped with a TV monitor showing programming from Dish Network, which was a nice distraction from some of the other things I could have been thinking about. Sleep as usual was hard to come by despite the flight being really smooth. I haven't been on a flight so smooth in the last couple of years.

After arriving in Atlanta, I went straight to baggage claim and met a group of people also traveling to India for the Infosys training. All four were from the UC system. We waited for the hotel shuttle to come pick us up and in the process, the hot and humid Georgia weather was causing us to sweat. When the shuttle finally arrived, we joined a second Infosys group and we headed towards the hotel.

At the Hilton hotel, I checked in and went up to my room to change. I lugged my two bags into my room and found my roommate already inside. He's from Dallas so he didn't have as far to travel. After changing into business casual attire, I met all the future Infosys trainees near one of the Hilton's meeting rooms. The group consisted of 55 total people, approximately 10 girls and 45 guys and interestingly enough, there weren't too many Computer Science majors. I would guess probably 10-15 of us are CS majors. The rest are either Electrical or some other form of engineer or economics/math majors.

The meeting started at about 3:00 p.m. ET, about 30 minutes late due to some late arrivals. The meeting consisted of a team activity involving half pipes, a marble, and a cup that I could only describe as a fun way to meet some other members of the group. Once all the teams went, an HR respresentive introduced us to the company while another person did a presentation on the cultural aspects of India that we should look out for. We followed that up with a nice dinner courtesy of Infosys.