Friday the 3rd. Reached to HSBC on time for the interview as told by Krishna. He also confirmed from me earlier to that if I was going there not. Finding the place was not a problem as I had asked HR person from HSBC, Amit, the direction to each that place. Till 11 there was no news of any one and as soon as Amit entered the room by phone rang. It was the 1st round from SAIC. Got a quick 20 minute interview. And again the usual HR promotions. when I reentered the hall, I found a senior person how HSBC Software works and has evolved in last 4 years. Good story. He spoke truth. I know HSBC well as its office is next to Cybage, where I worked for 16 months on MicroStrategy project. The yasked us to fill a form, which clearly indicated that HSBC is not an EOE. I was was my religion, DoB, birth place, parent’s address etc. Gosh… who ask all these now days. After having filled this form it was time for analytical and verbal written test similar to GRE (Encircle the correct answer). By the time we all finished it was 1:30 and all were dead hungry. Then Amit called us on 2nd floor which had two interview panels sitting. :-|. Few guys took lot of time to completed. They joined us may be at 2:30 or even late. Then I came to know two people could not clear the written test. didn’t like it. One of the person not making cut was from BIS team. I was asked a soft copy my resume a there was no right person to interview me. Not a surprise to me at all. Luckily I had a copy in my mp3 player [Creative Nomad]. Amit copied it to him laptop and sent it across to HR at Pune. Well I came to know HSBC has BI Center of Excellency. Wow.. a great opportunity. All selected people were getting interview one by one. It was very hard to wait. At 4:30 I asked if that was possible to schedule an telephonic interview and I received a call from Pune in 2 minutes. Had a good talk about what I do in MSTR etc and asked me question based on my resume. Probably they scheduled the interview not to disappoint me. Even though the interviewer was not a MSTR person, he was very senior person in BI team. Nice to know that. after the interview I was told that 2nd round would be scheduled sometime in next week. During the day a friend asked to meet him if I coem ot office, but I was dead tired to go. Not to forget that I had nothing other than morning Masala Dosa since morning. I reached Domino’s at Krishna Nagar. At very same time I spoke to Victor and Yeshwant about the lay off. Yeshwant had called me up to tell that he got placed in Mastek for a good package, but he had to go onsite for three month. Not happy for onsite compulsion as he became father just two months back and was not willing to go out of India. While having pet pooja at Domino’s I told my friend that I wouldn’t be coming to office as I was tired. I got a bike wash too after having food. Cool wash for mere 35 bucks. Now comes the worst thing of the day. The Business Developer (read: Collection Agent) of Sify disconnect the connection willfully just to realize that connection had to be renewed. My roomie (who actually owns the connection) had a nice chat (!@#$%&*) with him to get the connection back. I kept a movies for download in night but it seems he disconnected once again after I went to sleep as just 300 MB was left and in one night I can dwonlaod 550 MB easily. Not to forget that connection was not present when I came home.

So well at 10 AM, all technology had assembled for meeting addressed by Tod/BD about the lay offs. They came with dramatic speeches. They talked about that business has gone down suddenly in last week and management had to take this decision and revenue had fallen very much. As non-US contributed only 24% (as per last financial years information submitted to stock exchange), having maintained about 30% market was damn good. And the losses (or revenue as company was still in green) were same the day US operations were terminated and the day possibility of lay offs were declared. What I can definitely conclude is that, these were already in pipeline. No one knows about company financial better then BI, not even CEO and CFO, cause they depend upon information provided by BI team. The data provided by them is submitted to stock exchange when quarterly and yearly results are declared. [Nothing about the company financial health that I have said is privileged or any act of mine over here are against non-confidentiality contract signed by me. If you think then do let me know] From BIS [in IVY it is called Business Intelligence System which has BI, ETL, WH and Campaign people] there were total four lay offs including me. Well, I was so happy when I came out of the room. the compensation package was too good. Next day when many laid off employees met at a same off I cam to know that some people went to their manager and asked for lay off and crib for it. But I do say that their was unknown fear in may peoples’ mind when we all talked, specially married people. About the reaction of BIS team member of their buddies going was not good. this would have cascading effect on the technology. There are consultants and companies just hunting for people from IVY Comptech. Other than this. One thing that I must say that, IVY has been very professional in laying off people from organization. It happened in a respectful and peaceful manner and the compensation package offer was not bad. Last but not least, HR
(unka number aayega) people made some sincere efforts to out-place people in other compnay. Team was not happy due to two people leaving, one of them being good and pressure that’s going to bring on the rest of the team. I came to home with Keshav. Kept all papers and went to Domino’s to eat. It was about 3 when we left the eatery. I had never seen hi tech city even though it was just 4 km from my home. I asked Keshav if is is not busy let us take a look around hi tech city. We went there and saw a beautiful lake. Came back home at 7. Dropped Spent night reading about MicroStrategy. The package offered by IVY were really too good. Read here.