First Day at a MNC

A bit late on my blog but now i'll try to keep up

So around a week back i joined a MNC as an intern for this summer. The first day was an introduction to the company. I noticed a couple of differences in the culture over there as compared to what we are generally used to.

So the major difference was that in my collage everything we use to do was open source and free. it  was linux , scilab, our codes or other software we use. our thinking was also always like open source. Whatever you think, what ever you do let others know. let them also be benefited by your help. 

Here the rules of the game have changed. Everything you do has to be confidential. You shall not share and information which is important with anyone else. its like secret keeping, even the work it different. The environment is good but you have to wear formals and all everyday.

In all a different experience , the time will tell was it good or bad.

Third Year

This one is all about my experiences in the 3rd year of my collage life. 

When I was in my 1st year I asked my mentor "Which will be the toughest semester in these 4 years of engineering ?". He replied and i quote "The toughest semesters w/ ill be the 5th and the 6th ones. You'll get a feel of what is the department all about in 4th semester but those will be the sems which will surely test you.". 

He was so correct. Fourth semester we had 3 department courses, horrible grades, but still peaceful semester.
In Sem 5 we had the famous course of 'Operating Systems'. I guess everyone was sure that it would be the toughest course that we'll ever do. It was not the toughest course we dd but surely the toughest lab ever. Spending 12 - 14 hours continuously in a lab is no child's play. But we survived. I got a 7, bit on the lower side in the grade but I learned a lot.. 

We did system programming  for the first time in our life so it was all very new and a bit difficult. Then we had to do all this in C. C is not that easy language, there are many constrains. But this lab made sure that we learn to make our way out in C. Debugging large piece of codes which no one else could interpret. Many night outs in NSL (New Software Lab, Old CSE, IIT Bombay) which is also our mecca for all the programming :P. Finally OS ended, on a high node with the professor saying that ours was the best batch that he ever taught. :).

But Sem 5 was just not all about OS, we had DBIS and Computer Architecture also. We did a project in DBIS, 7 days continuous work , day and night. It made us forget everything. Even the fact that our end sems had ended and we should have fun :P. We completed this project after our end semester examination were over. It was the best project I did till date. Learned a lot and also the first complete running project.

Thus ended Sem 5 and began Sem 6. Courses were not that important this semester as was the fact that we had 4 labs in this sem, the most we ever did. So i began sem 6 with 4 theory courses and 4 labs, only one extra course. 

The first half of the semester was very relaxed. We came to know that there will be no strict deadlines but continuous evaluation. In AI lab grading will be done on the basis of the amount of progress you make every week, in compilers lab we had to submit 6 assignments 1 in every fortnight. In ERTS lab the pre midsem portion was just some easy assignments and few quizzes.  The post midsem was scheduled for project work. Networks lab was almost the same as all tthe prev. yrs labs, 1 3 hr lab every week and we are done!. It all looked very easy and satisfactory. Till the midsems it was. compilers, AI, Networks and ERTS were all easy. Then midsem ended and started the fever of sem 6. suddenly we were bombarded with a series of assignments and projects. This time not only we had to code but code well. The coding was not the major problem as was the report submissions, demosntrations, documentation and all. So many reports and submissions that it looked like it will never end. we will surely miss deadlines.

But We survived all this. Nightouts, sleepless days and nights working our asses off. making reports, finalizing codes to be submitted. documenting our work. We all worked in parallel. One person in one area. One made presentation while the other did the documentation, one did the report work while the other coded. In between we had our quizzes also where we just survived. 

I can never forget that day when I had 7 submissions in 48 hours. Day 1 morning, Extra course programming assignment demo, in the afternoon ERTS presentation, evening, network's project demo,  in the night a 3 hour exam. On day 2 morning 6 am, documentation submission of ERTS, in afternoon ERTS Video making and in night AI report submission. Two back to back night outs, some sleep of 3 4 hours in this whole time and then we had to prepare for our exam on the day after that. 

Whoa ! what a sem it was !. This whole year changed all of us. Now we are not just students of Computer science and Engineering but we are developers!. I can proudly say that because this was my aim when I came into IIT, not to just pass out as a student from here but to be a developer when I put my feet outside of this campus, into the real world. 

I can easily say that I enjoy coding more that  theory now. This is what has changed me in this one year. My confidence in my programming skills has grown as the skills themselves. I did programming in C, C++, JAVA, Assembly Language, PHP, SQl, and many others in this year. and not just beginners programming but moderate to advance level. 

Surely one thing is still left in all this, programming contests. Hope that next year this will also not remain vacant :).