Interesting Facts

I got placed in Infosys yesterday. It was the day when I understood the true power of fate! I understood it on Feb 24 2008. When I fractured my hand after a series of coincidences. Yesterday was one such day too. But the good thing is that I ended up with a job!



December 7, 2009

Me and Karthi had planned to under-perform in Infosys. To get into Accenture. Karthi woke me up at 7:00 AM. Then I was exploring my new Nokia 5800 Xpress Music set and it became 7:50. I started to get ready in a hurry. It was 8:15. My mum scolded me for not having the breakfast and packed the breakfast into my lunch box. I took it and then left to college. It was 8:28 AM when I reached College. I entered the auditorium by 8:32 and the pre-placement talk of Infosys began at 8:40.

All I can say was, Sharanya who was from Infosys, gave a better speech to that of Mr. Vishnu of Cognizant. And Infosys's campus was like a five star hotel. Or some Sahara project. But I was not really impressed with the growth of the organisation when compared to Cognizant it was pretty low. Though it has more employees and is older of the two.

Then the test began. There was an application form to be filled. The designation was System Engineer. And the hall incharge was giving too many instructions to fill out a simple application form.

The test began at 11:00.

The test began. I got the information that the cut-off was 50% of the marks. So I marked 10 to 15 right and 5-10 wrong. In english. The exam was damn easy. If I had solved them seriously, I would have scored lot of marks for sure.

Then came Maths. There were 30 questions and time was 40 minutes. And all the questions were a real cakewalk. Here too I did the same(left few as I did in English). But for time pass I solved all the questions in the rough sheet.

After the test I called my dad. He said that since you marked 10 right, you have a chance of clearing the round. I was afraid whether I would clear. And after lunch Me, Karthi, John and Aravind Babu met our staffs and informed about our Cognizant placement. Then the results were announced. My fear became true. I was selected for the next round. I was confused whether I should perform well in the interview or not. I spoke with my parents and took a decision that, I should perform well in the interview.

"Fate only takes you so far, then it's up to you to make it happen"

All the persons were interviewed one by one. And I was the last person to be interviewed. I was initially in panel 7. Deja Vu of Cognizant. But then changed to panel 3. My interviewer was a lady who was about 45 years old.

It was the first time I was being interviewed by a lady. My guess is that she is a brahmin. She atleast looked like one :-)

Interviewer: Good evening. Take your seat.
Me: Good evening Ma'am.
Interviewer: Think you must be tired waiting so long.
Me: Not really Ma'am. I had a hearty lunch. And was just relaxing after that.
Interviewer: Did you perform well in the test?
Me: No ma'am.
Interviewer: Did you prepare well for the test?
Me: No Ma'am.
Interviewer: Then you must be lucky enough to attend this interview.
Me: Yes Ma'am. But I had been preparing aptitude since my semester holidays began on November 24. Too much of anything is good for nothing. So I stopped preparation on Friday and took some rest. Probably a weekend off.
Interviewer: Hmmm. I had gone through your resume. It appears that you have done lot of projects.
Me: Yes Ma'am. I am very interested in developing projects, because I like to explore different technologies and different domains.
Interviewer: Are they part of your academics.
Me: No ma'am. Developed them out of own interest.
Interviewer: You have consistently scored scored 90+ in tenth and plus 2. But it seems that you have lost around ten % of your marks in College. Do you think 81% is good or do you repent that you could have done better?
Me: Ma'am I am interested in projects and devote lot of time to that. But that doesn't mean I have had a serious dip in my marks. I want to maintain a balance. Where I learn technologies, domains as well as my syllabus. I planned to maintain a decent percentage and I hope I am doing that.
Interviewer: Other than Projects, what do you do?
Me: I write novels.
Interviewer: How many have you written?
Me: Two.
Interviewer: Best of the two?
Me: Mystic Murder.
Interviewer: Mystique or Mystic
Me: Mystic the one with the C.
Interviewer: Interesting. Any sports?
Me: Chess.
Interviewer: Anything outdoor.
Me: I play table tennis. Oh thats indoor too. Hmmm. I play gully cricket once in a while.
Interviewer: Tell me about any hurdle you faced during your projects.
Me: Spoke about PEARL. The requirement problem. Waterfall model, Win-Win Spiral model, importance of documentation and lot of such stuff.
Interviewer: How did you source this project?
Me: Spoke about my fracture and how I got this project.
Interviewer: So you source your projects out of accidents?
Me: Yes. But it would be better to say. I source my projects even out of accidents. I believe in the philosophy- All is for good. So my accident too was good. Because I learnt lot of things in that project. And even when I was being administered with local anesthesia. I was observing how an instrument was fed with data. The nurse was entering as Deepak Senthilkumar RTA Male 18 in my first name. Though there were text boxes provided for the entry of gender and age. And a checkbox for Road Traffic Accident (RTA). That's when I understood the use of data mining! And how the operators feed the data.
Interviewer: Are all your projects Software.
Me: No Ma'am. I had developed a project called Informative Bus Details for Public Transport office. Normally in any bus station, the driver has to get out of the bus, sign a register enter the in time and out time manually. but in this project, the driver would possess an RFID card. And the details would be detected when the card is in the proximity of 2 metres.
Interviewer: Seems like a novel idea. Have you applied patent for it.
Me: No Ma'am. I got that idea by browsing through internet. It is not my idea. I developed the project just to explore the possibility of COM port communication and interaction with hardware. But I have presented a paper called Graphentication of passwords. Explained it to her. Said, her that she could remember the figure 5 better than the letters 'five'. She agreed. And said that I am planning to implement it as a part of my final year project and planning to apply patent for this project.
Interviewer: Do you know how to apply patent?
Me: Yes Ma'am. In Government College of Technology Coimbatore, there is a department called Intellectual Property rights. I have to apply it through them.
Interviewer: Are the technologies .NET, J2EE part of your syllabus.
Me: No Ma'am. I have had C# .NET in my syllabus. But the projects were in VB .NET.
Interviewer: Did you attend any class for that?
Me: No ma'am. Google is my tutor. I download the tutorials and learn the language.
Interviewer: What about SEQUEL?
Me: Ma'am I have not heard the term. I dunno what it is.
Interviewer: You have mentioned the back end as My Sequel for couple of your projects.
Me: Oh! MySQL. Fine. I dint know that it was called as Sequel ma'am. I have learnt a subject called Database management Systems and in that I had a lab session. I learnt oracle there. MySQL and oracle have similar type of queries. But I prefer mysql because it is free and it can be easily integrated with PHP.
Interviewer: Did you do any project in that Database lab?
Me: Yes ma'am. It was a mini project. Where I had four members in my team. Since the time was less and everyone had to participate in it. It was a simple vb application to conduct a quiz.
Interviewer: You have decent percentage, develop projects, write novels. How do you find time for all this? You spend 8 hours in college. And you have to commute from your home to college.
Me: Ma'am most of the projects were developed on weekends and Semester holidays. Regrading the novels. I work with the plot during the semester and write it in the semester holidays. I have 40 days holidays usually. That's more than sufficient. And for academics, there are study holidays. And during internal exams itself I would have finished around 80% of the subject. So that's easy too.
Interviewer: You have mentioned three memberships. What have you done.
Me: I have been part of an event called Virtuoso 2008. I was part of the organising team for the events Best Manager and Software Presentation. Other than that, in the last semester we have conducted Intra Virtuoso an event for our juniors in IT and Computer Science.
Interviewer: This interview is about you. What's that we?
Me: Ma'am. We means, Me, and couple of my friends called Arun and Karthikeyan. To make a good cup of coffee we need three key ingredients, Milk, Sugar and the Coffee powder. Each one has it's own part. And to make that event successful we were the key ingredients. Each one had his own part. But because of the effect of synergy our collective effort was amplified much higher when compared to our individual efforts. There were totally nine events and we were part of all the nine events.
Interviewer: Name few events.
Me: C-Debugging, Cyber Cipher, Technical quiz, Web Desgining
Interviewer: Leave alone that we part. What was your contribution?
Me: In the past, there was lot of paper work involved in the event C-Debugging because all students would be interested in that. There will be lot of participants. hence more photocopies of the question paper. Further the correction was time consuming. To reduce all that, I developed a simple application in VB.NET for the prelims of that event. I took five days to develop it and two days to test it. Around 200 people participated in the test and the it was a success. Other than that, in an event called Cyber Cipher, my friend developed the application and I developed the Content for the application. Explained the Donald Duck level in Cyber Cipher and said there were totally 15 puzzles like that and I developed them.
Interviewer: I think I am done with you. Any questions?
Me: Yes Ma'am. I spoke with my seniors and my relatives before attending Infosys. They said that the training was over six months. But it was the best company to work for if you need immediate-onsite opportunity? In the pre-placement talk it was mentioned that the training was for just 16 weeks. Is it true? Is there some fast track to quickly finish the training and enter into project team.
Interviewer: Regarding training, it is for 28 weeks. 16 Weeks was before 2 years. And regarding fast track. Yes, you can enter into projects if you perform well during training, may be within 3 to 4 months. And regarding on-site opportunity, you need to be lucky to get. It depends on the business requirements and your luck. Any more questions?
Me: No Ma'am.
Interviewer: All the best Deepak. I had a very good time interviewing you.
Me: Thank you Ma'am. I had a good time too. May I know your good name Ma'am?
She thought for a second.
Interviewer: It's not the part of my protocol.
Me: Fine Ma'am. Thank you.

I don't remember how long the interview went. When I came our of the interview room, time was 7:12. From my classmate Gayathri Lakshmi's information, it seems that she went in at 6:40 PM. I was called within a minute she was called. So my guess is around half an hour. i still can't believe that this interview went for so long!

I didn't prepare a second for this interview. But may be because I was really relaxed for this interview, I think I gave my best ever performance in this interview. I have attended two mock interviews and Cognizant. I don't think I have ever spoken this much in any of the other interviews. May be my friend Gokul Krishna's words sub-consciously had an impact. After Cognizant interview I was speaking with him. I said that his English is better than mine. I usually think something then think the suitable words and speak and it results in a split second gap. Its not in case of Gokul. He said, "It's because you think and speak. I just speak". The split second gap was not there this time around.

Coming back to this interview, I thought I had given a really good performance and was confident of getting it except for the last part where she refused to disclose her name.

But she didn't refuse to pick me. After two hour wait my name was announced in the list of people who were selected.

Two placements in my hand. This was the day in my life I became really happy after 3 and a half years (After getting Admission into Kumaraguru College). 2009 is turning out to be a fabulous year. I was quite worried that I couldn't clear the Subex written round. I started to doubt on myself and my luck. And I was under enormous pressure of getting into Cognizant because, I was worried that 'if Cognizant doesn't pick me who's gonna pick me?' After that, Infosys happened like magic. I didn't comb my hair properly, my face was oily. I didn't wear my sentiment green socks and my sentiment white shirt :-( But my confidence level was pretty high.

When fate has decided to give something for you can't change it. Its all written already!

In the film-Matrix, there is a dialogue:

There is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.

Knowing about Infosys interviews and attending it did have a difference!

Alas! Forgot to mention that this interview happened on December 7 and my lucky number is 7! Coincidence may be!

I got placed today. Yesterday to be accurate. Only five hours and ten minutes have passed since my placement in Cognizant. But appears like it has been ages!



I wanted to share my interview experience with you. December 3 was announced long back as the first round date. My semester exams were over on November 24. And I relaxed for a couple of days. Then downloaded Vidathu Karuppu (Marma Desam) series and watched it. It was Saturday, November 28, 2009 and I was watching Vidathu Karuppu still. Sunday morning I woke up at 9. I planned to start with aptitude. I was trying out the cube sums and syllogism rules. And I watched the film departed once again(I have so far watched it 4 times). I have developed a strong liking towards that film! The day was over. I received a mail from the placement cell that there was a pre-placement talk from Cognizant on December 2(2:00-6:00 PM).

November 30, 2009

The next day I planned to go to hostel and prepare the technical stuff along with my classmate John(he is THE technical wizard of my class). Karthi was to join me as well. There was an interesting question in the model question paper that the placement cell had mailed us.

Why result is different for:

1)
int x=5;
int y;
y=++x + ++x + ++x;

2)
int x=5;
int y=++x + ++x + ++x;

In Type 1: Line 3 is treated as an expression, and based on the “Operator Precedence” the increment [ ++ ] operator takes precedence over summation [ + ] operator. Hence in the expression, the increment operation is done first, and then the summation operation is done, thus the output of the expression will be "24".

In Type 2: Line 2 is treated as an assignment statement, and is hence evaluated from left to right. Thus the value of ' y ' in this case will be "21".

We started by discussing this question. Then we moved to data structures. When we were half way through data structures me and Karthi left for lunch. And though we retuned to the hostel by 1:15 itself, it took us another one hour to start again. We finished Data Structures and then moved to Computer Networks. In CN we brushed up the concepts like OSI layer, Topology, and other important concepts from Wikipedia. Then we started Operating system by 6:00 and finished it by 7:30. I was feeling very tired. But was glad that I learnt lot of stuff that day.

December 1, 2009

Then on Tuesday, I was just maundering over Database management system concepts. And resumed with aptitude.

I was searching for different formula and successfully stumbled upon this,
If a cube has n sides and all sides are painted and if it is cut into (n*n*n) identical cubes, then it has:
cubes painted on 3 sides: 8 ((n-2) power 0)
cubes painted on 2 sides: 12 ((n-2) power 1)
cubes painted on 1 side: 6 ((n-2) power 2)
cubes painted on 0 sides: 1 ((n-2) power 3)

Probably this was the only new thing I learnt that day.

December 2, 2009

The next day, I spent on my projects. Browsed through the code of all my projects. Fine tuned my resume and left to college. I reached at 12:30 in my college. Had lunch and was chit-chatting with Karthikeyan, Sathish alias(Sathish alias is his nickname) and Arun. The pre-placement talk was scheduled to begin at 2 'O' clock. But it never really began until it was 3:15.

There was a video display about Cognizant and Mr. Vishnu, the Vice President and Head of Coimbatore division of Coimbatore gave his speech. He was speaking about Cognizant, their policies and stuff like that. I don't know if it was the acoustics of the hall or the time. I was feeling damn sleepy. But tried with all my concentration power to focus on what he was speaking. After he finished his speech, there was a Q and A session.

I felt that my college mates posed senseless questions. Few like...
1. Is there a rejection panel during interview?
2. What do you provide for recreation to your employees?
3. Do you really recruit non-technical(OMG!) students?
and many more....

But Mr. Vishnu answered them patiently! This man has amazing patience.

Then there was quiz session, where there were questions about Cognizant and people got caps when they answered it right. I knew the answers for couple of questions. But never bothered to stand up and give the answer. A munch or perk would have motivated me. A cap? no way! Finally there was a passion video, shown about Lance Armstrong, a gymnast and Kapil Dev.

It was 4:45 when the program was over. I reached home and started preparing the aptitude question from TIME book. I really prepared well. I prepared 4 books of TIME. It was really easy.

December 3, 2009

The next day morning, I woke up, brushed through different coding problems and binary problems. Went to Arumugam Student's centre(in my college), that's where the exam was scheduled.

I had to fill out a form(much similar to my resume, except for the projects section). It had questions like what would be the qualities of a good software engineer? How do you think you would be a good software professional? etc.,

The test began at 10:00 and ended at 11:10.

There were three sections. Quantitative aptitude(25), Verbal(25) and Logical reasoning(20).

The test was very easy and there was no single question from what I had prepared!

I performed well in the first and the last sections. English was always a doubt. It depended on the cut-off. I knew I can make it if the cut- off was around 10 to 12.

I heard from Arun that the cut-off was 7. I was quite confident of clearing the round but never admitted it to anyone!

The results were announced in mic. and it was quite a long wait before my name came up. It was second in panel 7. Panel 7... Ah! May be luck is in my side, I was born on 25, my lucky number is 7 and my panel number was 7. Coincidence may be...

I came home. Watched the highlights of Indian innings where Sehwag was rocking with a double century. And then slept off by 8:00 PM itself.

December 4, 2009

Woke up early in the morning(4:00 AM) and prepared Object oriented Programing, revised operating system, networks, data structures, database management system, checked out my project codes and modules, and finally studied C.

I left to college. Interview began at 10:10 for me.

My interviewer was a very warm person. He greeted me by standing up from his chair, walking towards me and giving a firm handshake. And the little nervousness I had while entering the hall had vanished completely. I was feeling very comfortable. He resembled my friend Vikram's(thenga) brother and was a left hander.

Interviewer: Introduce about yourself.
Me: I am Deepak. blah.... blah... I have developed 9 Projects.
Interviewer: We'll go into projects later. Tell me about your family, hobbies.
Me: I am the only son to my parents. Hobbies...hmmm... I write short stories, novels and poems.
Interviewer: Novels... Tamil?
Me: No sir, in English.
Interviewer: Oh! Have you published.
Me: Should search for a publisher. But one novel is ready for publish. Planning to publish soon.
Interivewer: Whats the name of the novel? What's it about?
Me: Spoke about Mystic Murder
Interviewer: Why Cognizant?
Me: Mainly due to a senior, a super senior actually... She gave very positive feedback about the work culture in Cognizant and her experiences. And ofcourse the growth curve that I saw in wikipedia and during the pre-placement talk. Where it moved from 1 billion to 2 billion and so on exponentially. Other than this the enormous customer-base that Cognizant has is amazing sir.
Interviewer: That's cool Deepak. What's the name of that senior?
Me: Sowmya.
Interviewer: Where does she work?
Me: Chennai.
(All the while the interviewer was looking at my resume. Thank God! He read through all my projects)
Interviewer: Seems like you have done a pay roll software.
Me: It started off as a pay roll software sir. But with 6 iterations and 6 versions it has now become more of a HR software.
Interviewer: HR?
Me: Employees joining, leaving, attendance management, Performance appraisal, salary, leave, rating of employee...
Interviewer: Oh! Thats great! What language did you choose for this application?
Me: VB .NET.
Interviewer: Ok! Then tell me the difference between VB.NET and VB.
Me: Spoke about CLR for sometime. Then suddenly realized that I needed to give the simple answer- VB---> Component oriented, VB.NET---->Object oriented. When I was about to start with exception handling....
Interviewer: Fine Deepak. What do you know in DBMS? Just write down in this sheet of paper, he said, handing a sheet of paper.
Me: Started with files, tables.
Interviewer: Fine Deepak. Just write two tables, fill it with data and show a primary key and foreign key in those tables.
I started explaining as I was filling.
Interviewer: You fill and explain Deepak. Meanwhile can I have a look into your file?

I understood that he wanted to occupy me with some work while he was skimming through my file.

I started explaining the tables I had written. He said, just tell me the primary key and foreign key. I replied.

Interviewer: Deepak. You say a good software professional must be innovative. Can you give an example where you have been innovative?
Me: Explained about my paper called Graphentication of passwords, where i had proposed Google earth to be the password!

Interviewer: What do you think about recession? How it affects student community?
Me: Spoke everything I knew about it from banks, companies to Anna university Counselling!
Interviewer: Deepak do you know what SDLC is?
Me: Yes sir, SDLC means Software Development Life Cycle Process.
Interviewer: What are the SDLC's you know?
Me: Waterfall, win-win spiral, Spiral, Iterative, Prototype
Interviewer: What SDLC do you think Microsoft would have used to develop .NET?
Me: Iterative.
Interviewer: Reason?
Me: Explained the logic behind versions, bugs, problem with sun and such stuff.
Interviewer: Would Microsoft be tempted to use waterfall model for .NET development?
Me: I don't think so. Waterfall model is not for complex projects. It is for simple projects.
Interviewer: Where can you use Waterfall model?
Me: I had developed a project called ICAL(of course with Karthi and Arun). Which is a simple internal mark calculator with a relative booster like if the top mark is 15 then it gets boosted to 20. 10 gets boosted to 15. In that, the requirements were 3:

1. Collection of the internal assessment marks
2. Calculation of the total internal marks
3. Relative boosting

And I submitted it to a Microsoft contest called S2B. Where I had to develop it using Waterfall model. And all the phases were finished at one stretch.

But when I was developing a project called Pearl (Payroll management and Employee ARchivaL), I collected requirements from a particular person, who had given me the requirements but resigned when I next went there. Then explained certain nuances of the project where I was unable to implement waterfall model and instead I had to work on Win-Win Spiral model and it wasn't a true Win-Win Spiral model either. I had to mix it with Prototype model. For faster delivery of the software.
Interviewer: You say that you are the only son to your parents. I cannot guarantee you a job in Coimbatore. Would you shift your base?
Me: Definitely sir. That wouldn't be a problem at all.
Interviewer: Ok Deepak. I am done with you. Do you know whether Sehwag scored a triple hundred?
Me: No sir. Yesterday evening he was 284 not out. That's all I know.
Interviewer: Thought you would be knowing it. Didn't your friends message you?
Me: I had my cell phone switched off sir. I hope Sehwag scores another triple hundred and adds a really expensive dish in the menu card of his hotel :-)
Interviewer smiled.
Interviewer: Do you have any question for me?
Me: Sir? If I join Cognizant? How would you like me to spend the next six months? Should I learn something? Like I have heard that Cognizant works on mainframe?
Interviewer: Just continue your routine activities and enjoy your college life. Eh Deepak! I have the form that you filled yesterday. That's enough for me. You can take back the resume you had given me. I will place it in your file. It was nice talking to you Deepak.
Me: I had a very pleasant experience too sir.

After a firm handshake I started to walk back. I turned back and asked him.

Me:May I know your good name sir?
Interviewer: Shyam.
Me: Thank you sir.

My interviewer was the kind of dream interviewer I could ever imagine off. He was very friendly always smiling at me making me very comfortable.

I left the hall. I was confident of getting placed except for the one incident of him returning my resume. It was sowing some doubts in my mind.

Interview was finished in 22 minutes for me. I came out at 10:32 and nearly after a nine hour wait, I heard that I was selected.

My friends Karthikeyan and Johnson were selected too.