Ritesh Kumar Samal

It’s a general misconception that people in IT don’t share the same rapport with the managerial people as they do with their other colleagues. Based on this, I have an interesting incident that happened to me at the dawn of my career.

After completing my training at Mysore, I was posted to Chennai DC in Feb, 2016. This was going to be my first time living in Chennai. Not even a day had passed and I had already received a call from the DC’s biggest account and was asked to meet the manager in the first half of the Monday morning.

The next day, I reached the block on  time. On asking if there were any preferences allowed in choosing desired projects they mentioned that, it’s as if a radio and you don’t get to choose but to listen to what gets played, metaphorically speaking and I too would be asked for a valid reason if I were to reject a project and on failing to justify it, I would be added to the rejection list.

My brain had started working in the background, I was all set to say NO to the project and face the consequences as I was desperately planning to get transferred to Bhubaneswar, my hometown.

They were already starting with the Knowledge Transfer and kept describing to me what my role was. The train of my thoughts was still running and I did end up interrupting them. The next thing that popped out of my mouth was, ‘Who would be the right person to talk to, if I were to reject this project?’. The Manager gave me a warm smile and spilled the tea saying that I had no option but to accept the project. I was infuriated and unnerved at the same time as this was just the beginning and it was too early for something like this to happen.

Considering what had happened the previous day, my manager asked me to have a coffee with her or as we can call it ‘Chai pe charcha’ which I didn’t know back then an it kept on making me feel strange and what was more strange was that she offered me to get transferred to my preferred location but with a twist. The twist being, I had to work exactly for a year in the same project and not just that I must   become the top performer of the year. And then I’d have my ticket to Bhubaneswar.

It felt convincing and I was up for it. I don’t know why but I was the only fresher who was assigned a night shift. I didn’t feel like it was a good thing because I would rarely get to interact with the rest of the team and most importantly the manager.

But then again this night shift turned out to be a blessing in disguise as I was making more money than my peer batchmates. These hefty pockets  started motivating me. I would perform excellently in every task I was given and enjoyed my work now.

The year had passed in a blink and it was the award announcement day. My manager was calling out the names of all the people who had won an award. I was patiently waiting for my name to be called out for the best performer of the year but someone else’s name got called out for it. Only one award was left and she asked us to guess who the winner could be. I was Clueless! I didn’t wanna guess…  And then my name got called out, out of the blues. The award that I had received was called, ‘Knight in Shining Armor’. My clueless self was now happy. She had recognised my hard work and was praising me for my dedication and perseverance.

We barely communicated this whole year yet she kept her word from the day she had made me an offer of getting me my desired location. And she did make it happen. She made some calls in the Bhubaneswar DC and got me transferred even when I didn’t exactly fulfill her criteria.

It’s not wrong when they say, don’t judge a book by it’s cover. Because I too learnt  that, ‘Not all managers in IT are bad’, but like I had with  my first manager, we can really have some great experiences.

Total Work Experience : 5 Years(Infosys)