In my previous company (Global Scholar/Harland Clarke), one fine day, I was asked to come for a meeting, where the HR director Gayathri Chandrasekharan was present along with the Engineering Director and my manager. The summary was, I need to leave the company in some time. The same HR director signed the offer letter of Xome.
Irrespective of who signed the offer letter, the job was given by Manikandan Sundaram, who was a in a way responsible for my job for almost 15 years.
Kiran Kumar SN was the only manager in the last 18 years, who gave me salary raise more than the inflation without taking anyone's help.
Srikrish Subramanian was one of the few managers who talk very clearly to the point, which makes a lot of difference during sensitive discussions. He also tried to give higher salary raise than the inflation by taking help from Narendra Modi and Arun Jaitley (who in turn took help from the reduction of Oil prices). Later they also could not help.
Whenever anyone asked me about CTO, I used to tell about Jaganmohan Vangal Thulasidass.
When you and your manager's work profiles are a lot different, it is not that easy to understand the value provided by your manager. Life in Xome was very smooth mainly because of the support of Ram Krishnaswamy.
It is not that easy to find a transparent manager like Raman Srinivasan.
For any issue Jocelyn Gaw used to bypass everyone and everything, and provided whatever I asked. In India, Pradeep Kumar Kanagarajan used to give me everything that I asked till he was handling IT.
As a Senior Developer Ramya Prasad helped me in debugging the code, and as a VP, she provided the work that I asked, and a lot in between.
If one gives the exact same update for many days, not every manager would be happy. But, Poomaran Shanmuganathan did not mind getting the same update, "Migrating Project X from .Net Framework to .Net 6" for many months with a variation in X. When Wazidshareef Mohammad presented an award for that, I was like, why an award for my role? Later when I talked to Kavin Franco, I realized that, it can be considered as the recognition of the complexity of the work.
Randy Croy always supported any new initiatives and never said no for anything.
I did not realize how valuable a project manager can be, till I started working with Pooja Patel. Any issue/blocker that we raised at night, would have been resolved by morning. She is the only project manager that I have seen, who stuck to the agenda of a standup (in a standup) and nothing else.
When we took a few issues to a senior leader, he suggested to be like Robin Secours, who does not allow anyone in her territory.
Eric Beck brought many new technological initiatives, some of which I could take forward.
Till Kannan Subramanian was in India, we used to have frequent communication, and I used to have a special ringtone for his number (Kannanule from Bombay movie). Once during an issue at mid-night, he tried to call me repeatedly multiple times, and that ring tone could not wake me up. Only when someone else called, I woke up (due to normal ringtone).
Vinoth Kumar Ganapathy had taken all non-technical challenges from me, and saved me a lot of time to concentrate on technical challenges. Later Santhosh N did the same.
Professionally, it should have been embarrassing for me, when Vamsidhara Reddy told more about my work (in my previous company) in his interview than myself in my interview for Xome.
I used to think, I pay lot of income tax than many others (proportionate to the income). Later, I realized that, Sateesh Naramsetti pays much more. I pay only the tax, and he pays tax along with interest and fine.
All the discussions (everything under the sky) I used to have with Jeevanram Kasiviswanathan years before joining Xome, continued even in Xome.
Except one, all other people who sat facing me did not stay for more than 6 months (after sitting at that place), whether it was Ravinder Kumar, Vinoth Kumar Sambath, Siva Shanmugam Umapthy or Sukumar Nataraj.
No one conducted the games better than Karthick Paul Ramachandran aka KP, whether it was TT or chess.
When one person asked in what all projects I had atleast some contribution, I said, almost all the projects except the ones that are handled by Mohanakrishnan Gopalakrishnan. Then, she commented that, then we both (Mohan and myself) could manage the entire company.
Whenever someone raises a bug in the code, the first response that would come from me (and many people) is, "It cannot happen". But, the typical response from Ashwin Ramesh is, "Yeah. I did not test that", even if the issue is a race condition, which cannot be tested in the normal flow.
Whatever little help that I have done for Balaji Srinivasan, he never lets me forget it.
The interactions with Phaneendra Raju Mudunuri was more after he left Xome than while he was in Xome.
Working with people like Immanuel Prathap, Sriram Parthasarathy, Venkata Kiran Mutha, Gadi Lingappa Kuruva, Vishnu Priya S and Florence made me like, I was a part of DevOps.
She mocks at a Senior Software Engineer, ignores a Team Lead, gets work done from Senior Architect, interviews 10 years experienced person casually. When I was supposed to go to US the next day, she got her work done from me, and in the evening, she gave me permission to go to US. What would be her designation and experience. She was Kowsalya Devi Palani, and this happened after she completed one year in her career.
Whenever I needed a voice over in a video, the only person that I used to call was Pooja Govindarajan.
With very brief interaction with Anjana Sherin Thangadurei, I got two ideas for hackathon with one win.
The small things that Rekha Dhinagaran did, made me smile or feel happier.
I have never met a better host than Melissa Fernandes. Her attention to detail was excellent.
Rikia Kosaka is very helpful and fast responsive. There was one time and only time, where we disagreed on one thing, and finding the root cause was one of the challenging things that I have done, which I cannot forget even after 7 years.
After taking an interview for Suneetha Chunduru, many people told me that, "Others" were interested in knowing the result. Nobody said, he was interested in knowing the result.
Whenever Mounika Sure asked what food I had, my response used to be either I was fasting or had only fruits and vegetables (During the peak of Corona).
Uma Maheswari is the only HR who scheduled interviews for me in three different companies either as an interviewer or interviewee or both.
When HR Shanthi asked me whom do I look up to in Chennai office, I was like, I was the senior most person who was still coding, whom do I have to look up to?
When Sharanya Suresh and Rajaraman Swaminathan were talking and said, I do everything that is asked, I wondered whether it was a sarcastic comment or real, because, I did whatever Rajaraman asked only after multiple follow-ups.
Preethi Chandrasekharan would have felt, it was easier to manage a school kid than me. [I said no for almost everything that she asked].
Sindhuja V uses the terminology of heaven for time. Her call for a moment lasts only an hour.
Being in Technical Role requires constant competing with young people. It was good to compete with Sai Charan Gondrala and Suvathy G who were born around the time I started learning programming. Of course, it was even more interesting to compete with Rammprasath K, who was born around the time I started working.
S Venkata Mohith Reddy introduced me to many new technologies, and helped me in improving my development.
PrasannaKumar Balashanmugam and Saminathan Nagarajan provided me challenges in different domains. I used to feel bad for not efficiently solving the problems of Veronica and Subhashini. I would have been more happy, if I had got chance to modernize things in their domain.
When Dinesh Palanisamy informed me that, I was shortlisted for the annual award (which was presented to me by Jay Bray), I was like why are they wasting an award by giving it to me. Instead they should have given it to another person who would get motivated by the award. I would have been much more happy, had Naveen Palanisamy or Sabaribalan R received that award. [One left the previous year and other just joined and was not eligible for the award.]. The consolation was, Naveenkumar M got rookie award in an annual event.
There were a few instances when I felt the compliment was better than any award. During a monthly meet, when Shyam Royal talked about me, I felt that was better than any other award.
Even for very insignificant help, Vinithra L used to thank me in public.
The most exaggerated compliment was, when Shawn Brown introduced me to Rich Lull as Scott Boston of Chennai.
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