The journey sails on...
I would like to share that I got selected by UPSC (Lateral entry drive) and started a new journey as Director (Digital Initiatives) with Department of School Education & Literacy, MINISTRY OF EDUCATION, GOVERNMENT OF INDIA
I was fortunate to have a great innings at Cognizant spanning two geographies and multiple accounts.
Looking back, the first question on the first day was "How long do you intend to stay in this company?" I was caught by surprise (what a way to begin) as that was the least thing one would expect as first question. I took a moment and responded "At least 20 years" (to beat 12 yrs at School + 8 at College). Never did I know that it would come true. While I was being congratulated for completing 20 fruitful years, I wanted to let everyone know the time had come to try something different.
Each project that I had worked has given me lot of learning, challenges and friends (professional and personal). Over the journey I was able to meet customers with 4 days to 40 years of experience; all with the same objective - Let's make things better.
BOAT of all does have a special mention – IBM Call for Code, GPOY Special mention awards. The experience also helped me crack UPSC. What started as a regional portal with a small base has grown into a National level platform catering to all the Degree and Diploma Apprentices.
Thanks to my peers, managers, management and definitely the team members (current and alumni) who have been instrumental in shaping what I'm today.
People tend to put more time with you, if you get nurtured to be a leader. That is Cognizant DNA. Wishing Cognizant the best!
Some of the memories to cherish
- Pixels do matter
- Spend weeks in getting a dashboard up and running that helps monitor a lot of complexities in the infrastructure. Give a demo and the question that gets asked - Can I change the background image to something else
- An analyst would be the best person to bring out UI for the requirement
- Somewhere we are getting choked. Drill down, drill down but in vain. Out of the quick thought, increase bandwidth - voila
- Prepare well for a presentation and you get to know at 9PM that it has to be done in Hindi
- 3 days of brain storming and convert a complex flow within 3 screens in a handheld device
- Pot luck at Muttukadu boat house. Get organized as 4 groups each with 2 laptops and trouble shoot an issue.
- Do a trip plan, erase it, plan again, erase it, plan again - cannot erase it as location is closed due to flood or winds or COVID.
- COVID work around in 3 days; full process in 3 weeks
- Think about the outcome differently - resulted in Post Apprenticeship Permanent Employment (PAPE)
Note:
I hope either the above does not give any kind of identifiers to what was done or details are available in public domain.
The above is just an indicative list & not intentional to leave out others as there is a lot to cover.
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Lead ERP Implementation Project Consultant
1moCongrats