Goodbye Bangalore, Hello Mumbai!

Picking up from where I left off in my CAT 2008 post, both K J Somaiya and TAPMI announced their final selection list by the end of April, and I made the final cut at K J Somaiya!

I was happy with the result and all, but then came the important decision I had to make — to go ahead and do the PGDM (Post Graduate Diploma in Management) course, or stick on at Wipro and get some more work experience. Now this was a difficult decision to make. I quite liked my current job and there was no particular reason I wanted to leave, and more people I spoke to actually advised me to gain another year of work-ex at Wipro and join a better institute (reminds me of the 'Go for a Masters, or not?' article posted at Slashdot a while ago).

I was brooding over the matter for a couple of days, and these questions were running through my head —

1. Are you ready to go through another year of preparation, while balancing the 11-13 hour work days?
2. Are you confident of scoring more than 95 percentile next year and getting admission into one of the Ivy League institutes?
3. Few years from now, would you still like to pursue the technical line?
4. Are you sure you would be a good project for the next two years, considering that many of your batchmates are either on the bench or have been asked to come to office twice a week taking a 50% pay cut?
   

My answer was not a confident 'YES' to any of them, and after much consideration I decided to take up the course at K J Somaiya.

I informed my PM the following day (he didn't see this coming at all) and submitted my resignation letter. I was to be relieved by 22 May, so I had around three weeks to complete the transition to the people who would take over my role after I left, finish up some of my own tasks and complete the resignation/separation formalities.

21 May was my last day at office. I sent everybody a farewell email much in advance (to be on the safe side in case something like this happens). My team mates organised a small farewell for me later in the day, and they presented me a bag and said, "Here's a little something from us so that you don't forget Wipro" — apt words for what was inside. Much thanks!



The next day I travelled to the Sigma office at the other end of the city to complete the separation formalities. By around 3pm I was no more a Wiproite. Oh and speaking of long distances, it turns out I've covered quite a bit of Bangalore during my short stay of nine months! Check out this screenshot from Google Maps (the circled areas are the places I've been to) —



Karthik came to Bangalore on Saturday to help me shift all my luggage; never realised I had so much stuff! Went out for lunch with friends in the afternoon, wearing the shirt they gifted me (thanks guys!).


Caught the bus from Madiwala in the evening and reached Hyderabad yesterday. I'm going to miss the Cloud team at Wipro, the friends I've stayed with for the last nine months and all the fun times we had, but I look forward to what Mumbai has in store for me. The PGDM programme at K J Somaiya starts mid June, so I'm going to relax the next couple of weeks. After all, once the course starts I'm going to have a pretty hectic schedule over there!