It's nearly 14 months in my professional career, that I have spent at Sony Ericsson as a consultant...and yes, it is nearing an end in a few days...I thought it’s time to reflect upon a few aspects of this assignment and my experience here....
More than a year ago, one fine morning I stepped into this office and got introduced to some 30 odd people, spread across 2 floors (hardly remembered any names)...I found a vacant desk for myself and started working... ‘Don’t they have any kind of induction session or orientation program here’, I thought to myself... Next moment I had to remind myself, ‘Hey! You are no more an Employee now !!’...and rest is history.
Certainly, it is the most diverse work environment in which I have ever worked...In an AM team meeting,one has to just look around to find people from different countries, spanning across the latitudes and longitudes of the globe. I don’t think it could have got any more diverse than that, unless I get to work with Martians or AI Robots in future. J My team is composed of Swede, English, Chinese and me. No doubt it is one of the most easy going teams and fun to work with. A stark difference is that, there is no line manager whom I have to report to, which means that there is no performance appraisal and development plans...hurray !! it was a real blessing in disguise. J
As an Application Support Consultant, what you do is very similar to fixing a multiple punctured bike tube using patches, you are neither allowed to replace the tube entirely, nor, replace the tire, however worn out it is. (Of late, I am riding a bicycle, hence this stupid metaphor J).
Most of the times, one is on the messenger chatting with a customer, who could be broadly classified under the following categories: *Frustrated with a bug in the system (or) *Frustrated with self for not getting in terms with the system (or) *Screwed up something in the system (or) *Waiting to screw up something in the system.
When you are not on the messenger, you will be seen writing an email typically starting like, ‘Dear Customer, This is with reference to ticket number xxxxx….!!’. J
Apart from these, you are either attending meetings and Release related handover meetings...with every new release we solve a few bugs and manage to introduce a few new bugs and the cycle continues J....after all anything to keep the customer happy….: J
Well that’s all about work and lets come to fun at work. Of course the above mentioned things are no less fun. J Every Monday, at lunch hour, it used to be the Innebandy day and it was good fun. The local people are good at it; me and few others (read it as English man in my team J ) are the so called nuisance players. However I did manage to score a few goals both for and against my team during my short career as a bandy player, nevertheless all by fluke. Weekly Friday fika was another regular meeting time to have a cup of coffee and some goodies brought/baked by colleagues on a round robin basis. Apart from regular fika, we had Lussebulle on Lucia day, Semla on a winter day and Glogg on a day during Christmas time (Few events to get an essence of Swedish Culture). Another occasion for people to come together is the breakfast that occurs every alternate Fridays. All these contributed to fun at work.
Overall, last one year has been filled with plethora of experiences, fortunately all of which would be cherished in the years to come. :)
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