DWBI IT companies' review for Laterals

You are a 7+ years dwbi professional and you are looking out for your next switch. Many industry pundits would argue like product based companies and consultancies have better jobs , both in terms of the CTC and the kind of work, In this article I would like to emphasize why an IT professional shall stick to essentially IT companies while switching and which IT companies excel in the DWBI space and why an IT professional shall consider switching\being into these IT companies.

Please note this is just an opinion and the information below is based on what we hear in cafe discussions. This is not legal advise :)

It's always better to be in the IT service industry as it offers what is most important -

1. Job security.
2. A wide range of projects to move into from time to time.
3. Ability to work overseas and in India accordingly.
4. Though product based companies do offer high packages, most of their projects are internal, the exposure of which is nothing when compared to that of traditional billable projects.

Mid sized IT companies generally hire 7-8 years experience IT professionals as Project manager and leads for once in a blue moon client projects which they are able to bag.The upside is that there is tremendous opportunity for you in terms of CTC and client interaction. You can own the entire project. The only downside is job security as it is a project specific hiring.

Some of the top players in dwbi domain globally are as follows:

1. Cognzant - Every dwbi professional should definitely consider this company to work for. The work experience earned here is globally recognized in the dwbi space.

2. Wpro - Many wpro alumni have moved in dwbi product leaders like Informatica and are running the show there.Great company to work in new technologies.

3. IBbM - Is a market leader in analytics and every other thing. There is no dearth of projects but again that could change as per the geography.

4. Acenture- Another very nice to company to work for. Takes care of its employees and provides good CTC. Good number of projects across all domains.

5. Infy - It's great to see infy in the new avtaar. This company has managed to put back leadership issues and is now going great guns. A good option to consider.

H1B visa interview experience

Date\Venue – 11^th December 2015 – US Embassy, New Delhi

You may consider reaching 45 minutes before your time slot. It would be a good idea, if someone would accompany you to the embassy and wait outside, so that you may handover your mobile phones to him.

The place is bit crowded but the crowd is extremely well managed and things at the embassy go smooth.

Check 1 – Outside the embassy-  I was carrying my original documents along with the DS-160,Application confirmation and Passport from the VAC.I was told to produce my I-797 and it was stapled along with my passport.

Check 2 – Security Check. Its similar to that of the airport. I had to take off my jacket and wallet, and kept all my stuff in the tray which underwent a scanner. Simultaneously the guard scanned me with the machine.

We were made to wait in a waiting area and the entire line was told to move to the next stage inside the embassy.

Check 3-The gates of the main section opened up and I could see the portraits of American leaders .Nervous energy occupied the air and we were made to submit our finger prints. An officer was validating the same in the system and after a long pause confirmed my fingerprints.

Now we entered the main area, I could see around 7 to 8 counters with visa officials interviewing the candidates. The description of the visa officers were as follows:

1.       The sweet guy – Wearing a bow tie and sweetly asked the questions.

2.       The rude guy – Was asking questions in an aggressive way.

3.       The shrewd silent guy – This person meant business and was silent but extremely observant.

4.       The normal guy – Was asking questions in a normal tone and pretended to be confused at times.

5.       A young lady

6.       An old lady

There were some candidates that had chosen to be interviewed in Hindi like athletes and the American visa officials were asking questions to them in Hindi. I was quite impressed seeing this.

There was an attendant that was assisting the crowd to go the counters as per availability was directed to the Normal guy’s counter but was asked to shift to the ‘shrewd guy’s counter as it had a vacant space.

I greeted the Visa Officer and handed over the Passport and the I-797 to him.

VO – Whom do you work for?

Me- said my Employer’s name (only)

VO-Who is the client you shall work for?

Me – There is no client, the petitioner is XX.

VO – Where shall you be going in the US

Me – City and State

VO – Can you tell me something about the internal project that you shall be working on?

Me – I shall be participating in all phases of the SDLC starting from requirements analysis,design….

VO – Interrupted me ….No please specifically tell me about the product you shall be working on.

Me – I got extremely nervous here , I guess the VOs tone made me more nervous.I told him” We are building a product in the informatica product suite, that shall read data from an application databse and load the data in the cloud” (just said this line , although I could have carried on explaining but I decided to stop at this point)

There was a pause of 2 seconds.As though the VO wanted to hear more, but I decided not to explain    un-necessarily unless required.

VO – Your visa is approved sir.

Me – I stood there for some white receipt, I had read about in journals on internet.But he did;t give me any.

VO – Your Visa is approved sir, have a nice day.

Me-Thank you.

I came out of the embassy and didn’t stop for the courier services. Was too excited to stop.

VAC experience (US Visa Application Center)

Date\Venue - December 10^th 2015 – VAC New Delhi

My VAC was scheduled on 10-Dec-2015. I reached American Plaza ,Nehru Place around 1 hour earlier which was not really required. Everyone who has been given a particular time slot let’s say 12:15 pm (as in my case) may reach at least 20 mins earlier. The processing went smooth. As required, I carried my DS-160 and Application confirmation page along with passport. (Only these 3 docs required). No photographs are required as they shall be taken at the Visa Application Center (VAC).

Mobile phones in Switched off mode were allowed for the VAC.

Level 1 Check – At the entrance- DS-160, Application Confirmation page and Passport information cross checked. I was carrying a black and white printout of DS-160 and Application Confirmation page with clear bar codes. The Application Confirmation page was stamped with some seal. As the seal was dim, I asked the person to stamp my printout again.

Level 2 Check – I entered the VAC office and the guard asked me to switch off my mobile phone. He then checked me for any banned items and allowed me to enter.

Level 3 – I joined a queue inside the office and on reaching the counter, the officer checked my docs i.e. DS-160, Application Confirmation and the Passport. Then she pasted a sticker at the back of my passport which was earlier generated by a machine and had the same DS-160 id and passport number as mine. Please do not forget to get your Passport pasted by this sticker.

Level 4- I then collected a token from a different counter (like we do in banks) and sat in the waiting area. It’s not a very big place ,but a single hall where everything is happening ,just like a bank so no need to get nervous. I waited for my token number to be displayed on the screen

Level 5 – After waiting for 10 mins , my token number flashed and I went to the counter and submitted the three docs. The person asked me your name is XXX and your date of birth is XXX I confirmed.

Then he asked me to take off my specs and clicked my pic.

Then he asked me to put my left hand (4 fingers) on the scanner, and clean it with the cloth then after.The same process was repeated for the right hand and thumbs.

He then stamped my DS-160 form , returned my docs and wished me best of luck for the H1B interview.

H1B visa- Facts and Myths

Myth 01 - I cannot have H1B and B1 visa at the same time.

H1B visa application is a 1 year long process. You can have both H1B and B1 visa.The only condition is that if H1B is filed for client A. You may not file B1 visa for the same client A, it has to be anyother client other than client A.

Myth 02 - The client for which my H1B was filed, is no more with the company and I need to go for stamping.

You will have to apply for amendment of LCA , the client should be a current client of the organisation.Once done you can go for stamping.

Myth 03- Dependent Visa should be applied while stamping of the concerned H1B visa person.

Dependent visa stamping can be done later too.

Myth 04 - If I switch the company my current H1B visa will expire - False, H1B and B1 visa can be transferred from one company to other.L1 visa cannot be transferred.

H1B visa - High level process flow

Step 01 – Your name gets nominated for the H1B visa from your organization. You would need the following:

1.       Employee Salary Structure(ESS)

2.       Client Letter

3.       Letter from Onsite Manager

4.       LCA letter approved from Department of Labour-USA.

5.       Educational Certificates

6.       Work Experience Documents.

7.       If you have travelled on other kinds of visas to US, you would be required to provide the information of dates and places you have lived.

Step 02 – The Immigration services will process your LCA and once done will flag you. The LCA is done so that Department of Labour is sure that the company is not under paying you.

Step 03 – Your name shall be given to the USCIS for the H1B selection. If initial slot of 20000 is reached (which happens in most cases) additional 65000 visas are made available via lottery known as H1B-CAP for graduate degree holders.

Step 04 – If your name is selected then you will have to go for stamping of your passport with H1B visa to the counsellet.

Step 05 – Since the process takes over a year,the project\client from which the LCA would be processed may change, hence it is advisable to apply for LCA amendment with the new project\client. To achieve the same a new ESS letter and Transfer letter based on client location needs to be generated.

But we can parallely go and get the stamping done on the old LCA to save time.

Once the LCA is amended the H1B visa will also have to be amended.

Step 06 – Face the visa interview and if you pass you are ready to fly.

Disclaimer - This is not legal advice, I'm just jotting down my limited knowledge.

Stories of Big Daddies of the industry

Larry Ellison (Oracle) - Never gradated from college, learning was primarily based on Self study. He just picked up a book and started programming.

Bill Gates (Microsoft) - Never completed college

Steven Jobs (Apple) - Epic Misfit!!

The reason I need to write the same in my blog, that every s/w engineer needs to remind himself that he is working in an industry where degrees and certifications do not matter.What matters is your intellect, competence and aptitude. It gives a fair platform to a private engineering college or a correspondence student to compete against the ones coming from the elites institutions.So if you are good enough you are bound to make it big.The question is -Do you have it in you?

The Snow cap on the peak of frustration

The situation is similar to the second session of the third day of the test match.A batsmen well settled has to face the vicious spinner , trying to find a way through him. The fielders surround the batsman in the scorching sun, trying to mentally disintegrate him through sledging.

An IT job has a very similar situation when you are about to complete your second year. It is the time when you are on the verge of expanding your comfort zone within the organisation. You have successfully survived the viciousness and discouragement of your insecure manager and colleagues and ended up with decent appraisals. Impossible tasks are thrown upon you now and you are left with a feeling of whether to continue with the company.

1. A good decision would be have an offer in hand.
2. If you dare to  handle different kind of tasks thrown at you and are able to survive the same in your 3rd year, this could be your road to fame and growth within the organisation,which you had been eagerly waiting to walk all these years.
3.I had missed a similar opportunity in my first company at the end of  years when I had put down papers there.
4. Always remember - Never give in. (Cornwallis house motto), hold the fort and thou shall walk the path to glory.

How to work and not work at the same time.

Working in an internal project, where the project manager treats you like his pet slave?You need to stay in the job for another couple of months so that you could crack a company and put down papers in the present one?This post talks about the do's and dont's if you are in a similar situation.

1. Before you end up writing mails in which you would clearly deny the job assigned to you.Try out the following:
2. Never ever show any attitude at work or enter into altercations. It might worsen your situation.
3. Do your bit. People should not feel that you haven't even tried.
4. Try delivering a small working prototype so that you have something to show.
5.  Try not to react back to subtle or direct humiliations related to work by senior managers, understand that people around you should not matter,they are equally traumatized by the same people.
6.  Try to be chilled up.At times we think too much and things automatically come on track.
7. Remember the famous quote of Rocky Balboa - " No matter how tough you are,life will make you bend to your knees,and keep you permanently there. It is all about how much you can take and keep moving forward.Cowards end up blaming people around them".
 

Tips for a 0-2 year data professional

So you are another fresher who dived into the IT industry and is determined to learn the technology after getting into a development project.Every 2nd fresher's feels himself cheated after landing in a Production-Support profile.I was no exception.I was really dissapointed to have been trained in .NET/SQL Server and then landing in a technology called Informatica that too a production support profile. Worse, we were not working on a datawarehouse (Which I realized when I had started appearing for interviews)

Do not be afraid as there is always something to cheer about. I started off with simple monitoring, understanding the jobs at workflow/monitor level. Then trying to decipher which code at session level maps to what. We had extensive usage of shell scripts too in our projects. I took time and analyzed them.

The book: UNIX Shell programming by Yashwant Kanetkar was very handy in helping me understand and decipher the power of shell scripting in Informatica.It will help you overcome your fear of the black linux screen.

I believe developing is not the most important thing.For a 2year professional the follwing profile would be great

1. Exposure to all Informatica tools
2. Unix Shell scripting
3. SQL/PL-SQL
4. Try getting some hands on the reporting tool in your project along with the ETL tool.

Test cricket - Playing a long innings at work.

I'd started this blog to share the experiences I had at job.This includes both the technical and non-technical side of things. So I started to come up with this new tab,under which we shall discuss office psychology.I shall be sharing the difficulties that I had faced at office and how I had coped up with the same.

1. Never be an emotional fool at work, there are no friends or girl friends at work.
2. Make sure of having Simple,measurable,achievable,relevant and time bound (SMART) goals at work.
3. Working in an Indian IT company or an MNC having indians is like playing a five day test match.Each day of the test match can be mapped to an year at the company. Try avoiding people who make your blood boil during the 1st year, which happens to be the toughest. Once you have settled down and you know the pitch i.e. the organisational culture start by taking singles and graduate to boundaries. Remember Rahul Dravid who played the balls according to it's merit.
4. Do not be afraid of saying no to work in an environment you are not comfortable working in.
5. Being Nice to people is not licking and is an important art.
6. You are bound to be pulled down by known and unknown ways by all kind of people.Just assume them to be Jason Gillispes,Brett Lees and Glen mcgraths of your arena who are trying to sledge you for your wicket, Do not quit hang on duck the bouncers,ignore the sledges, close your eyes and ask for strength.