18 September 2017

Throwback to my first job in life!!!

He has lived all over the country – East Coast, West Coast, Arizona, Midwest… and went back to India a couple of times. But finally, I was able to nail him down – of all places, in Appleton, Wisconsin! The first time I met Qazi was in 1991 in Mumbai when I joined my first job. I think we both joined on the same day. In fact, we started working in the same project.

The way he used to crack jokes (mostly “groaners” or what my daughters call – “Dad Jokes”) and imitate others was hilarious. Clearly the clown prince of our project, he used to keep us regaled most of the days. He even started our own regular journal for the project team – “Dungeon Times”. (We used to work in the lowest floor in the building).

He has not changed much (I saw him for the first time after nearly 25 years). The spontaneous impressions he did of our old project mates had me rolling on the floor in Starbucks last week. And they brought back a lot of memories from that project where I spent about a couple of years.

Since I was never good at coding, I moved away from it eventually. Qazi stayed on the technology side. That led to some good discussions on the evolution of technology – or rather the evolution of programming over the last forty years. More importantly, where it is headed in the future. Thoroughly enjoyed the discussion!

Thank you Qazi for making some time for me in the middle of the day. Would love to continue with our discussions…



Posted September 18, 2017 by Rajib Roy in category "Intersection Points

13 COMMENTS :

  1. By Sudeep Ahluwalia on

    Rajib, I don’t agree with your one statement about you not being a good coderf – you were a pretty good coder as I recall from CPC project in 1991. I remember the pre-processing code that you wrote which , if my memory serves me right, injected some code in “C” files from “.h” files.

    Reply
  2. By Anish Gupta on

    Rajib – Not good at coding??? I recall you were a perfectionist at IIMA in ensuring quality code, speed at which you completed coding any assignment, and most importantly your “finicky” approach to indentation and nomenclature!!

    Reply
  3. By Padma Parthasarathy on

    There was something about COSL, right? We had such fun while working very hard. In FASTER, those of us who worked at night used to leave messages for the day team in the form of poems. The last 30 minutes before we left were spent composing this missive. Ravi Apte, you created a magical place for us to start our careers in :).

    Reply

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