The trouble with A7

A lot has been said about placements this semester. Now I am a very apolitical guy(lol) and don't want to get into any controversies so I am not going to post any details... at least not until there are companies yet to come.

Now I don't think I will be going against any of the guidelines that I have laid down above by stating that non-A7 people are.. how do I put it.. disgruntled by the present situation and are reviewing their options and 3 years' past decisions. And I don't think I would be wrong to say that they, during the last month have spent a few painful introspective sleepless nights.

I will relate to you an incident that shows how different the other side of the coin is, how greener the grass is and how true Bill Gates' quote is, "LIFE'S UNFAIR. DEAL WITH IT!"

It happened a week ago. All our royal A7ites were already... ahem well placed, and the rest of us were looking for better options, to put it mildly. Now comes Google. Now from my point of view, it is THE Dream company.. or rather a fantasy company, one for which most A7ites should be willing to give an arm, an eye, a testicle(if they have one or two :) ) and a close relative.

Now I attended the PPT(pre-placement talk) to get a feel of Google. Now after the usual listing of various awards, historical events, financial worth and the like, they came to the package. Now I don't want to give figures but they were offering two and a half times of what I would gladly accept from an IT job.(..hey wait, I think I actually did). Now I looked around and nothing could prepare me for the sight I beheld. All of them looked at each other as though there was an insect they were trying to shoo away. The audacity! They're expressions were like, "Is that it? No No there has to be more". MORE MORE, Now for a few seconds I had thoughts swirling around my heads, mostly involving close family members of A7ites, but I somehow kept them to myself.

Now the wing had plans of a trip to Delhi the next day. Now I felt that these guys wouldn't come. I mean, its Google after all. So when I asked they replied, "Nahin yaar, Google lite. Bhagwaan kare GOOGLE ke test mein pass na ho. Saala man hi nahin kar raha tha test dene ka". This statement if, said at any moment of time other than this, to any person whatsoever, anywhere in the world would have been dismissed as witty sarcasm. But what it brought to me was... pure unadulterated "WTF?". I mean c'mon, God. I know life's unfair and I'm trying to deal with it. But not this... anything but this. The trip was planned such that I could come back and sit for a job that would have paid me marginally less than the half of Google's pay package, all in the name of a core job. And here we have people carelessly dismissing the company that is identified with their discipline. Truly amazing.

Lesson learnt-
Will try not to kill someone next time something similar happens, or at least plan better so as not to get caught.