June 10th 2006 - Graduation ceremony was over at university of cincinnati and it was time for me to start. I had already got the contact of a software consultancy from mouli and was in touch with sam geed from that consultancy. They had asked me to come over to san jose. The direct flight out of cincinnati to sanjose was very costly so I booked a flight out of Columbus in Ohio. I took the greyhound bus to columbus and asked my friend Gokul to help me out. He let me stay in his apartment and dropped me at the airport the next day. I don’t remember if I had a connecting flight or not.. but on the last leg of the flight into sanjose, I was sitting right at the back of the airplane and no one was in any of the seats within reaching distance. The airhostess kind of gave me a doubtful look but was nice enough to ask if I wanted anything, I asked for coffee and milk. She stared a bit but brought it for me. She stood for a second to see what I was doing and when I poured in the milk into the coffee, she said ooh.. u take milk with coffee.. and I said yes smiling. When I landed in sanjose airport, I saw that the handle on my suitcase was broken. I complained to the flight staff and they suggested they can take any of the suitcases which was left behind but I had to give my suitcase to them. The alternative suitcases was worse than my suitcase so I said its ok and left. Sam was waiting in the parking.
PWCUS was the software consultancy name and the person heading it was Chuck (chockalingam from tamilnadu. He had done his university in annamalai university.) Sam geed was the main recruiter. After reaching, I was accommodated with a few other MS graduates like me. We started to take Siebel CRM classes. I was late and in the middle of the teaching session so it did not make a lot of sense to me. Somehow I ended up in an altercation with one of the roommates and I called the police. The police got angry that I had called for a frivolous reason and left. The people in PWCUS decided to give me a different room. Then started the siebel analytics course. I learnt siebel analytics from scratch and was soon able to install a AWS siebel server in a clean PC and setup the whole thing. I also made friends with the others at the PWCUS office.. a few I can remember are pampa reddy, kriparam mannaraj, ajay tummala. Ajay used to also invite me to play cricket with him with a leather ball. Kriparam and sam used to play with the tennis ball cricket association and I also tagged along. I soon found that there was also a bunch of people playing cricket on the play ground nearby. Thats how I came to know Ramneek real. I also remember befriending a telugu person (Venkat??) who had moved to US much earlier.. he was also bald like me. I think he was a citizen or atleast his residency was firm. I ended up joining with ramneeks team and playing with that team.
Although I was also becoming well versed in siebel analytics, I was also trying to get a job in electrical engineering so my degree is not a waste. I had attended a job fair and had gone a company stall saying formfactor. I talked to the person there and he said he was not the hiring manager but adam was. He asked me to come back later. I went around the other stalls, chatted with a few other jobseekers also and finally came back to Formfactor stall. I had a talk with adam.. he said they might be interested and asked me to go onto their website and apply. I did that. But I thought that was that and forgot about it until one day morning Emad called. He just asked if I can take the interview now and answer a few questions. I initially said yes and then within 2 mins I realised I was not prepared. So I requested another time to talk. Before the phone interview, I went on their website, read about all that they were doing, read about the related courses I did and also some extra, revised my thesis and waited. The phone interview went well and I also told them what I knew about their work. Emad said,”looks like you did your home work” we would like to have you for an in-person interview.
The confirmation for the direct interview came from a HR person called Taran Dhillon. She had given the time, the interviewers details and the address. I saw the name Uttara Sampath and thought thats fantastic..I had assumed that she must be a married woman with kids and I might be able to get good south indian brahmin food which was non-existent in US.
On the day of the interview, I rented a car (Chevy Aveo) from a rental agency with my discover card and started driving. At Fremont, I took the wrong exit and started driving in the wrong direction till I came on a exit sign saying santa clara. I was sure I was going in the wrong direction so took an exit and asked help in a gas station. The person there helped out and told me how to go on my way. I called taran dhillon and said that I will not be able to make it in time and asked what to do. She asked if I was on my way and asked if I can reach by 10.30am. I said Yes. I reached Formfactor and went for the interview. The people who interviewed me were Emad Hreish, Ryan Matsuura, Uttara Sampath and Stefan Graef. Ryan seemed new to interviewing and was smiling most of the time. We became very good friends later on. Uttara sampath to my surprise was a younger girl, she asked a few questions and I answered where I could. Finally she started to find faults in my resume like I was putting gpa of 3.24 and things like that. I was really angry and was about to say.. you are also like me only. But I just did not. I later found her to be very quiet and non-interactive. Adam told me that she was from pune and knew four or five languages and was very intelligent. Anyway that only irritated me because I felt that I was somehow lesser. Anyways, as I was driving back from the interview still angry with uttara picking holes in my resume, the front right wheel burst and there was a jerk in the steering wheel, and suddenly I noticed a toyota some suv coming up behind me, so in a hurry to correct the wheel and control the car, I also slammed on the brakes. The car went into a skid and I ended up smashing a good length of fencing on the side of the highway. I tried calling for help and also the card number but I could not reach anyone. So I just stood by the car and my legs were shaking. FInally a police car came up and the officer came over and talked to me. I told him, I was coming back from an interview and this happened.. he said thats ok, I can see the skid marks and I will write an accident report and he gave me a card. When people at PWCUS learned about the accident, chockalingam called me to his office and scolded me. I realized he was only trying to take care of his people and so I kept quiet. Later I was informed that I was selected and I ended up joining formfactor.
On joining, I met the team of Ben (malaysian), Ryan Matsuura, Uma, Jagjit saini, Rose chao and Uttara. As I was learning the first steps, I started talking to people and realised that jagjit was a bit stressed and was working all the time. I went over to her and tried to talk. She did interact too..and when I tried to see if we can give her a break from sitting at her desk and eating.. I asked if I can go to lunch with her and rose if possible. She suddenly said, if I want lunch, I will ask my husband. I realized I was misunderstood and stopped talking. But I continued to talk with other people and make friends.. The first person I met from sales was Dane Granicher, good guy with a straight forward approach and talk mannerism. As we continued work, I realized that things were a bit tough.
In the middle, I also had to find a way of leaving PWCUS which had sponsored my H1B and shift the H1B to Formfactor. I was a bit stupid and incompetent at handling the situation and ended up messing things up. Anyway, a deal was struck and I had to pay 5000 USD to PWCUS and they will give me the copy of the H1B, I borrowed money from the other guys in PWCUS paid the money and transferred the H1B to Formfactor. During this time, I got in touch with a friend called Saravanan Namasivayam from Chennai who had done his GRE/TOEFL Classes with me and another friend. We three had a great time together and we roamed around chennai when there was no class. Now, saravanan said, lets find an apartment together somewhere between san jose and livermore so we both can goto office. We found an apartment on Fremont Blvd / Leslie street. The first month electricity bill was a lot even though we had not stayed the entire month.. I remember thinking whether they bugged our apartment and were making us pay the bills for it.. but laughed at the thought like it was an inside joke. It was funny then..
As I started to learn my job, and also play cricket with ramneeks team, and spend time going around fremont, livermore temple and such. I started to find time in the evening to say sahasranamam in the shiva vishnu temple at livermore. I made friends with one of the priests and also a person from livermore laborataries who came to the temple. Eventually, I saw suresh narasimhan in the temple and talked to him. He said he was working in Quality department and we started to talk regularly in the evenings.
Somewhere in between, work began to become hectic and there was discussion that the title Project leader should be changed and the HR description of Electrical Design Engineer should be used. This was because every person in the company was reaching out to the project leader whenever something happened and this created a lot of work in addition to design and such.. Jagjit was also starting to send emails complaining that work should only be 8 hours and things like that. Around this time, I had become good friends with just about everyone..Theresa weeks from engineering, Sergio from Mask, Stas, Sam (tamilian),James Wu, Ram Golla, and a whole lot of other people.. just cannot recollect their names after all these years.
Around this time, I started to have arguments with Saravanan, he had gone to India and had gotten engaged. He told me the entire story.. he also suggested he will help me find a job because he thought I was working too much.. he said that after I told him about certain things. But I said its ok, I will just get the first year of work experience under my belt and switch as changing after 6 months will make it tough for me in the job market. But eventually when the lease ended, we had to move out. Saravanan was going with his friend and we had a few arguments but I ended up asking suresh narasimhan for help. He said he can allow me to stay with him in his house in 5 Kansas Way in Fremont. So moved in with him.
Around this time, my college classmate Kishore had come to bay area on a project. I went to meet him and we decided to go on a small road trip with his friends. That day morning, we filled my petrol tank and started to drive out..when I heard a small click behind me, I turned slightly to see what it was and ended up pulling the steering wheel. As I was accelerating to join the road from the gas station exit and also turned the steering wheel involuntarily, I ended up hitting a lamp post. None of us was hurt because of our seat belts. But the front right side of the car was crunched completely. Kishore later said one of his friends who was sitting in the back had a little chest pain.
But immediately after the accident, we did not know what to do and so we just walked to their apartment nearby. After a glass of water when I returned to my car, the police were already there. There was a lady officer and a male officer. The lady officer was quiet but the male officer was quite angry, he gave me a piece of his mind and said I was very close to being arrested. I was scared but sincerely told him the truth that I was really in shock because my car was in an accident and I did not know what to do and so had gone to my friends apartment to get some water and was coming back. The police called a towing company and the car was towed.
The towing company later called and told me the damage was bad and the insurance will not cover the damage. I thought it was such a nice car and did not want to loose it. So I reached out to a indian/fijian automechanic and asked if he can fix the car. He said he can and took the car and helped me arrange insurance payments to him. He also gave me a stand by car to drive. Saravanan had introduced me to this mechanic when he was trying to fix his car. Saravanan also had helped me find my car when he drove me down stevenson blvd and across different carsellers. I think I bought that car at the toyota company. We had tried different cars before and saravanan had said those were not good as I did not have full control. When we test drove this car, he said he felt finally safe and laughed. So we bought the car for 7000USD. I had no clue it was a cadillac till one day at a gas station, I found a guy staring at my car and he said.. “cadillac? Good car..”. Thats when I realized its a pretty nice car.
It took a long time to get back the car and I was also with Suresh at that time and he was also insisting that I get the car back. After a slightly bitter discussion, I got the car back.
On one day, it so happened that I was trying to complete a design and I was not really getting alot of help with things I did not know. Because of this, I was ending up working late and still getting it wrong. Finally when the design review again came up wrong. I just took emad to a conference room, told him I am bloody irritated and taking 2 days leave and left.
When I went home, suresh asked what had happened and I told him. He scolded me thoroughly and asked if I had come to work or go on a holiday and forced me to go back to work. Which I did. Later, we learnt that jagjit saini had decided to leave. In the midst of all this, I had also made friends with Martin Schonhoff from germany office and also nikhil verma. We three started to hangout after office when possible. I went out to clubs with both of them twice. First time, I ended up vomiting badly. Second time, we went out, it was with susan fan from mechanical department and a friend of Martin who looked like klotskin, a professor from cincinnati. We went around SFO that night and I reached home around 3-4am. We did not really go out after that. But through Nikhil, I also met a few R&D people who were in another office. By this time, through all the attention to my car, I was getting attached to it.
After sometime. Rose Chao called a lunch for everyone at Livermore. We all went.. and jagjit was there. They announced that jagjit was pregnant and that she was walked out of the office without being able to return to her desk because she was complaining about working long hours. This disturbance about long hours started to do the rounds and finally we ended up in a meeting with the entire team, the HR vice president (a lady) and Richard freeman. They were beating around the bush the whole of the meeting and me being stupid, inexperienced asked something like..”are we going to do something or not” for which richard said “ we will definitely see what we can do”. Later I left a voice message to Adam saying I thought that was useless.
Things kept rolling and suddenly suresh said that I have to move out of the house and find another place. He had also helped another guy from india to stay with us and we kind of understood a bit of each other. He was from kerala. When I was asked to move, I shared that I was looking for accommodation with sam at the office and a few others. Sam suggested I look for a place in pleasanton since it was nearby. And I started looking for pleasanton rooms online. I got a advt for a room for 800 USD and decided to not follow up since I thought it was costly. But there were not many other advts. When I tried to call another advt.. the same person emailed me and asked if I was still looking for an apartment. Well, I did not have a lot of options so I took it up.
Around this time, I was regularly having lunch with ryan and ben and whoever will come join us. We also had lunch once with the sales team. They were starting up the singapore branch around this time and the VP of singapore happened to be in livermore, so I went with him and ryan also once or twice. People like gensaku nagai from japan also joined us for lunch whenever they were in town.
One day, the VP of HR came over and asked me if I can help a recruit from singapore to settle down as he was supposed to be trained to be a project lead in singapore. He was kelvin lim. She gave me the apartment address which the company was providing for him. When I went over the first time, kelvin was still jet lagged. But anyway, I ended up being friends with him but eventually a larger singapore group came in for training in pcb and other teams and he joined that group.
When I moved into pleasanton, everything was ok. Until, the guy who rented me the room said he was moving away and his friends will stay in the house. Around this time, I also met Rajesh Khanna a college friend.I took him and his friends to the cinema showing in Dublin arranged by formfactor and introduced them to a few people.
This was happening and I was also asked to use the new T3 technology to design a solution for texas instruments. It was not going to work. But I made a few adjustments and so it just fit the requirements. But I had forgotten to add a marker which said, this side up. And my colleague angela loo added it for me and cheerfully said..krishnan, I added that in your design, so don’t worry, you don’t have to do it again.. She was actually helping out like a good friend. But that small marker made a big difference and the mistake was found at only a very late stage. The first few emails were ignored by me but the issue escalated until there were too many people in cc and someone put my name in Capital - KRISHNAN PARTHASARATHY.. I was shocked looked at what was happening and found the issue with the marker. I designed a solution without opening my mouth and also sent out detailed instructions for the corrective measures. After that Emad came over and asked me to call a meeting to clear the old problem and coordinate the settlement of the design. It was a bit too much for me and I did not know who were in the meeting and after 45 mins.. I gave up and told emad, I really don’t know what to do.
Thats when the problem started.. till then, things were great.. I also found that uma was going hiking with roy and tried to join them 2 or 3 times. It was fun.. but just walking around the bushes was not very interesting to me. So I stopped. But the new roomie at pleasanton started picking unnecessary fights. One day as I was starting to work. I forgot my id and went back in to get it. I had left the key in the ignition and the door open. When I came back the car door was closed and the car was running. I did not know what to do and called angela to tell her to tell sanjay that I will be late. Then I called nikhil to see if he can come over and help. He came over immediately, drove me to the post office and helped me get my car registration copy and then drove me to the cadillac showroom in pleasanton/dublin… and get a duplicate key made. Sanjay Arora was now the manager because he was called from canada to replace adam. Adam had informed me two weeks before he left the manager position that he was asked to move and he will be looking at doing something else at the company. Eventually, the genial head of design Kunio Hasebe also left suddenly. He said that he will now relax and go fishing.
Soon after, I noticed that it was time for servicing my car for 60,000 miles. So I drove it over to the cadillac showroom and was surprised to see smoke coming out of the bonnet. I eventually proceeded to give the car for servicing and told them about the smoke. They gave me a substitute rental car but ended up extending the time they kept the car.. excuses given were like..there was a strike and parts were not being delivered.. some nuts or bearings in the engine needed to be replaced and such. After spending a lot of the rent for the rental car.. I just told them to return the car so I can drive it away. I took the car and left. The roommate at pleasanton was also creating problems.. one day he put a bunch of wooden twigs in the toilet and said it would not flush. I bought a plunger, cleared the twigs and cleared the toilet also. I also communicated I was having these issues to rajesh khanna, he suggested that I move in with him. I said ok. But the car also started giving unknown problems..the indian/fijian guy said there was dirt in the petrol which has clogged the engine and the car will not start. I was tired of him and just told him to start the car and give it back. When I drove the car back to rajesh khannas apartment in grimmer blvd, it would not start again when I was going to leave.I had to call Allways towing from fremont. They came towed the car and again gave me differing problems. Finally I got the car back and it was already time for me to return to india for my parents 60th anniversary. So I took the car and rajesh khanna to my pleasanton room, moved all my things to rajesh’s apartment in fremont and went to the SFO airport to board the flight. I was basically out of money after spending all my cash on the unexplained repairs of my car. But I was super happy that I was returning home.
I had been in pleasanton from september to october 2nd when I left for india. In india, it was a great time, I had gotten engaged, the engagement was a big ceremony and all our family had come.Everything was so happy.
I have already described what happened after I returned to SFO on November 2007 to you.
