It’s been two and half months since I started my journey with Appiness. I have been having a wonderful time here. I’m delighted to share few of my most memorable experiences as an Android Intern. I will start from where all this began –
I applied at Appiness with just one thought “Let’s give it a try” but what changed my mind was the culture of this company. Later that day I was asked to take part in the Men’s Day Celebration and by the end of it, I was hugely impressed by how cordial people are here. After this was when I had a strong desire to be hired.
Earlier that morning my interview started around 10 AM, and at the same time one of the product managers got on a call with a client and he went on to talk to them for about 2 hours – this was after my first round. This left me wondering how much people talk and who this man was. What really surprised me was what he said after the call - “How much will this client talk…? Oh my God”. This incident stays in my memory as that is when I realised everyone here is like me.
The next round was the HR interview followed by a technical round, which really confused me, as I was unsure of whether the interviewer was listening to my answers or being sarcastic, because even I used to sarcastically reply to people by saying “uh-uh?” Irrespective of what I thought, I got selected and was ask to join on the 7th December.
This was an even merrier news for me as I consider 7 to be my lucky number and I was going to start off my career on my lucky day! And by looking at where I stand today, I believe Appiness is just the company I was looking for to start my career with.
My journey, so to speak, began with a very different experience – “Hi I’m Tamil” was how I introduced myself (that’s how I do all the time), of course, like usual, people thought I’m talking about my cast but no, my name is Tamilarasan. The reactions I got were priceless and the only metaphor for this situation I can think of is when Amir Khan revealed his real name in the movie “3 idiots” - Phunsukh WangDu. A few of the responses I got to my introduction were “I am a Malayali!”, ”I’m a Telugite!” and “I’m also Tamilian”. We all had a good laugh.
As they as, work hard, party harder – my journey at Appiness up until now not only involves a lot of learning from my Team lead – Siddiq but it also includes many recreational experiences – be it the fresher’s lunch where I couldn’t stop eating and yet missed out on trying a lot of dishes or the party at our CEO’s house. This company never fails to party – it’s almost like we redefine the phrase.
If you think this is fun, you have got to hear how we celebrate special occasions at work. I have never really celebrated Christmas but during this season of joy we played secret santa at work and even had a Christmas decoration competition. I was amazed to see the kind of enthusiasm people put in for both. Well, that’s not it – I had a very adventurous experience when I had signed up for Appiness FC but I honestly knew nothing about football. So we began practicing after work and riding to the practise arena was like riding to another city. It was in the outskirts of Bangalore, we kept riding and riding and finally at one point we thought we were lost and it was already 10 pm. And we still weren’t close. When we finally reached there, unfortunately, there was no electricity at the ground and we had to go to another ground. This night was a wonderful and thrilling experience for me.
Every working Saturday we have an event called “Dive In” and one of the Saturdays it was really interesting. It was a marketing round where we had to come up with an entire strategy to promote a product given to us. The product that was a “Broom Stick” and my broom was called “Jaadu by Maadu” and we were also the winning team – this was a very different experience as I’m a developer and I was doing something outside of my field. All in all, I can safely say this is one of the liveliest places to work at. I will never forget Appiness because it gave me the chance to start my career. From here is where I started to learn everything, both on a personal as well as professional level. The knowledge I’ve gained in these two and half months compared to what I knew before has a huge gap. I couldn’t have had a better launch pad than Appiness. Wherever I go in my life, Appiness will be the company that laid the base for my career. Thank You!
