The first few days of not being an i-flexer!

My first post after leaving i-flex, and its been 10 days since! And a hectic 10 days if I may add.

First few days in NIIT (Yes I've joined NIIT Technologies for those who don't know yet) have been decent enough... too early to comment whether its for better or worse, but its definitely not unmanageable, except for the commute. It takes me 1.5 hours or more either way, and for a person who has till date managed to stay close to office or have office transport available, this is definitely the most difficult hurdle thatz come in the new job. This blog is about my life at i-flex, so won't say more about my NIIT experience here.

Many friends have repeatedly asked me how it feels to be out of i-flex and into a new job. And I repeatedly keep telling them - too early to tell. Too early to tell what...??? The latter yes, possibly (will definitely take more than a few days to know how I feel about the new job), but how I feel being out of i-flex, it was very much evident and known much before I actually left.

Leaving i-flex, as I have said again and again, was definitely not an easy decision, but I think it was made much easier by the fact that last 1.5+ years was spent in Equinox (OFSBPO). Now before I'm misunderstood, the OFSBPO experience was great, with ample amount of learning coming with it. But no one would deny that the Equinox office culture was nothing like i-flex (maybe better, maybe worse, but definitely not the same). Had I been in Bangalore or Mumbai when I resigned, it would have been much much more difficult. But in a way my exit was cushioned by the move to Equinox (much like if you fall off height but a break in the fall saves you from getting hurt). When I moved to Equinox, I was still connected to i-flex but at the same time, it was already like joining a different organization, and the final exit in a way was from Equinox, and not from i-flex.

Still, severance from equinox wasn't easy either, as I'd grown into a comfort zone in equinox pretty fast, made a lot of good friends in Gurgaon office, and in a way had recreated i-flex for myself there. There are a lot of things I'll miss about i-flex, some I may come to ignore, some I may get in other places, and yet, some that will always be missed. The recognition that came to you when you walked into any office (Gurgaon, Mumbai, Bangalore) even when in some cases it was after years is something I doubt I'll ever get elsewhere. And I know, even now after leaving i-flex, I'll get the same whenever I choose to walk in.

A recent example of this was when I was in GO office and a security guard came up to me. The gentleman was happy seeing me (I was seeing him after at least 5-6 years) and told me that he is now based in SEEPZ and happened to see my entry in SEEPZ register a few months back on his off day and was disappointed to miss the chance of meeting me. This incident touched me a lot... getting this kind of respect from Security/Housekeeping after so many years is something I hold more dear than getting the same from other colleagues. Not to sound prejudiced, its just that with others, even if you don't visit them in their office, you tend to interact on email/messenger, but with the security staff whom you've not interacted at all in years, and even when you did it was limited interaction... you'll assume they'd have forgotten you by now! And the fact that they still remember you shows you must have done some good.

Now that I've started in the new organization, I wait and watch how things will turn out. Maybe life will be good after all, but it will never be the same!