A few days back I got a call from an alumnus about a job opening at Rediff in my domain (server side craziness :P). Initially I was a bit surprised because I was not expecting something like that at all. After discussing a bit more about it, I returned to my room and forwarded the resume. Two days later while I was in RnD Showcase, I got a call from Rediff regarding the interview timings. It was scheduled on Saturday 21st at 1PM.
Saturday 21st
In the morning at around 9:40AM, I got a call from Sumit Rajwade (VP, Tech, Rediff) asking if interview can be conducted at 10:30AM. I replied positively. I got a bit nervous as I had to quickly arrange a place where we can meet. Arranged a conference room. At around 10:15AM, I got another call from Sumit saying that he was at coffee shop. I was deeply shocked. Coffee Shop :O I couldn’t really figure out what was going on. In my point of view, coffee shop is THE best place in IIIT Hyderabad. For me its a holy place 😛 When I reached coffee shop, I saw two guyz enjoying cold milk. Sumit said, “Whenever I come to IIIT, I always visit coffee shop. I can’t miss this cold milk”. I was still dumbstruck.
After brief introductions, interview started. He asked some NATing questions seeking answers at TCP level. I was able to answer those. Then we moved on to open source domain. Talked about Apache compression and keepalive for sometime. Then we moved on to squid and caching. I feel so good when somebody asks me something about caching/squid. Have been experimenting with caching/squid since last 1 year. Then we exchanged a few thoughts about our interests. Luckily there were no questions about printf statements. Then I briefed him about things I have been doing since last four years. After that he introduced me to the kind of work they are expecting from me. It looked pretty awesome and inspiring at the same time. Few more thoughts exchanged and it was all done. I was asked to take some time out to visit Rediff Head Office in Mumbai.
All in all, it was fun talking to Sumit. He has been hacking (here hacking means hacking and not cracking) open source softwares since years. Inspiring personality.
The most shocking thing to me was the coffee shop part of it. I never imagined that I’ll be interviewed at Coffee Shop.
I think you shd give the coffee shop guy a big party. 😀 🙂
He has been running “The Holy Place” for many years…
Totally Awesome!Congrats 🙂
Well.. I’m expecting the next post.. about your visit.. to Mumbai 🙂
cool.. congrats!
Congrats ! 🙂
pretty impressive..
$ bhai … congrats 🙂 badhiya hai beta ab to Mumbai Teri jaan hai ..
waise “Ka haal Ba”
Congrats! Great! Keep it up!
Many of the interviews are held in fairly relaxing environments especially when one goes to company or institute for an interview.
At IIIT, coffee shop is the best place. Should have few more such places. Let us hope some of the bamboo structures become those.
The best part of this episode is – excellence will be sought where ever it exists. There will be right job available for a person who achieves excellence. Hopefully you can work there and continue your further studies here.
@Kapil yeah.. he deserves a party for sure 🙂
@Deepti thanks 😀
@Pankaj its already in drafts 🙂
@Bharat thanks .. and lol at your avtar 😛
@Sanrag thanks 🙂
@Atul haal achchha ba 😉
@K thank you very much for such an inspiring comment. I too hope that we’ll have more structures like coffee shop in forthcoming years 🙂
interview at coffee shop … naaice …
coffee-shop trivia : the holy place was non existing 5 years ago. This guy used to sell coffee and cold drinks under the stairs near the second gate of main building.