4 June 2006

7.15 p.m.

Samantha called me up in the evening and told me that I had been assigned to an outstanding higher education project out of Mumbai. The Panchatantra University project was one of Dufresne’s most prestigious ones and I would be the leading senior analyst on the case. Which is a relief. Apparently it sucks to be the juniormost on a project team. Now I can boss over a few other analysts at least!

Okay, more later. I have a conference call to kick-off the project in ten minutes.

9.20 p.m.

Can’t write much now. My ears are sore from the conference call. We have a kick-off lunch tomorrow to discuss strategy.

There is one principal, one manager, three associates and only one senior analyst on the project. Everyone agrees that it won’t be a particularly taxing project. Santanam, the principal, said that we won’t need three months to finish, but Dufresne would ‘bill the bastards anyway’ so we should cover maximum ground in the beginning and then ‘scale back delivery velocity through the end of the project’.

Excited! But also sleepy.

Still no gas. Need to order in pizza.

5 June 2006

7.13 p.m.

Just had the longest lunch of my life. Or maybe even in the history of mankind. Freaking unbelievable. We were at Out of the Blue in Bandra for three and a half hours.

Three and a half hours! Man …

When I reached office in the morning, Shailesh immediately introduced me to Tony, Karthik and Kartik. The three associates on the Panchatantra project. They all seemed nice if not particularly sociable and looked a little upset when I told them that this was my first project at Dufresne since joining.

Tony said that the work I did for Project Copper Chimney was only ‘number-giri’ and not ‘real’ work. I was a little irritated by this. But he has this odd habit of not looking into my eyes when speaking and so it was difficult to have a conversation with him and set him straight.

I made a little joke about there being way too many Kart(h)iks in our team and both the Kart(h)iks laughed extremely fakely. I asked them what their surnames were, so that I could at least distinguish them that way. And it turns out that they are BOTH Subramaniams. And then I learn that they are both from IIT Chennai, both mechanical engineers, both from Chennai and both from the business school in Bangalore.

And yet, Tony whispered to me while I gave him company for a smoke, they both hated each other with a vengeance. They’d scored almost exactly identical marks in the annual evaluation last year. Both had got E ratings—‘Exceeds Expectations’—overall and a 90 per cent plus rating on peer review. Both of them had joined Dufresne together from campus and spent exactly the same time in the firm. As per policy, both were eligible for promotion to senior associates last year. There were no other associates with their seniority and it was up to Jerry to take the call. But then at the last moment the Asia-Pacific HR head called up from Bangkok to say that India had been allocated only one senior associate in 2006-07. This of course completely complicated things for poor old Jerry.