Then we had five sessions on various topics including one on ‘Research and Data Acquisition’ by Yetch. But he made no mention of Wikipedia and instead spoke about analyst reports, white papers, online libraries and journals. I winked at him as he left but he didn’t seem to understand.

Cheeky bastard!

After lunch we were supposed to have a concluding session focussing on things like HR and promotion which everyone was eager to hear about. But the previous one by a Sydney principal on effective presentations went forty minutes over time and left us with only ten minutes in the end. Santanam, who was coordinating the day, suggested we just have a free and fair Q&A session where everyone present could talk about any HR issues they had with the firm.

It started off as a nice honest session. Vineet said that the company should give us accommodation for a few more days in Mumbai before we had to find our own place. Aditya, in his put-on accent, said that we should get more opportunities to work in projects abroad.

I pointed out that the amount of RAM we had in our laptop was highly inadequate for the amount of intensive data operations and analysis I do on a daily basis for the Panchatantra project. Jenson finally made a full ten-minute speech about how unlike the others he didn’t have a single thing to complain about, how he loved his job and how Dufresne had completely changed his life. Someone from HR took a photo of Jenson as he spoke, to use in the employee newsletter.

After all the new consultants had spoken Santanam asked if any of the more experienced consultants who had come to help with the orientation programme wanted to speak.

Suddenly Tony stood up and announced that he hated his job. All the projects were boring, most of our clients didn’t care for our work and were simply doing it to impress their board of directors. The principals and partners only cared about making more and more money. He said that all the new recruits were more concerned about making associate in March and that everyone just used Wikipedia to make huge decks full of bullshit.

Santanam told him to shut up and said that this was not a meeting to raise such issues. Tony reminded him that the idea was to have a free and honest Q&A session. Santanam said this did not include strong negative feedback and that Tony should have raised all this with Srikumaran Nair in HR. Someone in HR then said that Srikumaran Nair had left the firm in August. Santanam threw a paperweight at this fellow and asked Tony to quit if he was so unhappy. Tony immediately pulled out his notebook and then and there wrote a resignation letter. He handed it to Santanam and stormed out.

After a long awkward silence Santanam asked if anyone else felt the same way as Tony. Before I could say anything Jenson stood up and once again spoke about his undying confidence in Dufresne and how he loved every moment of the work and the team.