2011 was a year full of many experiences, and in contrast to the previous 4 years (except 2009), there were more good/interesting experiences than bad ones. Most of these experiences were acquired during my internship at Yahoo! Labs, Bangalore.
The offer for internship came around February. The timing was good- it served as a morale-booster at a time when my morale was in the lowest possible ebb. A journal paper had been rejected recently, but even worse, i had no direction to work on. So I was rather pleased to get the offer. After consultation with my advisor, i fixed the period of the internship from 2nd May to 29th July. I had been told who would be my mentor, but not what my project would be. At any rate, I had been assured that it would be on Machine Learning. I knew that here was a chance for me to resurrect my failing PhD, and I must make the most of it.
On 2nd May I had been asked to report to Yahoo's Embassy Golf Link office at 9AM. A week before, I had travelled to the place and located the office. On D-Day i woke up at 5:30AM, shaved, bathed and dressed in formals, nibbled a few biscuits and around 7AM, left IISc. I boarded a bus, and after changing at Majestic, getting down at Domlur, walking for 15 minutes and waiting 10 minutes to cross the Intermediate Ring Road, reached the office around 8:30AM. There was a huge, plush building with glass door and a fancy reception hall. It was Monday, and every Monday Yahoo takes in a group of new recruits. I was asked to wait in the reception hall, along with the new joinees. I spent time watching the televisions which were flashing news about the killing of Osama on the previous night. Around 10AM, we were hearded off to a medium-sized lecture hall. A HR member called Vineeta Varkey conducted the orientation of the group, introduced us to the different facilities in Yahoo and made us fill up lots of forms. She also divided us into random groups of 6, and conducted a short GD on why Yahoo is special. There were about 45 people joining on that day, of which only I seemed to be in a technical position. Most of the people were older than me, and came from other companies. By the end of the particularly boring day, I had my laptop and accessories, but the cubicle which had been assigned to me turned out to be already occupied by someone else! But it was already nearing 5PM, and at 5:30 the vehicles leave. So i had to pack up for the day without even meeting my mentor and manager, though I did find out their cubicle numbers from Vineeta. I had to speak to the transport officer Mr. Venky and he assigned me to a cab (Yahoo has a fleet of 50 cabs in addition to shuttle services and late-night cabs). I boarded the cab-a Tavera- and returned home after a long journey through heavy rains and heavy traffic jams.
Next day I again had to come to office by myself, and this time after breakfast went straight to the cube of my mentor Dhruv. He was in his position, and helped me get a seat in his cubicle. It was a cubicle with 4 desks. I would sit diagonally opposite my mentor, and the other two positions were occupied by Subhajit and Uma. Soon after I had established myself at the position, that I was called for a meeting with Rajeev, my manager, along with Dhruv. The problem was defined and I was given a set of papers to read. I was somewhat disappointed that it was related to text and not vision. The major components of the project were Topic Models which I knew in theory but had never worked with in practice, and Explore-Exploit Algorithms, about which I had no damn clue. So the first week was devoted to reading the papers sent to me, and getting a working knowledge of the subject. Throughout this week I got acquainted with the different people who worked in the Labs, and often we went for lunch together in the Yahoo Cafetaria. This lunch group had, except myself and Dhruv, Sundar (IISc alumnus), Vinod, Vidit, Sachin, Ajesh and sometimes Pankaj and Charu. Dhruv, Vidit, Vinod and Sundar were Research Scientists and the rest Research Engineers. Unfortunately most of them were quite older, and discussed matters over lunch which were of no interest to me. So i stayed quiet and simply listened to them.
The first week was marred by transportation problem. While returning there was no problem, and the 1.5hr journey was made entertaining by Shijo and Sharmila who kept fighting and pulling each other' legs all through. I also got acquainted with Keerthi, Srikanth and Inayat. But in the mornings i could never catch the cab. The cab driver spoke only Kannada, and though other passengers helped us negotiate a pick-up point, the cab either did not come to that point or it was full by the time it came. So every day i had to wait till about 8AM for the cab, and then take a bus, jostle through the crowd, and reach office around 9:30, which is an hour late. This issue was fixed the following week, when i was assigned to a new cab- a Tempo Traveller- with more seats, a more convenient pick-up point and a driver who could speak a language which was an acceptable approximation of Hindi.
(To be Continued)
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