First 15 Minutes At Office

Two random thoughts from my first 15 minutes in the office.

First, I talked in my last post about how astonishing the difference between Hitech City and the rest of Hyderabad was. Those thoughts were based completely on a 3AM visit to that posh hotel. Driving around in the day makes the difference even more unbelievable. There is an entire campus here with some of the most biggest names in technology (I noticed IBM, Oracle, Accenture, among others). The architecture of the buildings is very modern, but doesn't look generic. Rather, it appears that some thought went into personalizing many of the office buildings. Each building has multiple security checkpoints. With the amount of moeny being poured into here, this is clearly the future of Hyderabad.

Second, I'm astonished at how difficult it was for me to get into Amazon's office. Part of the problem was that I showed up at 8am and nobody was in the office besides the night shift for frontline support. My badge doesn't work here. The security guards, despite me showing a badge, naming 3 people I was here to visit, and showing my business cards, did not let me in until they got in touch with an employee who works here who could vouch for me. The employee told me to set up shop at his desk until he gets in, but finding his desk was pretty difficult as well. They clearly don't have a system down yet. No big deal, but highlights at least one small challenge of have decentralized campuses.