I've been so overwhelmed at work and was suffering from an abscess in my right pupil (small formation of pus in my eye because I was rubbing it a lot due to extreme monitor exposure) for around 2 weeks that I just realized I've already completed serving 1 month of my 2 months Notice Period!
Yeah, that's right. I am currently on Notice Period.
Around a month back, with a heavy heart, I had to officially hand in my resignation letter to my boss. I have been under a lot of pressure for the past few years from my family to start taking care of our family business and house back in Mizoram, as I am the youngest and only son.
And it is an open secret in office that there would eventually come a time when I will have to pack up and go home, hence the reason why I used the word "officially" to submit my resignation, so as to give my employers enough time to hire new resources before I could officially start serving my Notice Period.
Usually, if people are on their notice period, they are asked to keep it to themselves by their reporting Managers or HR, and only tell others on their last week. I guess it is like a Corporate office etiquette, so as to prevent other employees from jumping ship or causing a domino effect. However in my case, I am not joining any other company or looking for greener pastures as I really love where I work, this is like my retirement from the Corporate world due to family obligation, so it is different.
I've also realized that in around 15 years of my experience in the Corporate world across various sectors like Sales, Marketing, Advertising and Gaming, this is the FIRST time I am actually serving my Notice Period, as previous terminations were because of acquisitions, mergers, policy changes etc., which resulted in immediate new job profiles. This time, I am actually doing the proper Notice Period thingy! :D
So how does it feel to be serving my first (and last) Notice Period?
Well, for starters, I make sure I don't slack. I am still one of the firsts to reach office every day, and one of the lasts to leave, for FIVE straight years. That is one of my legacies I am planning to leave behind here. I love my work and the office environment, and nothing can take that away from me. Secondly, yeah, the tasks that I have been assigned to are a way lot lighter now compared to before, but I plan to make the most out of it.
Unlike other people who may be itching to complete their Notice Period so that they can start working in a new Organization, for me, every day of my Notice Period is quite nostalgic. Even the daily commute I take to office, as the first glimpse of our tall Corporate Office appear in the distant horizon, is poignantly painful, because working at such a place is something I will not experience again in my lifetime.
I will be in Mizoram, growing rice and vegetables, cutting trees and shrubs, rearing cows and pigs along with a handful of chickens, ahhh what a contrast my life is going to be. No more scrums, no more daily sprints, just a daily interaction with Mother Nature in its rawest form.
It feels just like yesterday when I was sitting in a conference room at a 5 star hotel in Mumbai, me and my fellow Co-founder Sumeet along with our entire Start-Up team at one side of the table, and on the other side sat Rajan, Parimit, Nitin, Niharika and the other top management from Jetsynthesys, as I presented all our gaming concepts and ideas to them. And finally, the green light that we had been acquired! Oh what a ride it had been, from moving out of our incubator space in Bandra to our new office in Chandivali, to the weekly commute to Pune, to finally moving permanently to Pune.
We were the first batch of employees of our newly set up gaming division of Jetsynthesys, and even though we were initially small, we gave it our best, and we stayed with the organization for as long as we could as more and more experienced talents were slowly absorbed, and today, it is filled with extreme super talents like Jenna, former game designer of Farmville, Roopak, Amitabh, Saurabh, Nayab, etc.
Our gaming division now occupies an entire floor of our office at the elegant Sky One Corporate Centre, and is more or less the size of the rest of all other Jetsynthesys divisions situated one floor below us. What a growth it had been, especially if you compare it to the time when we initially joined and we had to sit in that dingy old Metro House office with cramped up workstations and everybody had to push in their chairs and suck in their stomachs if somebody from inside the lane wanted to use the toilet, and I always felt bad using that toilet because everybody could hear the flush sound :D
What a transformation indeed.
I will really miss all this, the daily pressure of meeting deadlines, the brainstormings, the endless discussions in one of the many conference rooms, the learnings that I get from people who had many more years of experience in gaming than me, the mistakes we encountered, the pivots and re-strategizing, etc etc. And most of all, I will miss my colleagues and all the laughter we shared, especially our kickass upper management of Jetsynthesys like Rajan, Parimit, Nitin and Niharika without whom none of this transformation would have been possible. I thank them all profusely for giving me the opportunity to experience all this.
As I enjoy my last few days of Notice Period, I raise my glass to all these people, and hope that this company continues to grow bigger with more top grossing games released in the future.
In the meantime, I will continue drinking as many free coffee as I can from our office pantry room before my time runs out :D
Cheers for now everyone, and have a very happy Diwali long weekend!
