March 4th morning was special. Got up very early than usual and was delighted to see bunch of sms wishing "All the best" as it was my first day at new organization, Broadcom. I was very much excited to enter the campus which i had visited only once during my interview. Around 9:20AM, I was into reception of big beautiful campus. Along with me, there were 6 other who were joining that day and HR made all of us to sit in a room and gave a welcome kit. It was a red bag with broadcom written on it. Every time when a new object was pulled out of the bag, it use to be an exciting one like a cool broadcom t-shirt, fat dairy, stylish pens, yo-yo for id card, nice notebook, red water bottle and finally bunch of chocolates (who would expect that!). It also had a list of documents to fill out which took around 2 hours to complete.
HR took me to my team manager in 4th floor and introduced me. When i entered into the interior of office with all cubicle's & people working & discussing, i felt really good. Before i came near my cubicle, my place was so much ready with all brand new laptop, docking-station, very big monitor (all these 3 were my dream to get in prev organization, which i never got & here without asking all were ready), calender at desk, one more water bottle, tissue paper box, lot of stationery's like pen, pencil, sharpener, rubber, marker etc. you name it, it was there at desk, all ready! The one thing which was not ready at the desk was the person himself sitting over there :) I was so much delighted with all these small-small things being taken care very nicely (i'll come back to this point later). It was almost lunch time and before going for lunch, i was introduced to my team members. Although i didn't remember most of the names, but identified that these many are there in my team and sit at these places!
Cafeteria was at 7th floor and while going towards it, on the sides of corridor, there were several notice board kinda things, where so many things were posted. Somebody wanted to sell his car/bike or ad's like house rent or some event's happening etc along with lunch menu. It was a big list! Was excited to enter inside as was very hungry. Literally, when i first time entered into cafeteria it was like entering Hogwards Great Hall, where all the 4 houses sit and have the feast! Such a huge area with so many menu's and dishes.Oh my god. I was out of mind, what to eat and what not to eat. Tasty tasty food along with fruits, butter milk, sweets etc. Enjoyed the feast very well and in lunch table almost everybody asked about my background like which company?, how much experience?, i am from which place?, where do i stay? etc. I too didn't sit quite, i too asked back the same questions for each of them and few extra too :) After lunch few went for a walk, but i skipped and came back to my desk.
No need to wish what I want, they were ready with what I might need. Suddenly a security guard came and handed over me my desk cupboard keys! I was obsessed with cupboard's as i had several stuffs to keep at office rather than pg. In prev organization there was only 1 and it was always full but here, there were two cupboards! I was excited. So much space. Wonderful. Then another guy came and gave the VPN and configured and taught me, how to use it. As i said, "No need to wish what I want, they were ready with what i might need". It felt very special as they treated new joinee's very special.
Let me start introducing you to Broadcom beginning with coffee day! Coffee day is just hardly some 20steps from my place. Gosh, it is so beautiful that i would like to spend my whole day at office over there only! It has a wonderful wooden flooring where your shoes steps make worthy noise although the board mentioned over there reads "Maintain Silence". There is an actual ccd's coffee machine where you get capacino, latte, milk, hot water, steam etc. The real machine which we see in ccd is all ours to operate and drink whatever and how much ever we want! There are so many options that it will take a minute to decide, what to drink in ccd. Starting from Lemon tea, Ginger tea, Masala tea, Normal tea, Capachino, Latte, Expresso, Boost, Horlicks, Nescafe, Badam milk etc etc. These are all hot drinks and coming to cold drinks, there is a big refrigerator with full of chilled tins of Fanta, coke, sprite, 7-up etc. All drinks are unlimited and free. Just imagine what will you pick to drink when visit there for next time! I always take a minute to decide, what to drink! Once you decide then there are comfortable & stylish chairs to sit surrounded by white stones and pots with plants and enjoy the drink along with watching a big screen television hanging at the center of ccd which will continuously be playing in very less volume! What else you want, isn't it a heaven? ;-)
Well each floor is ideally & exactly a replica of one another. I mean, the ccd, cubicles, meeting rooms, rest-rooms (btw, meeting rooms and restrooms are also way cooler) etc all are similar and at same place. For a new comer it is bit difficult to identify in which floor he is! Same thing had happened to me on my second day. For past 3 and half years, i had been to 5th floor in the lift at prev organization. The second day, i casually pressed 5 in lift and went inside 5th floor to exactly the same place where i use to sit in 4th floor. Somebody else was already sitting over there! I was shocked and surprised! What the hell is this? My place is being used by somebody! I was about to tell him, probably, "Get up" but soon i realized the name plate wasn't mine and then looked adjacent cubicles and all were strangers! Suddenly realized, something is fishy! I said 'sorry' to him and ran back outside and then discovered that it was 5th floor. Then realized why this happened probably because, First day HR had took me to 4th floor to my cubicle, i didn't go by myself. It was a hilarious incident which i will never forgot at least until I'm in this organization.
Moving on, let me introduce 5th floor recreation room over here. At leisure time, its a very good time pass to be there. These days, everyday after lunch if you want to find me then this is the place to look. The room is built very stylish and it has a wooden staircase inside connecting to sixth floor (like a duplex home). Beneath contains 2 TT boards, 2 Carom boards, hand football table, billiards table, excellent gym, sleeping bunks whereas above there is library (almost all english news papers and hell lot of magazines), massaging chair(ticket to heaven!!), big TV & remote for you. Its really an awesome place. I like being there very much. Also usually trainings or meetings where population is too much (not to fit in meeting room), those will be arranged in recreation place only. Recently i had a training on ARM by ARM people themselves!!!How cool is it? I never expected this. It was damn super. Its like watching "Yeh jawani hai dewani" movie with Ranbir Kapoor himself. I mean, just imagine, ARM training from ARM people! Unbelievable.
Usually here, always one or the other event keep happening, for ex. like just last week there was a science project exhibition from poor school kids to provide scholarship based on their project idea and representation. Very creative projects from children and i enjoyed interacting with them.
Apart from all these, 7th floor open space is super breeze cool which is an ideal place for hangouts in the post-evening & before night time along with wide variety of snacks from sandwiches, samosas to poha and wide variety of dosas and tasty items. Without spending an evening over there, doesn't seems like day went fine. And also there's this equipment, which i heard or seen in movies, which will be kept in airport. You scan the note inside machine and select what you want and it will drop that for you to pick. Amazing!
Finally you might think, what is this all silly things, talking about everything other than work and working environment. I'll come to that too. But I believe fun lies in small-small things rather than big things. A famous say goes as "Don't settle with someone who takes you out for a nice coffe, but settle with the one who prepares a coffee for you". Small things really do matter. Small & silly yet an extra effort of preparing coffee reveals how much we mean to the person. So according to me, broadcom is really great with that respect because of so much small and silly things being taken care for its employees. It shows how much we mean for them.
Coming to the work environment, it is so bright and white here that if you don't struggle hard and give your 100% to work then you'll feel shame of yourself. There might be terms like IQ (Intelligent Quotient), EQ (Emotional Quotient) etc but after meeting colleagues over here, i discovered a new quotient, TQ (Technical Quotient) which is very high and found in everybody from a fresher to high level manager here. I personally feel, although i can quickly learn to work over here by great help but to raise my TQ to equate and stabilize to these people standards, I'm definitely going to take much time. Its challenging and I'm loving this challenge.
Still there are so many things i would like to mention about broadcom, but not able to express. One more solid thought planted during my induction was that, the tag line of Broadcom is "Connecting Everything", so HR told that literally, we connect everything in this world. No matter what way of communication you choose, email, telephone, mobile, sms, internet anything, that must pass through ATLEAST one broadcom chip. What a wonderful thought to think off and feel proud. Right now, very this moment, infinite no. of communications are happening and all the communications happening all around the world are passed by AT-LEAST one broadcom chip! Isn't that great? :)
At last would like to convey that this blog what you just read as underwent several changes. Initially it was written as "Welcome at Broadcom" then modified as "Life at Broadcom" and then finally i was out of what all content to put in it and edited and finally came up with "Introducing broadcom". So content is mixed and messed up and i don't know what it projects for a reader but trust me, Broadcom is really a great place to be and I myself feel very lucky & proud to be here.
