The rumors had turned out to be true. I as the convener of the class was given my first task to organize a meeting of everybody with the professors. The agenda had not been revealed officially but in every row of seats, the chatter was the same. “Why don’t they want us to intern abroad?” The professors presented their decision and gave many justifications. The main one was maintaining the status of IITD as a public institute and hence exposing its harvest first to the home crowd. People protested with all kinds of excuses, but Prof. M. Balakrishnan and Prof. Anshul Kumar were hard nuts to crack. Had it only been in hands of Prof. Banerjee, things would have definitely been different, all of us believed. But why only us? Most of the other departments were not forcing this policy, then why we? The computer science students are supposed to be the cream, right? Having the Dean and ‘would be Dean’ on your side can sometimes be bad.
The “intern team” had 6 members – Prof Prem Kalra, I (convener) and one group representative from every group (Ravi, Prateek, Rahul and Nitin). The work was divided into various phases – figuring out the pool of companies, contacting them and finally the hardest, forcing them to take interns without any test. There were many subtleties in the whole process which had become the talk of the batch. First, choosing the company pool was going to be a global optimization solution and hence some local preferences might go haywire. We students cannot be very sure about one single company and always want to expand our set of possible choices. This created issues while listing particular preferences. Still, somehow this was managed. Over this, the department was suggesting startups as a good option for internship, the idea which was ridiculed by the batch. ‘First they don’t let us go abroad and then send us to a startup. No way!’
Prof Kalra had to contact the companies. Once we had prepared the letters, they were emailed hoping to get positive responses from the company people. Many companies obliged but again, "many" was not what the batch wanted. We wanted a total of 60 seats and preferably more. It was tough being on toes every time. I kept bugging the professor all the time and pushed him to try more and more. But yes, one thing I learned during this was that when you are holding a responsibility that is very critical to other people who have vested the responsibility in you, it is not enough to let them know about the positive feedback. Every single update has to be given to them. Not doing this increases the unrest and they get a feeling that you are not doing any work. We five people had to bear a lot of spat from the whole batch, not because we were doing a bad job, but it was more because people were very anxious about whether they will get an intern in a good company. For some, it might also have been about venting the frustration on us for not being allowed to go abroad. Anyways, the lesson was correct.
Big companies have reputations to live up to so how could they bend their knees in front of this “weak” professor of IIT Delhi. Microsoft Research, Google and IBM were adamant on doing their own selection process and that complicated the system. Do we delay the student allotment for other companies for these arrogant ones? The problem was that these companies were good and people did not want to leave them. Besides we did not want the situation that people take up intern in a company and then leave it for some other. In the mean time, the department also had a reputation to live up since the other companies had also put their faith in us. The pressure was increasing from all the sides and we had to ask these arrogant companies again and again to do the selection as early as possible so that we could go ahead with the allocation process. At one point of time, there was also the department suggestion of nobody going to any of these 3 biggies but how could that be. We students want the best to happen to us.
“Never extend a deadline” was the second lesson I learnt. There was resume submission for the companies who were doing their own selection. And, I had been assigned the task to collect and forward the resumes. Few students asked me if they could submit the resumes a few hours after the deadline to me and I being the “good guy” said it was okay with me. But certain elements of the batch, when they came to know about it, raised a furor. I had to face people in my room trying to explain them why I had accepted the resume after the deadline. These elements just revolt and tell you that you are doing nothing and you sometimes feel the anger inside you. But again, it was the frustration against the department which was being vented at me so better to just stay quiet. But yes, in professional situation it would be a nice thing not to extend a deadline.
Then there was this Google issue. Of all the resumes submitted, the list of shortlisted people was astonishing to some extent. Many good people by almost everybody’s standards did not make it on the basis of the resume. I used the word “random” publicly for this selection and that again created an issue with people. Lesson three – Choose your words carefully. A single word can make a mob go against you. Finally, it was sorted out. The mailing list of the batch became a common place for somebody’s comments against the process and then a whole bunch supporting it and at last a meek mail in the end from one of the team to give a satisfactory reply. It was getting interesting.
The last issue was with some people being with low CGPAs being left out because of the CG criterion set by the companies. I can understand the frustration of these people because they might have got a decent internship had the batch been allowed to intern abroad. It again started the process of figuring out their best options and contacting the companies. And I had to be there in every meeting with the professor.
With all lessons learnt, spat faced, the allocation did go through. The order of allotment for the kneeling companies was decided to be on CG, the only objective criterion I believe when one is shooting an arrow in the dark. There might have been some small differences had it been a selection process by the companies themselves, but I personally believe that the whole process saved us a lot of hard work of applying, giving interviews which the department said was not worth an internship, and I completely agree with them (not because I got internship in MSR but because I really think so). Though some people might not be happy with their companies but I believe that this might have been the best they could have got in India.
The bottom line in the whole process was that, constantly people vented their frustration against the department keeping them in India, in form of anger against this allotment process. But in the end, they also tried to agree with the department to maximize their chances in India.
It was interesting.
Everyone had a summer internship to look forward to.
The department had been Indianized.
