Rama Laxmana Company

Ramco Systems was a leading integrator during those days. HQ in Chennai. I was based in Bangalore.

Bluestar was boring workwise but great fun other wise. I realized the money was poor. I was looking out at a better paying job and landed in Ramco Systems.

Ramco was a very political place dominated by Tam-brams. I replaced Arvind while he moved to a new role. He was apparently refused to be paid what I was offered and that irked him against me. He was hell bent on proving that I was an idiot and Ananth (my boss) had made a wrong choice in me. Ananth should have ideally defended this situation, instead he leveraged Arvind to police me. Lousy move. Lokesh was another key guy - not very supportive and played games along with rest of them.

Antony was good friend and he after the initial doubts, started to help me wade thro this mess. Six months since joining - I had an opportunity to complain about this politics to HR, at around the same time - I managed to get a huge order from mindtree. Both these events changed the tide for me and I began enjoying work at Ramco.

Venky - the high profile ISS country manager and I got it going well as friends for some time and that helped me win another big order from Syndicate bank. I recall Ananth ignoring my judgement on ITC case and trying to front end the situation - he failed badly. Left to myself - I would have won that deal.

Ramco had no inherent strength in the market unlike Wipro or Select Technologies. The only strength was the sales guys. Ramco operated in heavy competitive environment and was a handicap player. In spite of the odds there were occasionally few gifted orders from principals like Nortel and ISS.

I was all set for a long innings at Ramco till the day Aventail happened.

My boss, Ananth could have trusted me and helped me wade thro the office politics - instead he played the bad boy. I did not enjoy working with him nor did I enjoy the first half at Ramco. Second half - I made sure I have a good time.

Retro Look: Foundation place for my Aventail job, but for Ramco I would not have made it to Aventail. Ramco was not a great company with full of political people, I had my share of fun.