It's crucial to have a smart team: Rajiv Srivatsa, Urban Ladder

What I did in the first 100 days at work

I JOINED INFOSYS as a software engineer, and the first three months were spent in training in Bengaluru. I was part of one of the largest batches recruited, with 300 freshers from the Indian Institutes of Technology and Indian Institutes of Management, among other institutes. The time was spent delving into a tonne of work and learning new things everyday. Thankfully, I came out with flying colours and landed a great project at the end of the training period.

The worst mistake I made

ON MY first onsite assignment, I made the error of overcommitting to clients and underdelivering on timelines. Soon, I became better at giving more realistic timelines.

The best leadership lesson I learnt

NARAYANA MURTHY, I learnt about leadership through inspiring others and being a great role model. My manager in my last project also taught me a valuable lesson — that leadership is about having a smart team where people work well with each other. It makes you want to come back to office everyday and when necessary, and that attention to detail is crucial.

My biggest innovation

ATTENTION TO detail I put in during the requirements process on use-case modelling and the database modelling for projects helped the development part seamlessly. I carried it over to all my projects and the entire requirement gathering process for web projects became better as a result of it.

The best friend I made

IT WOULD BE difficult to name one. From my cricket team to my project colleagues to the Tamil music gang and even users of my personal website... I still keep in touch with them.



How I managed my work-life balance

IT WAS MOSTLY all about work, or with my team outside in extracurricular activities or sports. However, the pressure didn’t matter.



How I had fun at work

BEING PART OF the Infosys cricket team, I took part in regular practice and games. I also maintained one of the largest intranet sites. This, in fact, set the precedent for my love of the web, and inspired many websites I went on to do later in life, including Urban Ladder.


(As told to Brinda Dasgupta)