The Newbie in the Room

Pages from Corporate Life

A career that started in 2002 with a newspaper ad that didn’t name the company nor the city. I responded anyway. At that time, I was based in Chennai. That instinct — to walk toward the unclear — would define the next couple of decades more than any decision.

The first couple of years were the phone. Thousands of calls, a headset that felt permanent, and the slow realization that the operations floor had its own ecosystem — unwritten hierarchies, invisible alliances, and a particular kind of person who could only grow by making sure others didn’t.

A move off the phones arrived. This was sold as growth. It turned out to be true — just not in the way they meant it. The role sharpened many things. Communication, yes, but also the ability to read a room.

Then came the grade problem. Three people doing work that mattered. Paid less than a peer imported to oversee us. The math was never explained. It rarely is.

A move into a new team felt like arrival — until the fifth day, when I was pulled into a room full of people who resented me before I had done anything. The charge: I had walked in at a grade they’d been waiting for. The irony is that I hadn’t snatched it away from them either.

What that room taught me: the onboarding was surface-level by design. In certain organisations, what you’re handed on arrival is never the full picture — just enough to locate you. The rest you figure out by watching who speaks first, who stays quiet, and who is trying to make sure you don’t last.

I felt it. Plainly out of place. A rabbit who’d walked into a room that had already decided what it thought of outsiders. I stayed anyway.

Lessons came. Did I learn them, or merely survive them? As I reflect even today, I’m still not sure I can tell the difference.