1st Day @ LMKR, Impressed, but..

Islamabad reminds me of the memorable tour we had in which we covered Kaghan Valley, NWFP (areas like Naran, Shogran, Thandiani, etc.) as well. This we included four males:

Syed Humair Mudasser Qadri- FASTian, Batch of 1999 (Working at EzValidation (formerly Dreamznet), Karachi)
Sarfaraz Ahmed - FASTian, Batch 0f 2000 (Working at ITIM, Karachi)
Muhammad Ali Shah - FASTian, Batch of 2000 (Studying at Chalmers, Sweden)
& Myself

Memories!

I had already skipped the bus which comes to pick up at around 6:45 am. It was around 7:15 am while I was waiting for Khurram Majeed (batchmate from FAST and a very old friend) to pick me up from the hostel for office, when I thought about my recent past life and compared it with the present. Man changes a lot with the environment! A few of the people reading this will understand my exact point.

The office is located in F-5 sector, just beside Marriot Islamabad, 3rd floor of Software Technology Park I, and is around 15 minutes drive from the hostel. We reached the office at around 7:45 am, my first day at LMKR. After spending sometime at the reception, which is pretty spacious and quite nicely decorated (especially the wall clocks showing different country times) I was taken in the interview room to sign on the employment contract. After that I was taken to the cafe on seeing which, I was impressed. It contains a seating area like every cafe has, a kitchen, a smoking area, a pool table area, an internet access area and a TV lounge area (having approx 60" TV), all covering somewhere around 175 sq. yards area. Not kidding, but this much space can contain around 2-3 normal software houses of Karachi.

The office is structured in a way that different departments are partitioned accordingly. The decoration & ambience (love this word) is good, music played adding value as well, in the work areas as well as the washrooms. The dress code is formal & most of the people wear a tie and a few of them wear suits. Almost everyone has a flat screen thin LCD monitor, a good seat to sit on and a spacious desk. The scenery from the office windows is a good one with Margalla Hills view.
Etc.
Too much for a software organization in Pakistan, yeah?

As far as culture is concerned, the management is pretty strict about employees following the right timings in everything, dress code, body odour, office looks, employee behaviour, etc.
The operations management, also I guess in the board of directors, as far as I have perceived, think differently. They don't start thinking from the finance perspective. Take e.g. LCD monitors, I heard from some guy that when asked a board of director the reason for replacing normal ones, he was told in order to improve the looks of the office. Of course they aren't placed there for that only, but it gives the idea of the management's style, believe me I have seen the other extreme. There are many other examples of stylish stuff without which work can be done by the employees, but with which things beyond can be achieved, things which most of the software organizations in Pakistan fail to achieve, things which tend to motivate average people to reach the levels of excellence.

Just finished with our orientation sessions. Everything seems structured in one day's experience here, hope it stays the same but common sense should previal sometimes. When is the key!