Another small milestone

While on the topic of  anniversaries ( psst, I just blogged about one recently), I recently marked another small milestone. Completed first year at my current work place. The Indian companies I worked in past treated work anniversaries differently, the companies I worked in my first 7 years did not really seem to care. Later I worked for Cognizant which is technically a US headquartered company (but full of Indians) and maybe that could be the reason they used to send out anniversary notification to my manager who would share it with entire team with some good words tossed in for added motivation. Once I joined this grand old company, I could see that 'service' with company mattered  to folks a lot. Service anniversary was a big deal indeed. Once I went for a mandatory training at my city arranged for folks from various different roles/work stream and they had us introduce ourselves by stating, name, which city we work, what role and how long we have been with the company. When a team member has an anniversary we all get notified and there is a usual round of applause and congrats emails which floats around regularly. Several folks in my side of the organization have work anniversaries with the company higher than my age.  The emails are really fun especially for the anniversaries of veterans in the org, usually there is lot of self deprecating humor involved and the mails and huge fun. People spoke about being happy and sounded happy when we talk about their service anniversary, all of which is good to know for someone in their first year at the company. I could understand why the company featured in great places to work list

So the day arrived and as soon as I logged in I got a very nice email  from my manager and several others chimed in as well with good words and predictions of a long successful journey ahead. To be honest this was a job which on paper looked very easy and comfortable one for me given my previous work background. But as lone Indian employee in a team full of Americans I was not sure if I will fit in well and there were lots of doubts if I truly belong or if I can belong. Of course there were minor cultural differences, and I had to look stuff up online to understand some references/quotes but it also had to do with the fact that I was lot younger than most people around me. Before I knew it an year was up and it was up so fast that I hardly noticed. Only when I walked into office one day in April and after noticing my name up on the board for service anniversaries did it really sink in