Since I’ve been asked this a lot of times, it’s time it came on here. The team I was working for at MSIDC was the incubation team.
IMHO, the Incubation Team is the funnest and most energetic team on campus (but lets not get into a debate since everyone loves their teams at MS – essentially because they get to pick it – which is something very unique with MS).
Here’s a small FAQ that I compiled from the questions I was asked:
Q: What’s it like to work for Incubation?
Ans: Basically, the Incubation Team is sort of like a lab full of mad scientists – let by a really mad scientist called Perraju Bendapudi. The floor that we worked on looked more like the Batcave or probably the Q Branch at MI6. Every day as I walked into that wing, I could see some pretty crazy people attempting to do pretty crazy stuff – some of which has been known to be downright impossible. At MS IDC, the world “impossible” doesn’t exist. We play around with all kinds of crap.
Q: What’s your boss like?
Ans: This wasn’t a real question, but I put it in so I could get an excuse to tell you more about Peri. Peri is a mad scientist in his own right. And he loves to meet other people like himself – though I doubt whether others like him exist. Basically, everyone out there is just unique in their own way. Peri handpicks people to work for his team, and once in a while he gets lucky when 20 code4bill interns arrive at the same time and start using their brains. I think Peri’s definately convinced that India has got loads of crazy people. The c4b guys were completely certifiable. With Peri’s team, anything goes. Spend loads of money, live a luxurious life, and at the end of the day, deliver results. That’s all he cares about. You have to make a difference. Just writing a lot of code won’t impress him. Come up with the next wave of how computing would work. Imagine and build prototyes for tomorrow’s world and he’s happy.
Once in a while he gets really excited and makes promises to jump from the 9th floor of Cyber Towers if an intern will just finish his project on time and deliver. But we care for him so much that we purposely delayed the projects to prevent him from jumping (it was a big temptation, I won’t lie to you!)
Generally seen on campus with a coffee cup in his hand, has a good sense of humor (else he would be an “evil” mad scientist), and can decode some wierd language that our printer used. I got stuck where someone had changed our printer’s interface language to Swahili or something and this fellow decoded it and navigated the menus and brought it back to English. I guess Gene Roddenberry had better keep this fellow booked for the Enterprise’s first mission.
Q: How are the other people?
Ans: Everyone’s a mad scientist. They’re all crazy. They’re all wierd. And they come up with some of the stuff that you might be taking from granted two years from now. These people sit there day and night with only one thing – to make a huge difference in the way you compute today! It’s about revolutionising how you think of computers. That’s our job in a nutshell. Hari, the c4b guys, Anu Engineer, Phani, Harish, etc. are some names that instantly pop to mind. Some of their ideas are very interesting – all of them think of themselves as profound philosophers so no day at campus goes by without a long philosophical discussion.
Q: Is this like working at MSR?
Ans: Not really. I’ve never been to MSR, but I’ve heard about it. If we’re to be mad scientists, then the MSR people would probably be locked up in an asylum. Those guys think far beyond even us. We think of tomorrow. They think of 2020. MSR is working on some damn freaky stuff that’s going to change the way we live 15 years from now. Those guys work on some really amazing crap. Trust me - MSR has some aces up it’s sleeve that will be difficult to counter by any competitor. MSR is not to be messed with.
Q: What kind of stuff do you do, what did you work on?
Ans: (With a wide grin) You’ll see. It’ll be out soon. Then I might be able to tell you, “I did that part”, but not more than what you see on your screen. Sorry, that’s my contract. The best I can do is point you to www.code4bill.com and ask you to read our project profiles there. That’s all we can say. Sorry. But most of the stuff will take years to mature and will be really amazing and it’s only fair that we surprise you pleasantly. So give me a chance to make you jump out of your seats by not asking me.
Q: I saw something on the CNBC show in your screenshot.
Ans: Come now, did you really imagine I was that stupid? All that was total lies. What I told on the CNBC interview isn’t remotely close to what I’ve done. So stop analysing and stop trying to decode that video. You’ll get nothing. I faked a few slides to impress everyone all over india and showed you something about news articles. Oh yes, if you didn’t know, my project was a news aggregator (and you can read that on my c4b profile).
Did you really think that either Harsha, Kunal or Abishek told you the truth? You really have to understand that these guys are some of the damn smartest people in India. They’re not that dumb. Hell, everything works on a need-to-know basis. Even I don’t know what they’ve done beyond what their c4b profiles say and I wasn’t allowed to see their screen shots (forget code). I don’t know how others display even looks like!
BTW, we were coached and interviewed and reviewed and pressurised by some top executives from MS. Did you really think any of us would slip out what we did? 
As far as that is concerned, we’re tighter than JKR in this regard.
Q: So what’s this about MS setting up a center in Pune?
Ans: I’m not an MS VP. You had better ask Srini such questions. So far as I know, it’s not going to be as easy and as fast and as good-looking as it sounded in the newspapers, but then again, MS has loads of aces up it’s sleeves. Better not believe in anything I say. There’s loads of MS PR people out there who would be very glad to interact with you.
Q: Can I send you crazy ideas and suggesstions?
Ans: Definately. There’s no stopping that. If you feel you’ve got a killer feature for any of our products, feel free to mail me or anyone at MS. We’re all ears. We just have no mouths. I’ll forward it to my boss and he’ll make sure something is done about it. But the right way to do this is to mail our suggesstions alias or some PR people and they’ll get in touch with the right people. In any case, the heirarchy at MS is very lose. Mail anyone you know and they’ll know what to do – even if they don’t they’ll find out easily enough.
