I am a fresher and I have an offer from HP Research and Development division, Bangalore. Can anyone tell me what it is like to work at HP R&D Bangalore? How is the work culture, Work from home option, work life balance, opportunity to learn and career growth? My friend got an internship at HP R&

Answer for people who have less timePros about working in HP Work-life balance, one of the few companies that really cares about it. If work/project/team gets boring, there are always opportunities within HP. Encourages you to spend time on technical papers and patents. Lots of free time, as your work is well planned ahead (6-8hrs work daily X 5 days a week would be enough to satisfy your manager and for a decent salary hike/bonus); Good mix of people, and good work culture. Cons Salary is less when compared to other companies at the same level as HP Less perks. No free food at office. No R (pure research), only development. Pure R&D is done at HP Labs(none in India). Answer for people who have some more time and patienceBefore Joining I graduated from College of Engineering,Trivandrum(Kerala) in 2013 and me along with 4 others were the only ones to get a job that has a R&D tag in it. They had offered 5.5LPA package (highest offer was from Groupon and Amazon) for the R&D Engineer position. I was pretty excited about it and also used brag about it my other friends who got the role of s/w engineer. I didn't even attend the Oracle interview (I stood first in their initial round) which offered a better package and a job in kerala. The first six months At the very first day at HP during the induction program they told me that there was no R(pure Research) going on here and its all D(Development). My heart broke but I still had hope that the job was going to be exciting. I was assigned to the LivePaper Platform team (part of HP PPS R&D at Pritech Park, Bellandur) which was responsible for writing REST APIs for thehttps://www.linkcreationstudio.com/learn/overview. When the product-owner briefed about the project to me and 2 other freshers who joined the team, I thought I was part of the best team in the hub. We followed agile, pair-programming (would rotate the pair every one week), TDD, and I got know a lot about how a professional project is done (which none of my friends got an hands on experience). As we followed 1 week sprint and treated all team members equally (without distinguising between developers, tester, etc), I got hands on experience on writing API spec definition, development(Java), writing functional test cases(Java), build and deployment (chef and jenkins). While working in this team i never felt like working in a co-operate project with strict dead lines, as the team mates were very friendly (even the manager and the product owner). Every monday in the sprint planning we would only be assigned job which could be done in 5 day (working 6 hrs on average per day). If you spend time at home for office work you would be recognized by your manager(HP points awareded).Our whole team  used to go for badminton on tuesdays 5-6:30pm and football on fridays. The team was very well balanced, consisted of gamers, dancers, trekkers, philosophers :P, drinkers, movie-lovers, food-lovers and so on. We even got time to do some personal R&D works (writing technical papers, patents, etc)on 2nd half of every Tuesday. I felt like I was still in college doing my final year project. By the end of the sixth month my salary was increased as part of salary revision. Me and 3 of my college friends also planned for a 5 day Himalayan trek, and when I informed my manager about this he said "Cool, no problem". But unfortunately, my Amazon friend and MindTree friend had to cancel it in the last moment (because of fake work pressure from their managers). Me and my other start-up friend faced no blockers and it was one hell of a trip !!! The next nine months       It was after the first six months that I got clear picture of development that the team was doing (and would be doing). Since the project was not one that required heavy coding/algorithmic skills (I am more interested in coding/algorithms and dataStructures than other devOps works), it was starting to get boring for me. Plus I had lots and lots of free time(office hours 10am-5pm!!! and no work on weekends!!!) and didnt know what to do with it. So I invested the free time to learn android game programming and had successfully released 2 games in Google Play Store. My team also supported it by downloading and rating it ;).       Since the office work didn't required heavy thinking/coding the office work was still not challenging for me. Weekdays started to become monotonous; I expressed my concern to my manager, but for almost one month there was no response from him. I thought of leaving the company and started looking for jobs. I thought my job sucked, just because my friends were earning more than me. I felt like I did a mistake by joining HP and skipping the Oracle interview ('the grass is always grenner on the other side' advised the team's philosopher). Then all of a sudden my manager called for a one-one meeting and asked if was interested in changing to a new project which is about to start from scratch (they haven't decided what language to use!!) and with no pair-programming (i like working alone). After one month in the new team     The new project is very complex and requires heavy coding skills (almost went crazy writing threads with event loop for a investigation story). This team also appears to be very well-balances ;). Recently I got a salary hike and now i don't regret for skipping that interview in college (my friends working there have been asked not expect any hike for next three years) Conclusion Work life balance well maintained at HP, period. There are companies that gives fake promise of work-life balance, but HP is one of the very few companies that really offers it. If you don't like the work/project/team there are always openings within HP both technical and non-technical. Salary is a less compared to other companies but you have work-life balance. Weekly work is well planned. Encourages you to spent time on writing technical papers and patents. Wide variety of skilled people both technically and non-technically. The crowd may not appear to be that colorful :P but wont complain once you step outside the office. Lessons Learnt Your salary has no relation to the quality of job you do. Some of my heavily paid friends are made to fix bugs and attend phone calls as their primary task and are not satisfied with work/life. On the other side some of them who earn very less are so interested in the their work that they even work on weekends without even being asked to. With more salary comes more work, and if you dont love it your life is going to be miserable. Every few companies does pure R&D in India, a lot more companies may claim but all they do is customize software for clients or develop new software.

Work experience and culture differ from each and every one based on their  intrest, background ans so many other variables so you might never know until you expereience personally. Apart from this HP R&D division is good i have not been there but one of my friend was working there.

I have no idea on HP R&D, however I have not heard anything special about them, so we can assume they would be like any other decent R&D centres in Bangalore. They ain't Google, but not Samsung either. If the culture was bad, we'd have heard. WFH ... I am not sure a fresher should be too worried about it. Regarding opportunity to learn/career growth, in large companies, it depends on which group you're in. In the same R&D center there's Siberia as well as Sahara. Try to be in a group where there's actual product development that is going to customers. And you get real customer feedback to work on. However unsure how much will it be under your control in the first year. Don't be disheartened if you're in a project that's going nowhere. If you do a kickass job in whatever you do,  they'll notice you and put you into important stuffs. All the best.

You haven't yet started your career and are already asking for work from home option? Why? Aren't you excited to go to office and work? Plus, you are asking these questions because you have seen someone else asking these and the answers excite you, no matter how irrelevant they are to you. If you fail and things don't work out for you, that is fantastic. You discovered what works for you. Go experience life. You don't need anybody to make your decision.

I don't know the Hewlett Packard culture and what it is to work there. I triage this question to http://Suresh-Vishnu%20to%20answer%20this. Thanks for A2A and Congrats :)

The level of learning when u join a R&D division is always high. when it comes to HP  u can gain a very good amount of knowledge. Coming to the work culture, it is very good such that you wont feel like you are working in a organization. sometimes when u cant go office due to some reasons u can work from home. About career growth i dont have much idea since am doing only internship.

I have been at HP R&D for less than a year and here is what I feel The kind of work you get to do here is different when compared to other service companies. Good learning curve. You get recognized and rewarded when you put in extra effort Flexible timings. Work life balance upto some extent but there is an added pressure these days as the company is on a turnaround. Compensation (pay) very good and unmatched when compared to other companies.

Thanks for the A2A, but as I am a student still and that too of Mechanical Engineering, I don't have the remotest idea of what working at R&D, HP will be like. I can, at best give some general advice and that is that if you are a B. Tech and this is your first job then its a good opportunity. Work there for two-three years. If you do well then I suppose that HP too, like most others, will offer you a chance at higher education at their expense but with continued association with the company. If they don't then move out for higher education because a simple B. Tech is not enough anyway and the work experience with HP should sparkle in your resume making you a credible candidate for other companies. As far as the work culture and work life balance are concerned, I think HP is an American company and American Labor Laws should apply, meaning that you will have a maximum of nine hours work a day and weekends off. Work Culture, I am certain is good in all companies of repute and in any case the first few years of work are taxing in any field. Opportunity to learn and Career Growth: Well again you are going in R&D so you will have plenty to learn. Career growth too should be good. PS: This is just general advice. Don't bash me if you take up the job and they work your butt off. Have a good day.

,Do you have Any idea of how much pay a "R&D engineer" get per month..? in hand? Currently I hold an offer from HP R & D for "R&D enginner" role, I want to know the pay i get if i join HP.