Three Important Life Lessons I Learned

Being from a business family (from a Punjabi Business Family 😉 there were fewer chances that I could have taken the route of an IT Professional over handling my family business. But then, who said the Khaleesi was the first one in the world to be known as the “Breaker of Chains,” my Khal was my Father (I miss you ?) who always motivated me to choose my way.

During my engineering final year, I had an offer in hand from a significant fortune 500 organization, but life always has different plans that you think of. I lost my Father and my support system to join a professional career, which ultimately diverted me to take up my family business, somewhat unwillingly. However, everything in life is a stepping stone and is like a subject you study in one grade and then move onto the other learn new things over the skills gained from the previous class. I will try to put my career path into four parts segregating between each stage of professional life and highlighting the good and bad I took away from them.

The Unforced Error

Referring to me joining the family-owned business of tea trading and cloth embroidery plant, I was challenged with putting myself into the right frame of mind being unprepared to be a businessman as I was all set to join as an IT professional. It was the toughest times I had ever faced being in an emotional tsunami of losing my Father and having my mother bed-ridden for a year due to severe injuries she suffered. Moreover, I had to be active enough to understand the ins and outs of the work and managing a team of 100 people working under my supervision.

I somehow accepted that this might be a positive turn of events as I was supposed to work for an organization, and now, I am the organization (?). It turned out that even after contributing to the business’s growth, it never really gave me the professional satisfaction of earning what I deserved for my efforts. One life lesson I learned was,

“Hard work is never the requirement, it how smartly you work hard.”

Leap of Faith

After spending a little over a couple of years as a business owner and now being +1’ed (she said yes! ?), I decided to make the most significant risk. I left a secure family business for a job with an IT start-up with a three-member team starting operations as an IT Trainings and Services Provider. It was undoubtedly a Leap of Faith as I was not promised any job security or financial stability in case the business does not grow as was expected by management.

Coming from a business mindset, I planned to create a revenue source(s) that would provide us with the cash inflow that can be invested in more resources in business development and engineering team. I decided to aggressively market for providing professional training services to engineering students that could assure us funds infusion without having raised capital from the market or loans. I used my contacts in the local colleges and universities and created the first batch 70 students who enrolled with us for a six-month training (and yes, I took classes myself too).

Now that we had the initial bank balance, I decided to hire some business development executives that could fetch us contracts from freelancer platforms that involve simple jobs like creating WordPress websites or providing design services. We were getting good feedback all over though we were burning the midnight fuel on multiple occasions since we were working with remote developers to save us the full-time cost of resources. After some year and a half since we began operations, we moved out of the training domain and decided to concentrate entirely on the IT Services with a team of eight at this point and remote contractual members. I had an ambidextrous role of being a business analyst, QA, and a project manager, apart from being handling the responsibility to keep the finances coming in steadily. The lesson I learned from my tenure in the start-up was,

“Patience is not an absence of action, rather it is the timing of an action.”

The Switch Hit

After more than three years into the business, we were a team of 27 people working at two locations with a consulting office in New Zealand. Now was the time that It felt like a time for a change and also encash the experience I earned from past two diverse backgrounds, which gave me the motivation to make the switch before I get caught in my comfort spiral of working in the same environment. This is when I joined a CMMI Level 3 boutique IT Services and UI/UX provider organization with a headcount of 250+ and not to forget, a super expensive campus ?

In almost three years, I got to understand the importance of how you develop products other than knowing what to grow in the product. I got to write 250 pages of SRS documents for a diverse range of business domains like online gaming and hyperlocal eCommerce mobile application platforms. I aspired to participate in a team that spearheaded the Agile transformation for the project teams from being well versed in Waterfall based traditional SDLC processes they have been employing for the past 13 years.

When playing the role of a Product Owner and an Agile process evangelist, my work was highly appreciated. I got an opportunity to work in the COE team, reporting directly to the CEO appointed to research on building new capabilities for digital technologies like predictive analytics, chatbots, IOT, geo-fenced use cases, and recommendation engines. Getting exposure to multiple domains and having experience in delivering major eCommerce projects, I was offered a chance to take up pre-sales analysis that involved consulting with potential clients. This included helping teams estimate and devising customer requirements into probable release versions assuring faster time-to-market and shorten the cycle to achieve good ROI.

The Paddle Sweep

Being exposed to such diverse experience, I was in a dilemma if I should continue like this or now develop myself into an SME and taking up a leadership-oriented role that will push me to the next level of the hierarchy. I had a great team working with me and a superb learning and supportive environment created by the management.

This was the point in my career where I decided to stop playing defensively and start attacking from the front foot, which is why I took my first shot in switching to a more prominent organization with a senior profile but similar KRAs. However, the first shot did not go as well as I thought it should have gone since my creative hunger was not being fed, and there was no new challenge in the day to day work that could have kept me motivated to get up in the morning and drive to work.

Too much of a coincidence, an opportunity came knocking to my door, and I decided to play the Paddle Sweep and left the newly joined organization after a short stint of five months. At last, I got a chance to work with a Fortune 500 organization that was well respected as a BFSI major. The move paid off, and I finally got a hand on working with the technical side of analysis comprising SQL, Db, Putty, and in-depth experience of how the world of lending works. I was rewarded with a Performance Award for the quarter with just 5 months into my time since joining the organization. This was a massive motivation for me personally coming from a background where my technical skills (so to speak) hibernated as they were not being applied anywhere since my start-up experience. My takeaway from my time,

“Have no fear of moving into the unknown, you must have confidence in your competence.”

The Tryst Continues…

Things were going well for the first eight months, but then the work started dropping significantly to a level where I was doing only 12 hours billed work per week with rest of the time being either gone in self-training and looking at the clock (?)

Before joining such a significant team, I was confident enough to have a span of three to five years, but then I would compromise on growing my learning graph and even progress in the hierarchy. The time I spent with the start-up and the boutique IT service agency, I was programmed to be someone who will always be hungry to learn new things and be in a position of greater responsibility, having enjoyed the risks associated with the same. Brain told me to stay as I was enjoying a stress-free office environment and maintain a work-life balance. Still, the heart was stooping towards a more challenging role and more significant monetary benefits.

In the present context, I am working as a Product Manager with a start-up and managing a team of 20 technocrats taking care of implementing the processes, requirement management, and delivery. When I weighed the risk of leaving an established company versus losing my growth graph, I decided to risk the stability of an organization for getting into the shoes of a managerial role and, of course, a better pay package. A year since I joined here, I have been discovering the world market and sales optimization to the challenge of being responsible for the delivery and scope management.

If I summarize my work life of almost nine years, I would say that whatever decisions I took were the result of the same dilemma – a stable and comfortable career versus challenge and growth. I have somehow always made a decision based on the latter. It is what has kept me relevant in the industry as I touched multiple knowledge spheres (Web design, Mobile Apps, eCommerce, IoT, Analytics, Chatbots, B2B platforms, BFSI, and now MarTech). I also made jumps both in terms of finances and responsibilities.

I would like to quote from who is a well-known Business Technologist and whom I call a friend and a mentor Joseph Jude–

“Whenever you peak in some domain or career path, that is when you should switch to avoid that sudden drop due to monotony and being stuck in the spiral.”

Joseph Jude