The Year gone by
19th May 2014 was a milestone date in my career and I had written all about it here. Today, a year later, I think it is but expected that I look back and think about this year gone by.
I could not have imagined a life outside of Infosys for all the years I had been working there. A friend even had joked when he heard about my resignation, "How can you leave Infosys? I have been saving to come to your retirement party!". Afterwards, over the months I did think if I did miss Infosys and had shared my feelings here.
A year later now, it is time to do my personal annual appraisal and share the results. The catch is that this is a self appraisal and hence the results may be biased :).
It has been an exciting 1 year outside the campus that's a dream come true for so many youngsters. While I am yet to complete 1 year at my new organization, Curologic, but I could not have asked for something better. Working in a start-up has its own challenges and you start living month to month, week to week and almost day to day and it really makes you a lot more humble. Being in top management of the organization, I am privy to the working of the organization and it is a significant learning.
Being on the payroll, one takes so many things for granted, the simplest being the monthly salary. But now, being on the driving seat, along with Kiran and Shekhar, I get to know what it takes to run the show and ensure that your people continue to look up to you and keep doing interesting and challenging work.
I think this year has been substantial in terms of my personal development in multiple areas. I already mentioned about knowing the intricacies of managing the organization. As the CTO of the company, the technology bottom line is with me. The buck stops here, as they say. While I had a rich almost 19 years of experience to boast off, there was a known issue with it. It was all limited to Microsoft Technology areas. Over the last year, I have got exposed to the other side of the world and some of the nomenclature I am now familiar with includes - java, jsp, hibernate, spring, struts, my sql, java script, html5, angular js, node js, liferay, drupal, php, apache, nginx, mongo db, android, ios, etc. and yes, I did work on a SharePoint 2013 project also during this time. This year has definitely helped me grow as an Architect. The various projects I have handled have also helped further fine tune my UX skills as well.
While I had spent my last decade in Infosys Labs, the RnD unit, but I did have delivery experience from earlier days in Infosys. At Curologic, that experience became useful as I helped the project managers here run the show. Along with client based projects, I got involved in managing product development and it has been an experience of its own. The planning and execution is so very different from a regular project delivery. Having earlier worked on a versioned project, where we used to have new versions released every 6 months, it helped with the version planning for the product and its roll out.
Not only has Curologic allowed me to put my technical expertise to its best use, but has also allowed me to get into another area close to my heart, i.e. people management. I used to have long debates over various policies at Infosys with my manager. Now at Curologic, I have the opportunity to put the various ideas to test. Being a small company, at this time, we are trying out different policies and ideas for employee satisfaction and motivation. At the core of our philosophy is the idea that people should have fun, they need to be happy and as Shekhar often says, failure is not a stigma for us. We accept failures, because it means that our people are taking risks. Without this, organizations tend to become complacent.
As I look back, I see Infosys, as the one organization I worked with, for the last 18+ years and as I look forward, I want to see Curologic as the next one I will work with, for the rest of my career.
We may be small today, but our aspirations aren't small by any chance. We are dreaming big and we know how to realize our dreams.
I could not have imagined a life outside of Infosys for all the years I had been working there. A friend even had joked when he heard about my resignation, "How can you leave Infosys? I have been saving to come to your retirement party!". Afterwards, over the months I did think if I did miss Infosys and had shared my feelings here.
A year later now, it is time to do my personal annual appraisal and share the results. The catch is that this is a self appraisal and hence the results may be biased :).
It has been an exciting 1 year outside the campus that's a dream come true for so many youngsters. While I am yet to complete 1 year at my new organization, Curologic, but I could not have asked for something better. Working in a start-up has its own challenges and you start living month to month, week to week and almost day to day and it really makes you a lot more humble. Being in top management of the organization, I am privy to the working of the organization and it is a significant learning.
Being on the payroll, one takes so many things for granted, the simplest being the monthly salary. But now, being on the driving seat, along with Kiran and Shekhar, I get to know what it takes to run the show and ensure that your people continue to look up to you and keep doing interesting and challenging work.
I think this year has been substantial in terms of my personal development in multiple areas. I already mentioned about knowing the intricacies of managing the organization. As the CTO of the company, the technology bottom line is with me. The buck stops here, as they say. While I had a rich almost 19 years of experience to boast off, there was a known issue with it. It was all limited to Microsoft Technology areas. Over the last year, I have got exposed to the other side of the world and some of the nomenclature I am now familiar with includes - java, jsp, hibernate, spring, struts, my sql, java script, html5, angular js, node js, liferay, drupal, php, apache, nginx, mongo db, android, ios, etc. and yes, I did work on a SharePoint 2013 project also during this time. This year has definitely helped me grow as an Architect. The various projects I have handled have also helped further fine tune my UX skills as well.
While I had spent my last decade in Infosys Labs, the RnD unit, but I did have delivery experience from earlier days in Infosys. At Curologic, that experience became useful as I helped the project managers here run the show. Along with client based projects, I got involved in managing product development and it has been an experience of its own. The planning and execution is so very different from a regular project delivery. Having earlier worked on a versioned project, where we used to have new versions released every 6 months, it helped with the version planning for the product and its roll out.
Not only has Curologic allowed me to put my technical expertise to its best use, but has also allowed me to get into another area close to my heart, i.e. people management. I used to have long debates over various policies at Infosys with my manager. Now at Curologic, I have the opportunity to put the various ideas to test. Being a small company, at this time, we are trying out different policies and ideas for employee satisfaction and motivation. At the core of our philosophy is the idea that people should have fun, they need to be happy and as Shekhar often says, failure is not a stigma for us. We accept failures, because it means that our people are taking risks. Without this, organizations tend to become complacent.
As I look back, I see Infosys, as the one organization I worked with, for the last 18+ years and as I look forward, I want to see Curologic as the next one I will work with, for the rest of my career.
We may be small today, but our aspirations aren't small by any chance. We are dreaming big and we know how to realize our dreams.
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