I was an average student during my studies but I am a very focused, dedicated and committed person through my actions in my career and life. Once I committed in my life or career I achieved that no matter what.
I was always loving my teachers.
Why?
Not that I was a genius but I was sincere and hardworking towards my duties and actions. I always respect my teachers and mentors who supported me in my life and my career.
Let me tell you a story of my hardwork and dedication.
There was a competition for the students who live in villages in Rajasthan named “Gramin Pratibha Khoj Pariksha”. I was not aware about this competition but I was a loving student of my teachers so one of my teacher Mr. Akhtar Hussain Ji encouraged me to apply for this competition when I was in 8th standard. He purchased me a book and guided me how to prepare for that as the summer vacation started.
I started my preparation for that and I did my best. My only objective was getting any rank in that competition. So that my teacher does not feel bad for me because he was the person who encouraged me for that. There were three ranks: first, second and third but I didn’t get any of them and felt bad.
Then the next day a special post came to my headmaster where I was awarded with 4th rank. There was a provision of some money and certificates for first, second and third rank but not for 4th rank. But I was awarded by the headmaster with a book and I was more than happy. At least now I was able to make eye contact with my teacher.
Of Course I prayed to God everyday to get any rank in that competition and I got it. From that day I strongly believe that If we do our work honestly it’s always rewarded by God. It’s 100% true. It’s impossible if we do our best with our heart with honesty and we don’t get the results. Getting a 4th rank might be nothing or nonsense for you but It meant alot for me that time. This small incident built a strong confidence inside me that hard work is always rewarded in life.
In the initial 5–6 years of my career I was enjoying my career without focusing on new learnings. My only focus was switching companies one by one to increase my salary. I switched 3–4 companies back to back. But still my package was not good
Why?
Because I was not aware about the market salary trends and what is going on in the market and without knowing switched the organizations for a few thousands only. I was living in darkness till 8 years of my experience. I was not aware of my actual cost to the company based on my experience, expertises and the work I was doing. During one of my appraisal cycles when I got only a 13% hike and got to know about other similar profile packages, I was upset. I was so foolish that I was getting less than others. Still, I got a 13% hike while my package was already less. I did hard work and completed multiple projects throughout the year but according to the management I deserve a 13% hike only. My CTO assured me that I will talk to the HR and management but nothing happened. I was just going to resign but my team lead stopped me from doing that but after a few months I switched the organization.
This incident hurted me a lot and I felt bad. After this incident I started focusing on myself and self learnings. I started learning new things and started understanding how the things actually work. I was hard working earlier too but not so keen in learning and self consciousness. I started learning and implementing new things along with my daily stuff.
I planned my day every day in the morning after reaching the office and noted down all the pending tasks. Along with official priorities I started including self learning priorities as well. I target and plan my day in such a way that on a daily basis I have to learn something new as well parallel official work.
Suppose, If there is a task which can be done in a simple way but I started doing that another creative way. There were two benefits of doing that as
- I was completing my official priorities on time
- I was upgrading myself by doing that work another smarter way
I started upgrading myself by learning and focusing on how to design a system architecture, how to design a database architecture, how to design a system flow, how to maintain a technical documentation, code review process and working with an agile environment etc.
Now I started working independently as an Individual Contributor. I was responsible for the end to end solutions. I just need to discuss the requirement directly with the CEO or later on with product managers. Many times I corrected the PM requirements that they came up with as a solution. Because most of the PMs I worked with were none-technical and I developed multiple products single handed so I was always more confident with my solutions like what is feasible and what is not. I always worked in coordination with PMs whether they were technical or none-technical. Wherever required I supported them and worked as a team. I never thought that this is my work , this is their work. Sometimes If any task goes into PMs bucket but I was able to do that then without asking them I complete that and tell them later that I already did it. Due to my behavior I was liked by all the product managers. I never complain about any PMs to the management or my seniors. I always try to sync with product managers. That was the only reason that the products which were developed by me or my team were stable.
I worked 6–7 years closely with product managers. That was one of the reasons that I started taking more interest in the product development side along with technologies. Because I was aware about the technologies and I started taking interest in product development too. I observed that if you know technologies and you understand the product requirements in a better way then definitely you can build a good product.
Later on as I started handling teams I got more chances to think about the technical things. Earlier all the products were developed in a monolithic code base. Every startup does the same in initial days. But as the organization grows. More and more features are developed and the code base increases too much that it’s hard to maintain the code base.
So I started learning about microservices based architecture. We face lots of problems with OTP features and the OTP was used around 30 places in the entire code base along with other ecosystem products.
I was the first person who initiated the micro service based architecture within the organization. I thought about the system and noted down how the system could be broken down into different micro services. I found two major and deadly required microservice in the system. The first one was OTP and second was the CANP(Communication Alerting and Notification Platform). Because these two services were the most critical services which were used by each and every product in the entire system along with ecosystem products.
Both the services were developed by my team but later on these were used by the entire system as a service. In the first go we developed these features as service and started providing as a service to the entire products.
In the second go there was a plan to make these services totally independent but due to some financial concerns for independent servers we couldn’t deploy these separately.
But there was a complete plan on how many microservices were needed to break down the entire system. Later on another team developed a microservice for cart and check out in golang.
So that was the time when I had to closely work with product managers and devops team to make them understand what the requirements are and what is the best possible solution for that. The deployment decisions were not in my hand so I have to depend on the devops team for each and everything. Sometimes I feel frustrated and argue with them. But as a product owner I have to manage all the things within the team because finally we were a single technology team. Whenever anything wrong happens it all goes to the entire technology team not only any particular person or particular team.
I worked on POCs(Proof of Concepts) and MVPs(Minimal Viable Product) developments. We launched an IoT product after POC, an in house built product as earlier we were dependent on a third party service provider. We worked on various AI/ML use cases within the system. I upgraded myself by learning new things and implementing them.The combination of all these things gave me a chance to grow as a person in my career and life. I am grateful for each and everything in my life and career.
This is one of the chapter of my book “Startup Journey: How to Build, Grow and Scale a Product?”
If you want to read other chapters like this get a hard copy of this book, the book is available on
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Conclusion
In this journey, I’ve come to understand that true success is not just about reaching a specific rank or earning a high salary; it’s about the continuous pursuit of excellence, personal growth, and the desire to make a meaningful impact. I am immensely grateful for the support of my teachers, mentors, and colleagues, and I firmly believe that the path to success is one that can be navigated by anyone willing to commit themselves to the principles of hard work, sincerity, and lifelong learning. As I reflect on my journey, I am excited about what the future holds, knowing that the pursuit of knowledge and the dedication to excellence will continue to be my guiding stars.