Just trying to recall some moments where people have shown a great deal of empathy and kindness towards me.
I had a terrible accident during my 5th standard which led to me being hospitalised for well over a month. I was using some hot water in a steam inhale session to fix my fever, and ended up splashing a lot of water which caused significant burns.
I still remember vividly staring into the windows and imagining all sorts of things because there was nothing else to do in that one month. It felt like time stretched unimaginably long, I was just in bed the whole time - the first time I tried to walk blood literally came out of my legs. It was slightly difficult to understand how such a small mistake could lead to an outcome like this. Incredibly frustrating days.
But it got over and I came back to school. I couldn’t understand most of the things as I had fallen behind schedule. I was a reasonably good student so feeling behind at understanding stuff was like a double whammy. It just felt very disturbing. As expected I did very poorly during the exams and while most people were okay with it including my parents, I was livid with myself.
I think i could have gone completely downhill from that moment unless Reetha miss, who was my maths teacher, intervened. She was mostly very strict, but somehow she had a conversation with me that broke the barrier. She said I don’t have to worry much about the exam results and I can come back stronger. For the next few weeks she looked at my face during classes and if it looked puzzled she would go back and explain a concept taught earlier. This was not fair to my other classmates, there was no need for her to do this as well. It felt like a teacher looking out for a kid to make sure he is not falling behind. When my mother visited school to sign the progress report, Reetha miss said some really encouraging things about me which made my mother and me very happy.
In the large scheme of things it could be said maybe I will still bounce back, I did fairly well in academics when I look back now, so that 5th standard incident could have been just a blip. But it is also possible that I could have regressed significantly from that point in time. So thank you Reetha miss, wherever you are, for being extra kind to a kid who needed it.
First real work in my TCS journey was basically exploitation. Most of the people who I met who were senior to me were not really great role models on how a senior should be. They were just trying to pass on their work and make my life miserable. The worst thing is I still put in the effort and they still gave me poor ratings when I was easily one of the best performers.
But the thing with life is, when you take in a lot of bad stuff, it will eventually lead to some good stuff also. I was taken into a project where I had to do a rewrite from Fortran to Java for an old codebase, it was a project without much documentation and it was just me and Santhiya under Siva. Santhiya was a really smart girl and Siva was very different from all the people whom I met at TCS. He was kind of unpredictable at times being slightly outspoken, but definitely someone who was tolerated within the ecosystem because he had actual skills. Siva really knew Unix well and I think I got interested in terminals and stuff seeing how good he was with it. I remember him saying things like “unix is the real stuff” which felt revolutionary then when I heard it.
I really got along very well with him and Santhiya. It was a project which everyone expected to fail, but we were making good progress and the client was also happy with us. The way I got into the project is kind of funny, I was asked to whiteboard something along the lines of Fizzbuzz. Siva was extremely nice to me, he is the kind of person who, if you have met him once in life, leaves a mark. I haven’t interacted with him after my TCS stint, i am really bad at keeping in touch with people. Maybe I am selfish, maybe i am just still a kid who doesn’t know how to say thank you properly or runs out of words.
My teenage years were very confusing, i just felt like a huge misfit especially during my higher secondary days. During those days the class that i looked forward to the most was English. The teacher who was teaching the class was Brelvi sir and he was someone who was genuinely trying to make students speak more. I have hyperhidrosis which means that my hands sweat a lot, actually a lot more when I am tensed. I was incredibly socially awkward but for some weird reason i was good at public speaking, i used to enjoy it - it gave me an adrenaline rush and words used to come to me. There was a lot of speaking opportunities and honestly i just loved all those opportunities that came my way. It helped me to improve my confidence significantly and made me feel good about myself. I still had sweaty hands but I had the courage to speak my mind.
Thank you Sir, your slightly un-orthodox teaching style was exactly what i needed.
I met Venki for the first time when i was attending a Chennai Python user group meeting, when i joined indix Venki was my team lead and the reason for me to join Ericsson was also because Venki was there. I think he is one of the few people who sort of understood me, communicated in a way I could understand and I had natural respect for him like how you would have for an elder brother. He was always there for me when i needed help on something, gave me great perspectives about life and tech.
Manoj is the most amazing engineer I have seen, I really looked up to him and honestly he was my role model for the definition of things like 10x engineer. Most of my peers at Indix were incredible, but Manoj was just at another elite level. My biggest learning improvements with respect to building software came when i had worked with Manoj. It was also a period where career wise things were difficult for me, I had inherited a lot of classification related work after Venki left and honestly i had very little idea of how most of the systems worked together. Classification was this major piece and if you mess up something, it has huge impacts on downstream systems at Indix. So him taking over from Venki and creating a better process for software development was a huge relief to me.
Anirudh is probably one of the nicest people i have met. He has helped me so much during my tenure at Indix, even to the extent it was totally not needed. I think if he hadn’t helped me with a few things, I might have had to resign - my skill level at that point was not enough for the demands of the job that I had. I felt like an imposter, who actually didn’t belong with this elite team of members. I think Anirudh also recognised that i was struggling in the job and he just decided to help out so that I could survive in an extremely meritocratic environment. I don’t know how many people would care to do something like that. I did get better at stuff midway, but I don’t think I would have been able to get to that stage without his help.
Reema is one of the few people i know who is actually a great people manager and extremely strong technology wise. I didn’t work much with her during Indix, but had a great time working with her in Avalara. She was genuinely helpful on multiple occasions, sometimes going beyond what her role demanded.
In Ericsson, i think i enjoyed my life a lot more. It was a great place for work life balance. I had the opportunity to visit MIT through a training program from Ericsson. I still have no clue as to why Sanjeev selected me to attend this program. There were probably many others who deserved it more. There was not much pressure at all from a work perspective - i found most of the work super easy as I had operated in a significantly fast paced environment at Indix.
We had a lot of time too. I remember playing mafia, table tennis - a lot of laughter with a lot of nice people. It was a jolly good time. We had an innersource project called Quidditch. Lots of nice memories. Thank you Venkat, Raghavan, Gautham, Adi, Milan, Raaghul, Raman & others for the memories. I think it was genuinely a period of great happiness for me.