Chand Sethi
Jul 21, 2017 · 4 min read

One of my best and only internship experiences.

When you are about to join a company, you have all these expectations and scenarios playing inside your head about how the company will be. You have scenarios where you get much more than you expect/deserve but you also have these cases that you think you’ll just have to ‘settle for.

In my case, I was expecting a typical start-up culture that you see in movies/TV shows. No cubicles, no formal clothes, and no corporate BS. This was my default scenario. But what I hoped for, deep inside my head, was a sense of seriousness in a company. I mean, it’s good to have that start-up enthusiasm, but I did not want to work under some 22-year-olds who ‘had an idea’, ‘got some funding’ and now, are sitting on bean-bags all day. I was looking up for a place where I get to be with people with some real knowledge and experience that I can absorb. And fortunately, I got exactly what I wanted, and perhaps, even more.

GoFro is a start-up. Exactly the kind you’d imagine — open space working environment, spacious office, typical start-up perks, free food, team outings, surprise pizza parties, mango-eating competitions, and most importantly, flexible hours. In my first week, I reached the office at 10 AM. In my second week, I left for office at 10 AM. In my third week, I woke up at 10 AM.

And when it comes to the seriousness part I mentioned earlier, I am not saying that there’s no fooling around or fun here. It’s just people here are so good at what they do and so clear of what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, and how it needs to be done. There are no quick-fixes or jugaads; things are done for scale and every tiny-detail is seen through. People have years of experience and I also met a few BITSians here, along with IITians, IIMians (is that a word?), people from ISB, or otherwise, people who have through and through knowledge of what they do. It’s actually quite over-whelming for someone coming from an engineering background where the most you have done is a group project that someone else did for you.

While I was looking for internships, I was told several times that I should join a “big company that suits your CV, regardless of the work they’ll give you”. So I could have gone with a company with a huge brand and do their grunt work, or join a rapidly growing company where I could learn some real agile-development. I went for the later. Because it doesn’t take a BITS Pilani Undergrad to fill some excel sheets.

Coming to development, I was a Product Management intern here. I have come to realize that we all are products and we do need improvements every few days/weeks. But the whole cycle of product development is what my manager, Ravinder (who happens to be one of the three amazing product managers in the company) taught me. These 2 months were more of a coaching/training, except I was getting paid for it.

In these 2 months, work has been very dynamic (that’s the reason I opted for product management in the first place). Things have gone from “Should we label the button PROCEED or CONTINUE” to conferencing with third-parties in US. From “Let me teach you how to do User Acceptance Tests” to full fledged product release meetings where I wouldn’t understand 50% of the words.

Ravinder would sometimes create work out of thin air for me, where I’d have to go and make discussions with Business team, Sales team, Ops team, Design team, HR team, Tech team, Marketing team, Legal & finance team, or even the CEO.

CEO, right? Literally. I was assigned a seat on the very right of our CEO. It was the same feeling as when your teachers asks you to come from the back and sit on the first bench. Amitabh has this aura around him that instantly tells you that he is a man of solutions. I think that happens when you build a company like Snapdeal from scratch as it’s CTO. I could often overhear some of his discussion (sometimes, even intentionally) and learnt a thing or two about product experience as well. I wish I had interacted more with him. But I think the first-bencher anxiety took over. I think I need to work on that.

Other than that, I also need to work on the feedback that Ravinder gave me, out of the office. On stairs, with air filled with caffeine and nicotine, I was told that the engineering attitude — doing things at the last minute is quite detrimental after college. And I am sure I am ridden by that attitude, given that I started to write this blog a week ago, but I wrote all of it today — on my last day at office just hours before I bid adieu.

Check us out at GoFro.com, India’s foremost International Holidays Marketplace. Here you can build your perfect holiday through a fully customizable itinerary.

“Not all those who wander are lost” — Tolkien

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Chand Sethi

Written by

Product Manager. Likes to write about social media and to talk about himself in third-person. Twitter: @DMthisPM

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