My Leap from Corporate to Startup
Every day on Medium, I read stories of people who left their corporate jobs to start their own businesses. Stories about the challenges they face, how happy they feel despite being exhausted, all the hard work they put in and a lot of advice on how to be productive as an entrepreneur.
But I am yet to come across a story wherein someone moved from a corporate to working for a startup. Therefore, I decided to grace Medium with my story.
After completing my graduation, I joined Royal Bank of Scotland’s esteemed graduate program as an application developer. I quite enjoyed my time there, met new people, learned a lot of things about the so-called “real” life and gained 11 kgs gorging on the company and party food.
Life was good.
So I decided to leave.
I wanted my work to challenge me. My life at the bank was too comfortable. I could predict most of the things that would happen in the coming months. I did not want to be so comfortable at 23. So I came to this startup called Roposo.
Roposo was a pleasant shock culturally and visually, unpleasant aurally.
On the day of my interview, I found the twinkly lights, the beautiful jhoola of Roposo, the tech room with wires sprawled on the floor, warm and welcoming just like the guys who took my interview. The interview was quite fun, and Kaushal, our master of witty retorts who happens to be our CTO, even cracked a joke on one of my stupid questions.
When I joined the tech team as a backend engineer, I understood what it is like to try to code in a place full of constant chatter, fights, excited “Arre Waah!”s and loud EDM music. It is not easy. I would be busy with a production issue, and hear the product manager yelling “Dude! The title of the stories has an extra space!”.
There are no easy days in terms of work. There’s always a huge pile of work to be attacked, and then a bigger pile behind, and then a Mount Everest, surrounded by hundreds of foothills.
Hardly anyone reads mail! Everyone is just a few feet or a room away. Once, as I remember, I had a discussion with my team at RBS that we have so many emails it is hard to do any productive work at all. Now, I think it is easier to do productive work with some emails in your inbox than having people coming up to you all day for “priority” work.
That being said, I absolutely love my time at Roposo.
I am not expected to behave in a “professional” way, watch my tongue carefully or leave my personality behind when I show up at work. About two months back, I rediscovered my love for drawing and everyone at work loved it when I shared my doodles on our app. I wear jeans to work, sit with my feet hoisted on top of a chair or a table or against a wall and have serious discussions with people sprawled on the ground.
I have become used to the noise with time, and am an unconscionable contributor many a time too. I have also learned to find quite corners to work when I need time to think.
Oh, and did I mention how crazy our parties are?
The best part, though, is the people. My colleagues are fun, full of zeal, helpful and truly brilliant. I get to discuss solutions and ask questions from people who started the company. It is a great learning experience because they see things very differently. They measure the constraints I would never think of. They are also very receptive to the ideas that rest of us have.
Unlike a lot of people, I do not find working for a startup extremely demanding. Maybe it’s because I like my work enough to not find it demanding. Whatever the reason, I am rarely tired in a bad way.
At times, I miss my manager. I never had to say “I am short on time” or “Your work is low priority. You will have to wait”. It was his job.
I work in a flat hierarchy now. I have to learn to say no and be able to make decisions about my time carefully. It’s a learning experience, and an important one.
At the bank, I learned a lot of ‘right’ ways of doing things. At Roposo, there is still a lot of chaos, which has been teaching me when and why we need those “right” ways of doing things. The bank offered me a well-defined career path and professional guidance. Here, I have the opportunity to work and explore my potential. There is a sense of ownership towards my contribution and my mistakes, and it wouldn’t have been possible at the bank at this stage of my career.
I am enjoying my time here, writing code, sipping green tea, discussing plausible algorithms of other social networks, fighting about how to name a class and sometimes, falling asleep with my mouth open as I wait for my code to work wonders.
Life is good. Whilst challenging.
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