Never Say Never

I am Shipra. (EC 2009–2013)
And I have lived through almost all of your current fears…

• was not placed out of college.
• didn’t get one even after getting a certification. (was CCNA certified)
• unwillingly prepared for MBA because of being unemployed.
• had a boss who doesn’t trust you, thinks of your will to do something better as fashionable, believes and expects that you will fail.
  (the only thing he said when I left the company was I like fancy stuff like Python :D )
• worked with COBOL (Yes, you read it right).
• had a day job consisting of copy/pasting, fixing typos/errors in legacy code, working GUI tools.
• was termed one of the “non-productive” employees, with no bonus or hike after assessment.
• was on the verge of getting kicked-out within six months of joining a company.
• quit the job because it was so horrible that it messed with my health.
• being unemployed with 2 yrs of work-ex and nothing to show.

And I made it through.

How did I do it?

It did take a lot of hard-work and I also had help (kudos to the C club).

I started coding in XII and knew that this is what I was gonna do for a living.
So, when it came to choosing a branch in Engg, I chose ECE since I was gonna code all my life, anyway. I hardly studied anything in college. Except for Microelectronics Circuits, EMFT, Computer Networks and scored lowest in these. I read one book per semester, book not syllabus. (Read the standard Authors, they are brilliant.) Since I was close to Tiwari and Rajput, I, at times, sat in the c club, slept in the c club, listened to them discuss stuff in and outside the club. I played basketball with the (stinky) boys almost everyday, I was not good at it but it was fun. That’s all I got out of college.

I had 64.2% and EC companies hardly come, so no placement for me. So I got myself a certification. CCNA certified, still no job. Started preparing MBA, wham, I got one. I Slept through CAT.

My first job at Amdocs was to write shell scripts for automating a process along with working on proprietary GUI tool.
I figured that it was my best shot at programming at that time and I put everything I had in to it, hoping if I was good at it I would get to do more of it. It paid off, soon a few teams wanted me to automate their manual processes.
When I applied for another job, shell scripting was all I knew. And I got the job. Apparently, AWK is good enough to get you hired. But things didn’t turn out as I expected. I absolutely hated my stint at NCR Corporations. I was learning little bit of JS and Python alongside. Goodbye, NCR.

Unemployed again, I moved to Bangalore and got a chance to work with Tanmay and Mayank Sir at Thinqbot.
I brushed up my Linux knowledge, started working on Django.
It was the first time I started something that was not a single page script. It was overwhelming and scary but the joy of building something out of nothing, sculpting something out of my brain kept me going.
I kept working on different small projects, improving the ones that I had. Kept learning.

Then I got a job at Kings Learning(this is where I currently work).
I was the only member of the backend team and built node.js server even though I was hired as Django developer. I architected and built infrastructure when we didn’t have a DevOps. After that I have been working on the Django API for mobile/web app. Right now, I handle the backend team that has grown to include one more member.
In short, I have done whatever was required to be done here.

Rajput once said to me “Learn one new thing everyday” and I have tried to do that as much as I can.

Moral of the Story:

• Learn one new thing everyday.
• Hope and optimism help more than you think.
• Grab any opportunity you get.
• Help will always be given to those who ask for it.
• Never say never.