From Engineering to People: A Day in the Life of a Startup Junkie
If I had a rupee for each time someone asked me, “How on earth did you go from Engineering to People Strategy?” I would probably have no need to write this article or even get out of bed. Alas, procrastination is not a well-paying job, and so here I am, penning down a crash course of sorts on how to be someone with no fixed career path or job designation: also known as a “startup junkie”.
I still remember how happy I was when I got into the most prestigious engineering university in the country, only to be immensely disappointed by the traumatic experiences that followed (for all those parents reading this and thinking of sending their sons and daughters to Engineering schools: don’t!). However, being the obedient son I was, I soon accepted my destiny to become a part of the mainstream queue of people jostling to get a 9–5 job after graduation that would pay the bills (just about) and lead to a suitable arranged marriage proposal (obviously, engineering wouldn’t give me freedom of choice in that regard).
I did get that job, in one of the world’s biggest multinationals, but man, was it boring! Despite all the pomp and show, fundamentally, my job was to be a desk-based paper-pusher who would provide binary responses to monotonous, semi-scripted emails from people who were as bored sending those emails as I was responding to them. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that those few years of my life led to a cumulative decline in my IQ and EQ, which is saying something.
At that point, I decided to take a plunge into the unknown and resigned from my job (my family virtually disowned me at that point). Enter: Dastgyr. I do not have words to describe the shock I experienced when I entered our first warehouse in Lahore; it was like a truck of adrenaline ran me over, twice.
Coming from a background where old-aged managers bossed everyone around and young graduates like myself were bullied or treated as personal assistants, the startup life was pure bliss. Even though there are a billion things that stand out about the startup life, a few Golden Aspects deserve to be shared with everyone:
1) A day is considered unusual if it doesn’t have shouting matches between people fresh out of college, driven not by personal ambition but a mutually shared passion for the mission at hand. For someone who has been conditioned to think that corporate life is characterized by selfishness, these displays of ownership are so pure and refreshing that they change your philosophy of work entirely.
2) Teamwork actually means teamwork, not just working individually and then patching it all together at hand for a presentation. You will always find people going above and beyond to help each other out, even if it means compromising on their own deliverables, to ensure that they achieve mutually assured growth. While obsession is a word that usually has a negative connotation attached to it, startups are firm in one thing: you should be healthily obsessed with helping each other grow.
3) Contrary to popular belief, it is considered good to be “over-confident” in your actions because it means you are taking ownership of the company and driving organizational change. Hand-holding as a concept is frowned upon, and colleagues are encouraged to take charge and help the company move forward, foregoing bureaucratic approvals. In fact, these autonomous operators are at the forefront of everything “happening” in the startup and hence, they form the core growth engine of the company itself.
4) You might have noticed I used the word “colleague” above and not “employee.” This was intentional because there is no “boss” or “manager” in a startup, and everyone operates on flat hierarchies. As someone who has worked in two multinational companies, I think there’s nothing more democratic than a startup working environment. People are given equal opportunities to express their opinions, and there is no such thing as an “order” or “directive.” If we don’t reach a consensus, it won’t happen!
5) Startups are also known as the “Home of the Generalists.” Nowhere else in the business world can a person switch as many functions, departments, projects, and roles as they can in a startup. I fall in this category myself, as an engineer/supply chain professional/operations professional/sales professional/HR professional (I know, that’s a lot of turns, right?). This freedom to create and continuously learn by doing comes right from the top, and I’m fortunate enough to work with servant leaders who always act as enablers.
6) Firefighting! If someone ever surveyed the most common lingo thrown around startup offices, “burning fire” will be at the top of the list. Perhaps the most significant learning a startup gives is that things are continuously being built, broken-down, put-on fire, and rebuilt … in just 24 hours. This hands-on experience accelerates the learning curve of all those involved to an extent where a fresh graduate becomes bolder and more courageous than a manager of 10 years who spent their life on a desk.
7) Perhaps the weirdest thing at a startup is a mantra that has gotten very famous over the last few years: “Hire better than yourself.” At first look, this seems pretty counter-intuitive as it goes against our deepest instincts of self-preservation. I mean, ask yourself, would you ever willingly hire someone in your team who you know is better than you? If you would, then in the words of Rudyard Kipling, “You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din.” However, this is precisely how startups win in the bigger picture by ensuring that all colleagues have nothing to fear from hiring people better than themselves. In fact, they actively work towards ensuring that the new teams can do what they could not do themselves because, in the end, they are equal owners of the company.
These key learning of a startup life are more or less what differentiates it from life at an established company, not only in structure but in spirit. The soul of a startup lives on in its people, and it is those people who form the collective legacy of the startup itself. I’m not in the habit of giving out advice because I want people to learn by doing, and failure is something I recommend everyone to experience. However, if I were to give one short piece of advice, it would be this: don’t be afraid of taking that leap of faith to join a startup. It will be tough; there will be nights where you regret your decision, but when the dust settles, there is nowhere else you would rather be than at the center of building something impactful and disruptive.
To sum it up, I am a startup junkie, and I am proud of what I am building. Because, after all, what is life if not a series of ups and downs, which, although nerve-wracking, are what give us the high we all want.
