Working at Igniter Space

My first blog post

It’s 11:20 now as our CEO, Jehan, called us into the room to discuss something. He told us to all to start blogging. Almost everyone has started to write about a topic, but here I am still thinking of what to write….

A lot of topics raced through my head until I thought of writing this blog about my experience here at Igniter Space. My first job in Sri-Lanka.

I’ll start by giving a brief summary about me, I used to live in Saudi Arabia for most of my life until I came to Sri-Lanka with my family around 3 years back(in 2013).

I have been searching for a job for almost 6 months until I got hired at Igniter Space (used to be called Kids Ignite).

It’s been almost a month since I started working here and this blog post is going to be all about my experience here.

The Job Hunt

Introduction

As mentioned before I’ve been searching for a job for some time. Every interview I’ve gone to, I have left disappointed. Finding a job isn’t easy here in Sri-Lanka, especially if you don’t have the right connections. But to be honest, I think it is the same anywhere in the world.

I got desperate and applied for any job I could find, hopefully someday I would get a job…..

Until 9th December 2016, where I got a call from our boss Jehan about an opening at Kids Ignite for a technical instructor position. You might be thinking how I can remember this date clearly, to put it briefly it’s because that was the first day my team and I were going to participate at SLCG (Sri Lanka Cyber Games 2016) we ended up coming to the quarter-finals but lost. Anyway that’s a story for another day.

Frankly, I didn’t expect the call at all. Moreover I didn’t even know what the job “Technical Instructor” meant.

So on Monday I went to the office at Narahenpita. I wasn’t really nervous, as I’ve been to many interviews already. Neither was I really hopeful, as I’ve failed at a decent amount of interviews already.

At the office

As soon as I entered the area I thought the entire building was owned by Kids Ignite, so I went to the building at the center. What an embarrassing mistake, I was at an office called West Ventures. The receptionist there told me that this wasn’t Kids Ignite so I left.

I kept looking around the place until I saw a board called Kids Ignite. I entered and the lobby was empty so I took a seat and waited for Jehan to come. As I looked around the lobby I really liked it, it had a really cozy feeling and the quotes that hung on the wall showed that the employees working here really loved their job and wanted everyone to be motivated. I waited for a few minutes till an employee named Angala greeted me and told me to wait for Jehan. I kept waiting for another hour till he arrived. I expected him to be a suit and tie type of guy, but he was the complete opposite. I already began to like this place. Everyone was friendly and the environment was cheery.

He called me into his office and told me what the job was about and every detail about Kids Ignite. I was being cautiously optimistic but I was really looking forward to working here….

Getting Employed

Almost 2 weeks have passed, and honestly like every other job interview I’ve gone through I already decided that I wasn’t going to be selected anyway. However, at the same time I got an offer at another startup. I didn’t really like it so I had to make a decision. Join the startup that offered me a job or wait for the job at Kids Ignite.

I didn’t take any chances, I called Jehan immediately and asked about the job, he apologized for not calling me back as they were very busy that week, he told me that I was hired and had to come for a training.

Training Days

Yeah that sub-heading is a movie reference ;) You’ll be seeing a lot of references in my future blogs so keep your eyes peeled for them. The training days were awesome. I met several people Buddhika ayya (the accountant), Angala (the social media content creator) , Jehan (the boss, although he’ll get angry at me for referring to him as the boss), Hasith ayya (the co-founder, I remember him from his visits to NSBM, but he probably doesn’t remember me) and Hasith ayya’s family. I really enjoyed it although it took some time for me to adjust to the different working environment.

The Classroom

These were the days I enjoyed the most and the main reason why I chose this job. To explain it, it would take a really long time so I’ll talk about it on another day. But the people I met at the training day were amazingly awesome. The class days are honestly the best days of work. I’ll give a small brief of the people I met on that day. Mayowa, Pabasiri, Pasindu, Charana and Sameendra were the first group I was instructing with. I had a hard time doing technical work, but they made it a really fun experience. They helped me constantly and made sure I was a part of their group.

If I had to talk about the classroom this blog would become more longer. So for now all I can say, is that working at Igniter Space (or Kids Ignite), has been a life changing experience for me.