The Power of Grit: Susan Lou and Iqbal Farabi’s Stories

Alverta Shani
Sep 7, 2018 · 4 min read
Source: GO-JEK

Angela Duckworth, an American psychologist and popular science author, defines grit as a passion and perseverance for a very long term goal. Grit is sticking with one’s future for years and working really hard to make that future a reality. Knowing grit is a powerful drive to create high quality talents, this week’s Go-Talk features “The Power of Grit” as the theme. Held on Sept. 5, the event wants to inspire and help GO-TROOPS to achieve their long term goals. During the talk, there were two GO-TROOPS invited as the inspiring speaker. Susan Lou, product manager at GO-FOOD and Iqbal Farabi, system engineer at GO-JEK, who believe that their grit is one of the main reasons that brought them to where they are.

Upon graduating from university, Iqbal went to create his own start-up company along with his friends. Without any knowledge on running a business, Iqbal took the risk to develop his own company where he still needed to write code on his own. At that time, write codes in his late 20s is not a popular decision as most of his counterparts have become managers in big IT corporations. However, it never stops Iqbal to keep coding because it’s one of the things he is passionate about in his life. After five years of struggle, things finally settled down when he moved to GO-JEK as a system engineer.

“I’m really glad when I came here [to work at GO-JEK], the first time I went to Bangalore office, I saw a big board in the pantry and it says ‘coding is not a low level task’, and that’s when I know [at GO-JEK] I’m home,” he said to the audience with a fiery spirit.

Iqbal admits that his close friends play a big part in his life because they taught him a lot about good work ethic and always give support to keep going.

Iqbal thinks the way to measure the grittiness of someone is to look at how much effort they put in their works. In his case, whenever he feels so insufficient, he starts to think that there are a lot of things out there he needs to learn from. So, he removes things he doesn’t really need such as gaming which he has given up for three years now and replacing it with things he does really need like reading books as many as he could. These are how he keeps staying on track to his pathway of success.

Susan, on the other hand, has a different story. When she was in college back in the US, her dad lost his job and there was no one who can pay for her college anymore. This was a life changing moment for her. However, instead of wailing in despair, she got back up and got a full time job as a waitress to support her own education.

For three years, Susan was running on three hours of sleep everyday since she needs to balance classes at daylight, working at night and studying in between. She never had a chance to go out with friends because weekends is the most profiting time when she can make the most money. Even when she was in that tough situation, she always felt that she was lucky because her surroundings were very supportive of her, “a lot of other people in the US don’t even have the opportunity to go to college. So I had to do everything that is in my capability to finish my degree,” she says. Susan also notes that finding a little moment of happiness and always be confident are two things that get her where she is now.

The word ‘no’ is one of Susan’s favourite words, she admits that she always takes no as a challenge and an opportunity to learn, “I have a very long log of people who said no to me and I prioritized that [to turn it into ‘yes’] based on actual impact for our companies or my team,” she notes. Susan advises when one is facing an imposter syndrome, one needs to think that nothing is a static state, “you might be not the best right now, however it doesn’t mean you can’t be the best.” Being confident in one’s capability is also one of the things she believes that can be done when facing the imposter syndrome.

Susan and Iqbal are only a few examples of people who have proved that grit has helped them to achieve their goals in life. Even though they both still have things they would like to achieve in the long run, but in their stories, a strong drive will never betray the hard work.


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Alverta Shani

Written by

Telling the untold stories. Passionate about tech & science.

Life at Gojek

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