My Last Day — At my Old Job

Back Story

I am not changing my company, it remains the same, I am just changing my role, the client for whom I work and yes with it my Job. This is an emotional moment for me, a role which was to be a temporary 2 year stopover before I moved to doing something great turned out to be 4 Year long transition.

While at a high level I am still a Data Analyst but the kind of role I am taking and the kind of role I was doing are two very different roles. My location is and the kind of stakeholders I will have to manage are also changing. But this blog is not about where I am going but more about my last day and the feelings I had.

Last 4 Years

While I see back on the last 4 years of my career, while I wanted this to be a very stable and uneventful period, it turned out to be full of ups and downs. I can divide these 4 years into 2 parts. The first part was of exploration, re-skilling and networking. I learnt more technologies, new ways of thinking and met so many people which I not have done ever in my life. But it also tested the boundaries of my persona and also took a toll on my career. My focus was on self development and to some extent this helped me to be recognized as a technical expert and even an SME in my old team but it never helped me to grow in my career. While I did a lot of give back to my company and to my team in form of POCs, team enablement, strategic initiatives. I somehow lost out on growth on my existing role that I was doing. Here I was doing something that I accepted in compulsion and there was another me who was gaining new skill sets which enabled me and helped to sell some of capabilities of my team to our clients but did not materialize into any tangible benefits for me or my client.

The Facts

In last 4 years despite all my emotional bonding that I had created with my surroundings, the bond that I have developed in my role. All of it could not hide the fact that I had no promotion in last 4 Years, and the two unfortunate filings that I did for H1B never materialize into a visa or opportunity. I did not get any rewards, not even a recognition for my work in the account. I was told I am a senior and more was expected from me than just doing delivery. But then I am also human and while I did not expect from my current role, I still missed being recognized. But then when it comes to certifications that should have validated my capabilities in front of my superiors I did only one and that was a insurance domain certification which I felt then minimum base knowledge I needed to do my job effectively.

Why I Moved

To be honest, I tried moving from the first day I joined. This in some ways was my undoing. I did good work and but constantly ways searching ways to join Startups, exploring other opportunities outside of my team. And even saying no to some of the core additional workload that I was asked to do. My superior wanted me to be a Manager, a role he had offered to others but I wanted to be a Data Architect. In my last 2 years I set out myself to be a Data Architect, but then I did not achieve that. And the close friends that I had made, I saw many moving ahead in their career, and that only amplified my feeling of being stagnated. And when the right opportunity from my management came to release me, it was in ways a mutual call to move. Also this gave me an opportunity to me to move from a role where I had become to much comfortable to someone now more focussed.

What I gained

It was not all loss for me. I learned many new technologies like AI, Machine Learning, Blockchain and Cloud. I worked actively on Data Governance, Meta Data Analysis and Enterprise Data Lineage and Business Terminology curation in form of Business Glossary. The most important technology that I learnt was probably Data Warehouse and added a new domain to my resume — Insurance. One of the best things that happened to me was that in all these 4 Years I never was stressed and I got to explore the Startup culture of Bangalore. I got lot of time to learn and expand my knowledge. Which I hope I can take forward to do something meaningful. The most important thing from my last 4 years of experience that I would like to take is the wonderful people and friend that I met and learnt from. I am thankful to all who touched my life and hope then all the best.

My Last Day

Since last 2 months it had been a hectic period of transitioning and closing any work that I had started. And even to the last day all these work continued. And these last 2 months also made me realize the scope and the amount of work that I have done in last 4 years. And I felt proud about it. But the tragedy of the whole thing was I was all alone and not many to share. Converting of a rag tag of admin operations which was fully manual to a semi automated set of Python scripts that to while learning Python on the job made me feel very proud. This year I was planning to make all my operations fully automated but then as I was moving out this just remained as a dream.

I remembered the good old days. Even I got to see our CEO and even meet the leadership team from US who were instrumental in getting more work for our technology team. And even meet the top leadership of my old client and was inspired by the transformation journey they were embarking upon. I got to meet all and personally say good bye which is a chance many do not get.

Finally

We have only one life and while we may not get everything we wish for, but I feel we should always strive for making a difference to our lives and be helpful to all the people around us to — the last day. We should always enjoy and celebrate in what ever work we do and if we do not enjoy it, well we know its time to move on.