Meesho Intern to SDE — I- Tech in 6 months: How Hridyansh Sahu grew exponentially in Meesho by taking ownership & writing code for change
Guest Blog by Hridyansh Sahu, SDE — I — Tech
While pursuing my undergraduate degree in Computer Science and Engineering from National Institute of Technology, Bhopal, I gradually developed a passion for building tech products and the idea that my code could perhaps reach millions of people — inspired me.
Placement season started in August 2019, for me, and like the rest of my peers, I too started listing companies that I wanted to start my career with. That was when I first heard about Meesho. I did online research and was enticed by the business model and its commitment to its resellers. And after learning more about the company culture and its people, I knew without a doubt that I wanted to be a part of Meesho. Luckily enough, I was able to clear the written test and the interview during my campus placement. I got selected for a full-time offer along with a prior 6-month internship. My journey had just begun!
Walking the talk
I joined Meesho with seven other tech-interns in January 2020 for a 6-month internship. After the onboarding, CTO and Co-founder Sanjeev Barnwal himself sat down and explained about the Meesho and the work of various teams. During this conversation, the phrase that he kept on repeating was “Bahut sikhne ko milega” meaning you will learn a lot here. Rather than just instructing us as to what our jobs will be, he made us realise that they are here for us, and this felt reassuring. Being a fresher who was not even out of college back then, it made me feel comfortable and I couldn’t have asked for more. After almost seven months, I am happy to report that truer words have never been spoken — during that conversation with Sanjeev.
One of the core values that we follow here is “Taking ownership in whatever we do”. I feel the first step of achieving this is having a sense of belongingness to the company. And the folks here have provided that with perfection.
On the very first day I was asked to join the weekly Wednesday cricket session by one of the senior-most developers Rajendra Singh Choudhary (SDE-4). Later on, I also joined the Meesho cricket team for weekly matches. I was also invited to play badminton on Tuesdays and Thursdays by Prikshit Kumar (SDE-3) with whom I worked for most of my internship period. Everywhere people were interested in me, asked questions, gave rides and were so welcoming. Luckily I also got a chance to live with a co-worker Siddharth Bulia (SDE-2) who later on became more like a brother and was always there to help. I felt at home and when you feel at home you give the best you can.
Freedom to experiment
One of the things that stood out for me was how everyone encouraged me to come up with my own solutions, rather than depending on what has already been done in the past. It taught me how to Deep Dive and Solve Problems, and also gave me the freedom to experiment. Even though I was responsible for coming up with solutions myself, I always had help. I could reach out to anyone at any time and people were always ready to help even if it meant answering the simplest of questions at 4 in the morning over a call. As the lockdown started, I was anxious about how I would cope up with work from home without any help, but here too my mentors and managers made the transition very easy with their constant support.
Writing code for change
During this time, one of the major projects that I worked on was creating a new service called Merchandising, which was responsible for serving the different components related to navigation on the app. The task required me to build a new standalone Microservice by migrating code from existing services while adding features such as Multi-tenancy.
I learnt how to write code that can scale, the importance of testing, maintaining and monitoring the performance, iteratively adding features overtime.
These were some of the things that I had only read in books and thought were inconsequential. Oh boy! I couldn’t have been more wrong. Writing code that can hopefully reach out to millions of people and help in bringing about a positive change in their lives is a dream come true, and I don’t mind having sleepless nights or working weekends living this dream.
I have really grown in Meesho not only as a developer but also as a person. The work culture and people here are so compelling that it forces you to Think 10X . After 6 months of internship, I graduated to being a full-time employee, this July. It was an insignificant change as I had already become a Meeshoite long back. I await the opportunities that Meesho beholds for me. I want to keep riding on this exponential learning curve. I am looking forward to doing my part for the company as a token of my gratitude for the trust that its people have put in me.
And yes, I am eager to attend my first party with these awesome people which could have already been a reality had the pandemic waited for a bit.
Have you read Creative producer and Strategist Sonakshi Tiwari’s employee story yet?
Computer engineer and Meesho reseller Sindhuja MS is dreaming big thanks to Meesho
Head over to Life at Meesho’s Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn pages if you are a fan of fun and positivity.
