From a childhood obsession with computers to helping Meesho make data-driven decisions, find out how SDE-IV (Backend) Subham Sharma is making our entrepreneurs powerful
Tech innovations. User obsession. Social impact — this is the holy trifecta that has Shubham Sharma, SDE — IV (Backend) Tech, excited about his work at Meesho two and a half years after joining the company.
Growing up in Punjab’s Pathankot, Shubham became obsessed with computers early on and would make websites and blogs as a hobby. Over the years, that hobby turned into a passion, and eventually his career. He joined Meesho as a Senior Software Developer in June 2018, and his love for tech and his passion for experimentation has made him an irreplaceable asset to the tech team.
Shubham has played an integral role in developing some of the most ground-breaking processes at Meesho, like the A/B experimentation system, user authentication, etc, that form its backbone today. By thinking 10X and putting the success of entrepreneurs above all else, this Chelsea FC superfan exudes the Meesho spirit every single day at work.
Read more about Shubham’s life at Meesho here:
I knew early on that I wanted to be an engineer. I fell in love with computers as a child and grew up building demo websites and creating blogs. I was a curious child for sure, and when I found out about the true potential of computer science, and the vast opportunities it presented, including its impact on society and the real world — I was sold. I wanted to be a computer engineer.
So, I headed to the Indian Institute of Information Technology Allahabad to pursue computer science and graduated in 2016. Campus placement took me to Hike Messenger, where I was working with the growth team and focused primarily on the chatbot Natasha. At Hike, I gained a vast range of experience, especially in scaling up and building services and features from scratch.
Working there strengthened my roots and educated me on building highly scalable, resilient systems. After two and a half years there I knew that I needed to change ships to expand my learning further and I was faced with two choices — join a well-established company or take a risk and join a startup. The boldness and penchant for learning that comes with being in one’s early twenties inspired me to choose the latter. Dynamic growth it is, I decided. The intent was to join a small startup with a pretty small tech team and contribute to the company’s overall growth.
In pursuit of growth
Serendipitously, Sanjeev [Barnwal; CTO] reached out to me on LinkedIn, telling me about Meesho and expressing his interest in hiring me for the dynamic tech team he was building. I was so impressed with the profiles of the people who were already part of the team, and a few honest conversations with Sanjeev about the social impact of the company further convinced me that Meesho is where I needed to be.
And so, I joined as a Senior Software Developer in 2018 June and became a part of the small tech team that was 15 members strong at the time. Even within the initial few days at Meesho, I knew that this was the kind of startup I wanted to be a part of, primarily because of the company’s scalability. Within just a few months I got hooked — not only to the tech but also to the product and the work we were doing as a company.
Working at Meesho changed the way I look at my job as a whole. I wholeheartedly believe now that every engineer, along with having good tech skills, should also have user empathy.
Not just another tech company
It was evident early on that Meesho is not just another tech company trying to have a product out there, Meesho app is effectively helping women across the country [and Indonesia] become financially independent. My work doesn’t end with tinkering in the backend. Every small action I do has an impact on the lives of these women and that awareness is very humbling. So, my focus is on ensuring that our entrepreneurs are not facing any hiccup while using the app and are having a smooth experience while reselling.
Prioritising the core value of Making Entrepreneurs Successful is important for us, but also we do it willingly. We are constantly looking for ways to scale up all our projects and processes and take them to the 10X level. As part of the team that manages Meesho app’s core platform, Thinking 10X has been pertinent to my success at work. Everything we build has to be scalable.
Building Meesho’s framework
One of the first projects I took on after I joined was breaking down the monolithic backend system into multiple microservices. Back in the day, we had a single giant monolithic service written in PHP, which was powering the whole app. This started to cause issues since with increasing traffic and codebase, this system was becoming less resilient. So my initial responsibility at Meesho was to break down core components like logistics, inventory, and pricing into separate micro-services and scale them up independently.
We have since been able to scale all our systems and our infra is way more robust. Even our teams are divided such that each team has its own set of services to focus on.
Other services that I am proud to have worked on are user authentication — which keeps our backend systems and data secure by permitting only authenticated or genuine users to access the protected resources and user profile — which maintains the details of the data which our entrepreneur fills in the app, like name, phone, etc. I have also worked on a very core component — the A/B experimentation system. Everything we build today on Meesho interacts with the A/B service and this helps product managers make data-driven decisions.
All these projects have become integral to Meesho’s existence today, and I am so proud to have played a role in them. What excites me about the work here to date is the ability to create an impact while also being a part of technological innovations. It’s the best feeling in the world.
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