YOY of an Engineer
There are numerous metrics to track career development. However, Year Over Year growth makes perfect sense for me, as the growth of the individuals is one of the pivotal parameters for the YoY of the organisation.
The Impromptu Entry:
I wanted to leave my previous organisation in the quest of finding a new dimension to my career. I wanted to become a person who can assist fellow engineers. More than technical, help them plan their career, make them feel proud about what they were doing.
RedBus happened to me in a jiffy. It was the last week of my notice and RedBus was looking for a senior engineer who can join immediately. The focus was on core concepts and problem solving rather than looking at the depth of new technologies.
To a person, who was used to wearing ironed formal clothes 4 days a week and collared non printed T Shirt. A technical manager wearing a superman T-shirt entering the room, grooming his straightened hair looked like the future. Once the interview was done, he said something which changed my life altogether. “You are strong in concepts and I see the potential. I like your honesty and believe that you will have an impact on the company. I am hiring you”.
It then struck me that the universe had other plans for me and it spoke to me through RedBus.
They trust people. It has been constant over the last 5 years.
They have this nick of identifying the talent and giving them confidence.
Everyone inherits this quality as they grow in the organisation.
The Climb, up the ladder without Snakes:
When I started back in 2015, I made a few friends who shared the common goal.
To build big, To Grow and To Make RedBus Famous.
Platformization was the stepping stone of Scale. The decision which would enable the company to grow over the next few years.
The confidence to solve the bus booking and journey experience at this scale all over the world.
We used to work for 11–12 hrs regularly for more than 2 months. This is the time when we enabled features like Signup, Wallets and Referrals. Right now we stand at 40 million user accounts. We used to know that most of us would be working in the late and we used to ping each other around 2 am without any hesitation.
The release process was so exciting and we cherished every release with a song.
TechOps desk was the highly populated place on the floor.
These pictures definitely were to capture the joy of completion back then. But now, when we relive the moment, it shows what a strong base we have created. It marks the start of infinite possibilities.
Post Platformization, Few opted to take the front-end and app tech to the global level Where we got listed in more than few Google events. Others wanted to dive deep into Data and build capabilities of Data Lake/Data Engineering.
I chose the path of handling the core systems of B2C.
It started with middleware and DotNet Technologies.
Over the years, I have owned systems like Personalisation, Offers and Promotions, Notifications, UGC, NPS, CRM, Customer Experience, Payments & Security.
The Lengthy list of tech involves SQL, NOSQL, Graph DB, JAVA, Galen, DotNet core, NodeJS, React, AWS, GCP, SalesForce, Elastic Search, Queuing & Streaming.
When I look back, I have this question, whether I was touching only the surface of multiple things. Until we are able to solve the issue in any system/tech and guide people to the growth/health of the systems, we don’t have to doubt ourselves.
Anjaneya had to be reminded of his capabilities for him to grow tall and fly over the ocean.
Similarly, the credit goes to the leadership team who had shown me the path and trusted me to contribute to the new challenges.
From a Senior engineer to a tech lead who can empathise the senior/junior engineers and the managers, my career has seen a positive stride.
Being a manager who can solution for priority deliverables and also spends hours of counselling to the younger generation, I have found the dimension to my career, which I was looking for, 5 years ago.
Recognitions have always provided the necessary motivation, starting from the Trail Brazer to the GoMMT Founders Ring of honor, I have seen it all.
Team awards are what matters now, after all, when you climb up it is important to pull others to enjoy the experience at the altitude.
People, Let’s Go Places:
If you hear from anyone about RedBus work culture, you will definitely hear about the people.
The connection which the seniors shared in the initial years has resonated in their teams as they grew.
Be it the redVentue where we found places in Goa, Colombo and Bangkok to party till early morning or the platform releases which we did till 4 in the morning; we have had so much fun with full heart, which would stay with us for a long time.
I have gone places myself, proudly representing our company at global events.
Google IO 2019 at San Fransico, where I found a lot of people from various parts of the world to interact and gain knowledge which could help me and my company.
Salesforce TrailheadX, global summit outside the US, where RedBus were one of the poster guys.
I had my first economic times interview.
AWS webinar and a video shoot, which I would probably smile about.
A Lot of people have been there throughout my journey and we have gone places. The redBus Mafia is what the ex employees call themselves now. They seem to miss the time they spent at RedBus rather more often.
When you work with such kind of people who are true to each other and believe in the strengths of one another, the entire spaceship warps into success. One of the employees from the team who had an exit interview answering to HR mentioned “The group is not a team; it’s a Family, I will miss my Family”.
It gives me a sense of proud yet humble feeling that I am able to take forward the culture of the company and drive my ideologies of compassion under my watch.
With the responsibility of nurturing more than 20 engineers, driving the Geo wise delivery for India and the technical ownership of core systems/Customer Experience,
I stand here, now with a goal to Go Further places. With my People.
