June 25th

This day holds special significance to me, especially now. When this day came around five years back, I thought this would be like all the other 25^th Junes before it. It turned out to be the beginning of a great time in my life. I find that this Monday, June 25^th had all the potential to start off another era in my life – life the Monday, June 25^th, five years ago in 2007.

June 25^th, 2007

This day was the start of my professional career. It was the joining date of my first job. I have to admit that I was quite uncertain about this job. I had got it while I was still had almost year and a half to go in college and I was excited at that time. A couple months later, however, I started freelancing. It was nothing like anything I knew of earlier. I found there were thousands of people ready to pay for something which I had been doing since six years. It started off great. In less than two weeks, I earned more than my month’s salary and I almost gave up on joining the job.

Things changed in 2007 and due to a multitude of decisions, I gave up freelancing and joined the company where I already had a job waiting. It was 25^th of June that day and I didn’t know what lay ahead for me and what I would gain (or lose) from it. This day marked a change from everything I thought was ideal and all I had was belief and faith that it would be for the better.

It was! After the first three days that were filled with introductions, formalities and presentations, we were divided into groups from training. I was picked for .NET training which was lucky (or at least easy), as I already had quite some experience with it (remember, I was a freelancer). Our group had around 20 trainees, if I remember correctly, and we were to start on a training schedule of over a month.

It was a profound experience to be a part of an excellent group where we forged friendships that still last, even now, almost three and half years since I left the company. Being an introvert, and kind-of a geek my entire student life, I was overwhelmed at being accepted as an equal by my peers. I was in a group of similar minded folk and I fit right in.

Even professionally: As a freelancer, I was used to, and actually preferred, working alone. I could not imagine working as a part of a team. That changed. I joined a team of about 20 people working on a module of a much larger project. We had a great manager on our team and that helped me be a productive (and stay eccentric) member of the team. I learnt how to structure and work as a team. Very soon, I was an acting team leader for a small sub-team of 5 people. The lessons I learnt in managing technology, problems and solutions were invaluable and quite obviously, they stay and help me in my decisions today.

In retrospect, there is no doubt that I made the correct decision even though it seemed against all notions of entrepreneurship. June 25^th 2007 – I remember that date for it was the beginning of a whole new ‘me’. I am very grateful for everyone and everything that made this possible.

This has gone on much longer than I expected and I have not even start on June 25^th of our very own year. I will continue that in my next post.

This day holds special significance to me, especially now. When this day came around five years back, I thought this would be like all the other 25th Junes before it….