Self Realizations and Change of Perspectives: DevRetro-2022-WrapUP

Setting up the environment

"See Rushikesh, there are two ways to look at a crisis in the Corporate; either you could get scared, confused, and leave it in gods hands or look at it as an opportunity, I would prefer the second one...", the exact words of my CTO which changed my whole perspective of dealing with a problem or crisis in life. Yes, 2022 is been a life-changing year for me and, shameless bragging 👱🏻‍♂️ is kinda my problem as one of my colleagues said, so here I am sharing the amazing year I had with lots of downs and bit of uplifts. So, tighten the seatbelts and hold on to something cause we are going to have a roller-coaster ride through the whole year with the TimeMachine, or should we call it TimeThieft (Endgame ref)😅 in 2022?

Once upon a time, there lived a legend well, of course, it's me, seems a bit much right?😅 well am the writer... okay let's start it over, uhm okay back then I was undergoing Mechanical Engineering and it was going very well. To be exact on 24th March 2020 govt declared the ultimate lockdown, since then the economic situation of my family messed up very badly, and all of us got together, my eldest sister preparing for competitive exams, and the middle one is in the third year of engineering, and am the last one. To be frank, besides all the situations, I was the happiest one like every other student, who else won't like it? Not having exams or having just the online exams, common professors online exams for us engineers? we were supposed to find a way ultimately... so we found a way and moved ahead. Just to give a bit of context we were hit badly by the lockdown situation and in this crucial time the eldest one (Piya) decided to leave the preparation and go out to bear the responsibility... she handled it well though. The thing is, life goes on, and it won't stop for anyone so you yourself have to take charge of your actions, the philosophy of hers which helped me take charge in the upcoming future.

Understanding and accepting the situation

Fast forward to 2022 I had no idea what's gonna be in front of me, the year started online and recruitment updates started to spread out. Last year of engineering is something where you realize you've wasted valuable years of your life and you are gonna lose on everything, and the same happened with me. I started trying out a few things to get on something but nothing was working out, I couldn't plan on preparing for Mtech, not on my own as my BTech prep was pending, couldn't plan on other career aspects as well due to the economical imbalance, placement situation was hell for us mech guys so the only hope I got was to get into IT, yes fellas greed is something that got me into this field well, that's not the whole truth but initially, this was the case. The best thing about the software field is, we can learn anything and everything for free and this was the only thing that seemed affordable. I started researching on YouTube and the web and got to know that learning Java would be beneficial and Anuj Kumar Sharma became my first tutor, the liberty of choosing a tutor that I always wanted, another reason to get into IT. I started coding in java, learned the basics, and solved multiple basic-level problems and when I reached Recursion it became very difficult for me to understand, I started getting scared and I gave up on coding for a while. This thing happens and is kinda relatable being a mechanical guy I've always been scared of coding and unconsciously I always hoped for a way to quit and that thing happened with recursion. This thing happens when you start anything with the greed of achieving something. Today being quite a better developer if I would've to suggest that me back then, I would've suggested starting the prep with development instead directly starting with language, cause if whatever we are preparing and its use case is known to us we can better understand and learn it passionately. Though I got the benefit of learning the language and IT terminologies in getting selected by an MNC/ mass recruiting company and that company provided the best CTC that most of the mechanical graduates could get in my college.

Entering the Startup World as a Developer

I know you might be getting bored cause nothing exciting is happening, but this is life and most exciting things happen for a very short time at least for now... In the month of April, I got to know that the last semester was gonna be offline and everything changed, I got back to my college for attending it and didn't look back then. Around June 2022 exams were completed and the results were so disappointing, well it's another fun story of exams that I might share on my personal blog someday after I dare to tell my parents 😁. Completing my exams left me with one job in hand and some other jobs that I left just because I didn't want to do them. Still, I wasn't convinced to take the MNC role as I wanted to work as a developer and work on developing some websites. So, I took a stand and started learning React.js, HTML, and CSS all frontend in short. Internshala had been a very important part of my graduation period so I tried on it again to get a fresher-friendly job as a developer, applied to several companies, and was shortlisted by some companies. The thing about Internshala is whatever companies shortlist on it, they provide you with one development task with whatever tech they are hiring for and I wasn't proficient in developing anything. The company I've got hired by, gave me in general task to make an authentication page with showing a basic calculation to show on the screen after login, a very simple task right? but I had no idea how I was gonna make it. I got 24hrs to make it and the only thing I could do was to look if someone has made a tutorial on a similar task, well I got one and started with it, spend 8-10 hrs on making it, and successfully completed the task. Wasn't I amazing 😇? I got selected finally and hired as a front-end react developer and the journey was just to begin.

Into the unknown

Until I reached Bangalore for the office I didn't realize I was gonna work in a startup, I was so overwhelmed I didn't even go through the reviews, another mistake that led me to the greater good. A new city, new language, and new faces all over, being an introvert I was sure that I am gonna prefer being isolated. On the first day our prod manager said you need to perform to sustain otherwise it will be difficult, and the journey began... This was my first interaction with her, she soon became kind of a guide to me. On the second day we got a bit of induction with our CTO, tell me guys if I've been hired on react wouldn't I suppose to work on it? at least on some front-end tech? or at least web-related tech? But I got assigned to flutter, the tech I heard about the first time in the company. Flutter is a cross-platform development framework, I didn't have any idea about. The future was gonna burn me into hell I could see it happening. On the fifth day the only senior developer on flutter left on medical leave, I was supposed to learn on my own and the time was nearly ended. One day boss called us into the cabin and said, "See Rushikesh, there are two ways to look at a crisis in the Corporate; either you could get scared, confused, and leave it in gods hands or look at it as an opportunity, I would prefer the second one...", there was this interaction and I didn't even realize when I went through source code and a few days later I was working late on the ongoing live project, solving and fixing bugs with the boss (CTO), and my mentor. It was kind of a dream come true. The amazing thing about my boss, he never tough anything but yet we learned everything from development to troubleshooting and bug fixing from that person. His philosophy was simple, there was not gonna be any exam for what you learned, and the only thing important is whether you could develop the tech, how you develop doesn't matter. Soon I was handling the whole code base with one other college of mine joined after a week of my joining.

Guys, if you want to start your development career join startups instead of joining an MNC, if you wanna get an idea of how a company works end to end, the work you do is valued and the responsibilities you get in the very initial stages are something you might need bit of a time to achieve in MNCs. Those nine months were overwhelming, I was frustrated, working late nights event at 1.00 -2.00 am in the night, working in the room yet, I felt like the luckiest guy to be in that company.

My Contributions to the project

There were many functionalities pending in the app and the complete UI was supposed to be changed/improved, in addition to that there were some major bugs in the app for e.g. user could bypass the authentication and enter the app directly. Though all these tasks seem a bit hard, my first work in the company was to set up the system and provide them with the .apk file for testing which I completed after discussing it with the seniors, one more tip, if you're stuck somewhere ask the seniors for the clarity and to understand where you went wrong. After which I never stopped, I worked on bug fixes, and yes I cleared that authentication bug too. After which there was no looking back, I worked on UI facelift, API integrations, push notifications, and badge notifications, Worked with Isolates/Work manager (Background services/Multithreading), and interacted with the native code (Method/event channel). The more difficult the work became, I started to enjoy working and brainstorming on them, and the time to complete the tasks started to decrease, after many efforts and testing and bug fixing we finally completed the app to go live on app stores for users to test in actual scenarios post which, I got a bit of relief and some spare time which I invested in understanding how the backend work with node.js, express.js, and mongo.DB with the help of the same friend in the office of whom I talked earlier with the bragging experience🤣. Created some APIs and integrated them with the sample flutter apps, I learned flutter-firebase authentication with social media login which I was wanting to learn since I went through the source code of the app. One thing I wanna say is that I always got help whenever I needed and I got the help and support cause I asked for it so, whatever you feel like asking please do ask and don't be quiet, throw away the hesitation.

Change of perspective and goodbyes

It's been a saying that, everything we are and will be in the future will depend on the kind of experiences we get and how we evolve from them. Having the experience to work in a startup environment has been the best decision I've made in 2022. Getting out of your comfort zone, taking your own responsibility, and confronting the problems in life instead of running from them this kind of important things I got to learn this year. Got to meet and work with the people who've built something huge and made their position in the industry, being independent and standing for yourself is too important in life though it's difficult at times. The year is passing by, a new one is just entering my life, and the world is changing rapidly... I don't know if the experiences I had are enough for me to build the career of my dream but I am sure they are enough to get the attitude to face anything that comes up. To be frank, I am scared, a bit, or very scared but the thing is now am habitual of getting scared, and being confused cause in the end these hesitations and a bit of patience are something that will lead me towards the greater good cause I am getting fun in dealing with the challenges.

Well, you must be thinking how could everyone be that good in a corporate or a startup, and I would say it wasn't. All of them I've mentioned here and haven't weren't all good, I had bad instances with every one of them and I was very angry about it immediately after the instances, and common guys no one is completely good or bad, everyone lies in that grey shade where they hide their darks... The thing is I chose to mention the good not because I wanted it to be good, but because they were true to themselves, they didn't hide whatever they were or are... at least I felt that way.

In short, 2022 you've been an amazing partner to me, the checklist I made with you is been checked mostly and some of it is still remaining for which I am sorry Luv. I gotta say when I promised you the checklist I wasn't sure how much I was gonna follow cause I wasn't honest with myself, and now honesty is something I've got, and welcoming your elder, 2023 I could promise another list with the assurance in my mind cause this time I know I can do this. Well, on the top of the list for 2023 will be to find a better developer position😁, thinking of getting into remote work, let's see...

Being a youngster, it's a bit obvious to experience an existential crisis at times, asking so many questions to yourself, like what's happening with my life? What am I? How am I gonna achieve the best? What's my passion? and some more which might seem creepy so leave them, but the thing was I didn't have any answers before, but now I think I am understanding these questions. It's not necessary to have all the answers, the only important thing is to not lose interest in solving these mysteries, and trust me when you get the answer you find peace...

I think I've found my peace with these questions or am loving to resolve the mystery, what about you?

So... here's Rushikesh Kumbhar, Developer and Mechanical Engineer. And this is my story...🙂