From my work experience, I have realised that as long as your job role is interesting, the name of the company doesn’t really matter.
So let me tell you how I reached this conclusion for myself.
I did my schooling from Hyderabad. With little guidance to look up to, I gave the EAMCET exam and luckily got into the second-best college of the state – MVSR engineering college. Alongside my interest in the tech domain, I always harboured a love for table tennis. During my graduation, I continued playing while keeping up with my course. Simultaneously, owing to my accomplishments in table tennis, I also got into Osmania university and became the captain of my team.
For inter-college matches, we got a chance to visit colleges like IIT Hyderabad, IIT Lucknow and BITS Hyderabad. Going to these colleges made me realize the mammoth difference between our academic cultures. While their students were introduced to a few advanced concepts much ahead of us, we somewhat lagged behind. Take competitive programming as an example – while we were introduced to competitive programming towards the end of our course, they were well versed in it by the end of the second year itself.
Regardless, I made do with all the resources that were available to me and cracked the interviews of a few companies during campus placements. I took up a job at Accenture and worked there for about 7-8 months. Again, the job role didn’t add to my learning as it involved very less programming-related aspects. I was looking for better job options when I got an offer from Deloitte. At the outset, I was offered the job of a developer, but after joining, I was informed that initially I would have to work in manual testing and later I would be promoted to a developer’s position. You can imagine the level of my frustration as I became privy to this information after I’d quit my previous role. Justifiably enraged at the miscommunication, I resigned within a month and found myself without a job.
While opportunities were on the downside at that time, things took a turn for better when I interviewed for a startup based in Hyderabad. This job was a career propellor for me as it allowed greater scope of learning and application. I realized that for me, learning and upskilling helped me in strengthening self-confidence. This was the reason I decided to join Scaler in the first place.
What I cherished the most after coming to Scaler was, however, the wholesome and uplifting community that I became a part of. With people working at different companies, it was like a cumulated portal of the best in the field. I found it particularly helpful when I read the first-hand experiences of people regarding almost everything. Before interviews, it helped me gain a complete overview of the company- its interview process, work culture etc. While such experiences were available on the internet in limited quantities, hearing them first hand from a community that you were a part of felt as authentic as it can get.
Apart from this, my social support system has always been concrete throughout my life. My parents have always pushed me to do better and never doubted my choices. A very dear friend of mine, who has been with me since college, has also helped me in navigating this tumultuous journey. Having joined Scaler together, we were both there for each other whenever we were confronted with difficult problems.
I have seen many people compromise the quality of their roles at their job as long as they were working under the umbrella of the huge companies in the tech sector. However, for me, the amount of contribution, learning and exercise of expertise will always come before the name of the company. I am currently working at WorkSpan as a Software engineer and I actually feel that in my capacity, I am contributing greatly to the organisation.
Connect with Fazeel Usmani on LinkedIn