What's your career agenda? A startup or an enterprise?

Should I pour the fancy state or showcase the reality? Elaborate on the lessons or hide the embarrassment? True to my POV or bitterness of the better others?

Here is a little Prologue:
I wouldn't call myself a daydreamer, but a person who was surrounded by the obvious greatness of the fantastic work life and exciting personal life.
PS: Still lives by this motto.

I did my BTech in ECE, so I took up courses on data structures, algorithms, and databases, "why did I choose to shift to the CS world?", is a topic for another blog.

In this process, I got into a mentorship program with Amazon, after my 3rd year. It is a known fact that diligent practice of DS and algorithms would fetch you an offer from Amazon, Google, and other big B's. So, for 2 months straight without distractions, I practiced them.
I got into a couple of companies, Nokia(big company) and Incredible(startup) were the options I had to choose between.
I chose Incredible - "sometimes you just jump and hope it's not a cliff."

And like that my "Life at Incredible" begins...
I was listening with full intent and holding on to every word Karthic(Founder of the company) was talking, as he explained "what Incredible does?" and "Where I come in!".
Still, in my final year, I was excited about my first office experience, work, and team.

To my excitement, it was a fun, close-knit, easy-going, young talented team. I met them at a cafe, as a ritual, they follow to welcome the new member(me) to the team. Yes, there are a lot of team outings, team-building activities, ice breaker sessions, and more fun stuff happening often.

I understood work and fun aren't mutually exclusive. As a startup there would be a lot of experimentation and redesigning of the MVP, to achieve the goal. Time and again I saw how enthusiastic my teammates were about the new tasks. The energy and dedication they put into their work are truly mind-blowing. Needless, the results were always promising seldom with a bunch of bug fixes. They were always encouraged by new learning experiences and mindful time management. They look forward to seeing their work output and take pride in the result.

Working at a startup demands more than just your coding skills.

• Active contribution to the use of latest tech in work.
• Coming up with new ideas from your side which align with the company's goal, and working on them.
• Quick learning, adapting, and contributing.
• Able to put on different hats, if the situation demands.
• Taking ownership of the projects and following them up, until the polished results are delivered.
• Being open to working with different software
  are skills that I observed in all the members and must-haves for candidates with a startup future in mind.
  

It feels great to have skills and be awesome at it, doesn't it? And a chance to enhance them? Karthic once told, "yes, every form of approach teaches, It's learning, the bigger question is, 'How long would you take to nail it?' "

So yeah!, the bottom line is - At a startup ' time ' and your ' skills ' matter, in turn, there would be much fun, love, and learning.

There is always this incident that splits your life into before and after pieces. After little more than a year at Incredible, I moved to an MNC. This was that movement for me.
I don't know how to be semi-interested in something, I'm either indifferent or obsessed. I realized this lesser-known fact later.

Here, they encouraged orderliness, patience, and discipline. Each interaction is coordinated by a specific supporting, friendly team.
I excitedly explored the entire office space when I went to collect the welcome kit and laptop.

There was a lovely welcome cake and plant sent, and soon there was a team fun activity for the year, where I first had a glimpse at the entire team I was going to work along, with and how they approached work.

Working in an MNC would give you many satisfactions like

• Amazing work-life balance
• Stability and job security
• Experienced, understanding, helping, and talented team
• Reliable time estimation skills for learning and other activities.
• Opportunities to work with big teams, different tasks, periodic recreational change

Working at an MNC means falling at the center of the bell curve.
My manager once gave me some advice, "Experience and learning are tools which give confidence and growth in career."

"When you love something, you are good at it. If you weren't good right away, you got good at it.”

*Epilogue time...*
I asked myself a couple of times, where I wanted to see myself in the future? What really inspired me?, How do I want to go forward from here? Each time it felt like mental warfare.

All the running in my life, such self-reflective times made me feel like, a shark getting its teeth cleaned by pilot fish.
This made me search for answers from others, books, and time in general.

This got me realizing, someone else's choice doesn't change who I am. So, I made a decision this time.
Went from a girl who wished her choices were right to fight her way for what she really wanted.

Now, I'm at a place that makes me happy and equally proud, as I'm my priority.

Thank you, Happy Reading :)