What did I learn in 2019?

If I have to pick up the best month, January is probably my personal favorite. A new fresh year but a beautiful nostalgic past. Some good moments and some bad. As, I have grown one more year older and one more year in the industry, I wanted to go back and see why was 2019 a very big year in my life?

2019 started with full of confusion. Applying for masters, getting rejections from my dream universities, and amidst all this confusion, the dearest person in my life passed away. This was the first time I felt a few things that I have never felt. This was the first time I realized that an emotional crisis is a big deal. I struggled with my mental health. But, life goes on. I had to think of alternatives. So, at the end of the year, here I am, in a new city, a new country and a new company. I have left behind a big chunk of my life.

As I moved to a new company and after talking to a lot of my friends around, I noticed switching jobs was not just a question of money or new opportunity, it was also a question to quantify growth. Now, the problem with growth is, it is very subjective and even after changing jobs, my friends, me and everybody around me did not feel happy. Well, that’s a talk of another time. But for now, I wanted to pen down a few things.

1. What should you expect from your organization? If it checks a lot of points mentioned below, you might feel more content and less prone to changing the organization.
2. Why was MindTickle (My previous organization) great for my career as well as for my personal life?
3. Having said that, why did I leave my previous organization?

Expectations from your company

When I graduated from college, I was filled with enthusiasm, confusion, and fear of a new job. But after almost 4 years later, I have come to peace with the expectations and motivation to work in a company that you love. Trust me, switching a company, or getting to your dream university will not bring you happiness or satisfaction unless and until you feel content and motivated in whatever you are doing.

So, here are a few questions that helped me to feel motivated at work.

1. So, every day of your job, Are you learning something in the direction of where you want to head your career?
2. Do you feel challenged at work and feel independent to explore BUT at the same time, you have mentors/teammates who can help you or at least try to have your back when you are stuck?
3. Do you feel that you are making a difference? Do you feel that you own a project and if you do not do justice with the project, it’s gonna impact the growth of the company?
4. Do you feel that your office is a happy and healthy environment to work? Money is important but at the same time, feeling content with the way you earn it is also important. I have seen my friends earning a handsome salary for a soul-less job. It creates more anxiety.

For me, most of the answers were positive for the time I spent at Mindtickle, but obviously, it was not a bed of roses, I had my ups and downs. But, I want to address why was MindTickle a great decision for my career?

MindTickle worked out for me

I started my MindTickle journey around two years back. I had one year of experience, mathematics and statistics background. But I did not have any idea what was waiting for me to unravel.

I sort of owned a project for the first time. I thought about productivity and hyped words like scalability for the first time. I saw a full cycle of experimentation, engineering, and product development. I defined my first machine learning problem there. I worked on extracting data, understanding data, defining a use case that can help the organization. For the first time, I worked on an intuitive hypothesis. I experimented with few models and, I understood if you are not able to justify your ML model result in plain words, you are doing wrong. Accuracy, precision nothing matters. I learned the nature of data can be very subjective and so is the outcome. I got the freedom to work in a new language. I started just as a contributor but ended up owning the entire project by myself. I learned the importance of documentation and communication with other teammates. I had my first mind blocks, my first real-time data pipeline experiments and to simply be fearless in handling any project. Did MindTickle teach me to be a pro machine learning engineer? Not Sure, but did MindTickle teach me to be a fearless and confident engineer? Hell yeah!

Apart from work-life, MindTickle offered a great culture. It was very transparent. I could reach the founders any time I wanted to. There are very small things which made the moments very special. For instance, getting a personal note from founders congratulating on the work done. P.S I still have the card :p. I went on Workation with everybody and made friends with not just coworkers but their families as well. I made some great friends there. I met a team that cared for each other. I had my best chai sessions over there. I laughed my heart out (Got an award for it. :p). Going to the office was so much fun.

I had to go

But then a very big question that pops, why did I leave MindTickle?

It was more of a personal chase for a better future. There is always a saying you should not expect everything from one person, that is the same thing for an organization. Exploring new problem statements, working in a different country, working in a different domain, making mistakes and taking risks is what your 20’s is all about :p. So here I am, a new year, a new company, a new domain, and a new country.