I have kept knocking on the doors!
I will be completing 11 years in software development this July. Throughout this journey, I have changed jobs frequently. Back in 2014, when I was going from office to office in search of employment in Hyderabad, I had the privilege of merely visiting tech giants like Amazon and Microsoft, and viewing Google’s office from the outside. Little did I know that one day I would be invited to work for these companies.
tl;dr
I have entered many one way doors and learnt from my mistakes. I was denied and now I want it all. Before my career concludes, I want to become the person I once dreamed of being - a top contributor who remains humble and gives back to others.
I have frequently changed companies because it provided me with a sense of accomplishment. I found the recognition that was absent in other areas of my life, which made me crave more of it. Additionally, I consider myself a late bloomer. My first significant achievement was securing a job offer from Furlenco. I haven’t accumulated as much equity as I should have and am still working toward financial independence. That dream of living on a dog farm remains a work in progress.
I am currently at Google and intend to stay for at least 10 years to learn extensively, contribute meaningfully, and thrive professionally. There are numerous fascinating areas and products where I wish to make contributions. My favorites include Chrome, Chrome DevTools, AI applications, PuppeteerJS, and AngularJS.
If I can pursue what I truly love, I will be able to retire with satisfaction!
1st Door - LexNimble
I was working 9-5 for LexNimble (my first job) and then 6-10 to improve my skills. The dream of working for tech giants seemed unattainable, as I lacked the credentials even to secure an interview with them.
I was sending unsolicited emails to email addresses found on job boards. Some guiding force motivated me to keep persisting! I held onto the belief that someday I would successfully make it through those doors.
Actual 1st door - Furlenco!
Furlenco provided me the opportunity to relocate to Bengaluru. It was my first genuine full-time software development position. I created wonderful memories and developed equally good software products (though I sometimes have doubts about this). Combining both periods of employment, I stayed there for 2.5 years. I had a strong desire to learn, and the people around me were exceptionally talented!
2015 was also when I began seeking freelancing opportunities and secured a few small projects. I networked effectively, but the freelancing work never offered substantial learning. I realized somewhat late that learning occurs when the intention is to learn, not when my goal was simply to earn extra income during my free time.
Nevertheless, I enjoyed working late at the office during weekdays, and on weekends I would focus on my freelance projects! I was meeting individuals who worked full-time at Google while spending their weekends attending meetups and freelancing. I was inspired to pursue a similar career path, which prompted me to begin interviewing elsewhere.
I received several comparable startup offers but nothing from major tech companies. Around 2017, I had an unusual experience when I was interviewed at a Café Coffee Day outlet, and what appeared to be a cultural fit assessment was the only interview before they extended an offer that same evening. I served my one-month notice period and worked at the new office for a week before returning to Furlenco!
Before receiving the Flipkart offer, I had secured another offer from Nutanix and resigned from Furlenco (once more!).
2nd door - Flipkart
Finally! After 5 rounds, I joined Flipkart as UI 1 on April 30, 2018. In May, Walmart acquired Flipkart, and both founders exited. I received the UI 1 position because of my overthinking in round 1. I was convinced that I would not succeed and did not put forth my full effort.
Previously, when I interviewed for Flipkart, I performed very well in Machine coding but failed in round 2 (DSA). I ignored their calls when they contacted me again, but my friend encouraged me to try once more. By a twist of fate, I passed the DSA round this time.
Opportunities began appearing from all directions. I started interviewing more frequently and managed to secure numerous job offers. Several major companies like GoJek (2019), ClearTax (2020), Nvidia (2021), and many smaller startups were interested in hiring me! This was exactly what I had dreamed of back then!
I was working for Flipkart, making an impact at scale, and other companies wanted to hire me! 🤩
Working at Flipkart was like a fairy tale. The entire company would focus on two sales events, one in May/June and another around Diwali. I loved and still miss the Big Billion Day sale atmosphere. The whole environment is electric, with everyone energized about their features and optimizations to perform on this grand stage.
Reason to leave Flipkart
I was promoted in mid-2019 and continued to contribute with utmost enthusiasm and curiosity. I created an end-to-end testing framework completely on my own, which helped identify bugs before deploying changes to production. Many senior engineers appreciated it and helped me productionize it. I was set for another promotion in the mid-year cycle of 2021, but it didn't go through.My promotion was deferred, and the reason given was that “I had to improve my documentation skills!” 🫥 There was no culture of documentation in Flipkart. All previous promotions were based on work and impact created, with zero documentation requirements. My peer reviews from different organizations within Flipkart included positive feedback, but the promotion still didn’t happen. HR assured me that all aspects were considered during evaluation, including both my good work and an outage which brought down the iOS app for 15 minutes.
Since many exceptional colleagues left around mid-2021, I was given a retention bonus to boost my confidence. The combination of I had to improve on documentation! and the retention bonus created a sense of mistrust in my mind!
For the first time in my job search, I created a structured preparation plan for interviews. After establishing a two-month interview preparation strategy, I dedicated six hours daily (Morning: 7AM - 10AM, Evening: 7PM - 10PM) to ensure success.
I resigned from Flipkart just before my wedding, and during my exit interview, skip manager informed me they were considering my promotion in the upcoming quarter. This information came too late, and I wasn’t even certain if I would receive a salary increase after the retention bonus situation!
3rd window - Atlassian
I am calling it a window and not a door, because I've worked only for 6 months in Atlassian.Atlassian came as a welcome relief. It offered a fully remote position, good culture, a 10% salary increase, and a joining bonus—so I made the move while remaining at the same professional level!
I accepted the Atlassian offer for two reasons. First, to escape the retention trap, and second, because my manager had given an unreasonable feedback about improving documentation, which felt like suggesting democracy improvements in an autocratic country — an artificial obstacle. Even after joining Atlassian, I still missed having the right position, the compensation I deserved, and the autonomy that comes with the title. I was responsible for where I was, and how long I stayed!
One positive aspect of Atlassian was that they made me feel valued in the company. They sent goodies, t-shirts, and caps for various events throughout the year. They would add funds to your food delivery accounts during hackathons. They maintained a Slack channel for employee inquiries, staffed by actual operations personnel who would address and resolve questions within minutes.
Amazon’s interview process wasn’t well-coordinated, as they lost track of how many interviews had been conducted during the loop and wanted to restart midway. Fortunately, the situation was resolved when my recruiter returned from vacation! A good aspect of each interview round was their emphasis on leadership principles, which was both unique and inspiring! I remained hopeful throughout the process, but the final bar-raiser made me uncertain about the outcome.
4th door - Amazon
In July 2022, I finally joined Amazon! I remember handing my printed resume to an Amazon employee who was standing on the footpath waiting for the bus! What an emotional moment it was when I received my verbal offer. I was fortunate to have a recruiter who responded to all my inquiries, provided feedback at every stage, and guided me during the stressful waiting periods. A true blessing!
Initially, I joined Amazon Ads, where I worked on internal tools. The technology used for creating dashboards resembled early 90s web development. I was hired to improve these tools and build new ones. This environment differed from my previous teams. There was no Product Manager or User Experience Designer, and my manager assumed all these roles while being a System Development Engineering Manager.
Within the first few months, I realized this wasn’t the right team/setting for me, and then the massive layoffs of 2022 began. The entire atmosphere at Amazon became somber. I had just arrived when everything started falling apart! US transfers were suspended, new positions were canceled, employed people feared losing their jobs, and those who were laid off received no feedback.
Although my manager assured me our team was safe, I was convinced that based on the work my team was doing and how leadership perceived it, we were likely to be laid off. With my one-year anniversary approaching, I began looking for opportunities within Amazon and found one in the devices organization! My current team almost mocked my decision during my farewell - “Engineers don’t leave the successful Ads organization to join the loss-making devices organization. Even my skip manager told me the same.” 💫
By another twist of fate, I left in July, and the complete team was laid off in September! I literally dodged a bullet!
The following year was filled with drama and my first real experience with burnout. I was developing Fire TV Stick UI modules for settings and was the only Frontend Engineer on the team, as well as the only person who understood the JavaScript stack. I worked extremely hard and clearly communicated my expectations for promotion. Both my manager and skip manager supported this plan and assured me they would focus on my promotion in another year. Then my manager left, and the new manager arrived with a surprise: he had no idea about what a Frontend Engineer role is in Amazon and had no understanding of the role’s career progression. I was completely baffled.
You cannot change your manager, better change the manager!
The real kicker came in February 2024 – another year, another 0% raise. Then, in March 2024, I found this opening at Amazon Tez. But my skip-level manager convinced me to join him on this new project, saying it would basically guarantee a promotion. So, I agreed and even put together a six-month plan for that next step. I really wanted to trust my manager this time. It seemed fair enough to get more data for the promotion doc, and this new project would definitely give me an edge. I was tired of all the back-and-forth, so I just focused and started working on this new opportunity.
Then, out of nowhere, ServiceNow came along! I had three rounds of interviews in one day, another three the following week, and an offer within the next three days. The whole thing took just fifteen days! I was actually supposed to go on my first official trip to America around July 14th, but I ended up quitting on July 8th! My skip-level still wanted me to visit Austin to meet the team before I left, I could not believe it!
My manager felt like he should have handled things differently, maybe not been so unsure about my role, or at least not told me he didn’t know. I actually felt for him; I don’t think he meant any harm, he was just following the books. No hard feelings this time, though.
I can happily go back to Amazon, yeah, it really is a great company for engineers. I wish I’d joined earlier in my career because it really shapes how you think and sets you up for long-term success.
What I learned at Amazon is that there's so much more to software engineering than just writing code. Amazon really emphasizes a good review system, and the code is almost a byproduct of a good review process. You write a design document for everything – a one-pager for smaller things, six pages for bigger projects. Managers write docs for team-wide initiatives, and engineers take parts of that and write their own technical docs. All these docs get reviewed at multiple levels. Each one has the core principles in mind, and people review them based on Amazon's leadership principles. Engineers get their docs reviewed by someone more senior. Nobody "owns" a doc, but everyone contributes to it.5th window - ServiceNow
With ServiceNow came along the title, the money, and the chance to work remotely. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect. I was actually looking around, and then BAM! It just landed right in my lap. Wow!
So, I was a Senior Staff Software Engineer at ServiceNow. That title itself was a mouthful, four words – felt pretty big to me. 😂
There were only four of us with that title in the whole ServiceNow store organization, and two of them were in India, both right here in Bangalore. The team had about 20 people, with eight of them over in the US. So, it seemed like a pretty balanced playing field in terms of opportunities. But the competition for those opportunities was intense, especially with a not-so-technical manager in Hyderabad overseeing a mix of really good and experienced engineers!
The team in India is struggling because of a Senior Engineering manager. Reasons enclosed!
- He called a design doc a really long document.
- He'd ask for an executive summary for pretty much everything.
- Instead of a proper design document, he'd want a presentation.
- Apparently, he'd copy your document and just send it straight to your skip-level manager.
- He didn't even know the difference between "cherry-pick" and "merge" in Git and actually made someone revert a merge just to do a cherry-pick instead.
- And get this – during a live issue, he wouldn't even let you debug the code yourself! He'd insist on having a meeting to "find the bug" and then just decide on the cause based on what he thought.
I heard these stories from my colleagues about even crazier stuff. Like, if a Senior Engineering Manager was passing off ChatGPT’s answers to junior engineers and force them to implement those solutions, that’s something you’d definitely need to escalate to higher management. And if that same manager was only focused on impressing the US management, it’d probably be time to switch teams.
But honestly, none of that really happened to me, except for that whole “cherry-picking” mess and him always wanting an executive summary!
For me, it was pretty chill, easy-peasy work, and I was able to do the work my way, The Amazon way!
Getting my head around the ServiceNow architecture took a bit of time, but my teammates were super helpful. I actually managed to get the hang of some of the trickier stuff just because I was lucky enough to be surrounded by really smart people.
I wasn’t really in a rush to leave the company, but I kept interviewing anyway. I remember reading this quote once – “Fear is your compass” – and that’s why I applied for Google. Honestly, I’ve always been a bit intimidated by Google!
6th door - Google
I became a Noogler on 01/04/2025 on the April Fool’s day and I am closing the exit door🚪. I want to stay here for next 10+ years, learn, contribute and thrive! I use to bow down in front of Google office in Hyderabad on my way to work.
What a feeling to enter the building! ❤️
Google cares for its employees and I want to give back to Google. There are tons of opportunities in Google to choose and excel. I do not know how, but I want to contribute to all of them. I want to build Chrome browser features, I want to add to my favorite PuppeteerJS library, I want to build my favorite Chrome dev tools features.
I have just one question(ok, many more) for my self, What can make me stay longer?
- Should I be less ambitious about next level?
- Should I isolate my ambitions and curiosity, and only serve my curiosity bug?
- Should I take 1 day, 1 month and 1 year at the moment?
There are many things at Google to keep me curious at least for next 4 - 5 years. And, another 4 - 5 years I will spend building new things for the next generation of users and engineers! Alright, I know, only the time will tell ✌🏽