Leaving VNL

Today is my last day in VNL. I had mixed feelings about leaving VNL. I was looking forward for working in a company that is nearby to my place of residence but I feel sad as I leave a good organization and a great team with whom I had lot of memories in past 2.5 years. My experience here have been both memorable and unique. Memorable in terms like I did lot of coding, developed a number of features and tried my best to improve the quality of product, Unique in terms like each day was a roller coaster ride for me as I have to cross 3 states (UP, Delhi and Haryana) to reach my work place. Every day was a new challenge, as if I am getting ready for a battle. My typical day looks like following - Wake up at 5:30 in morning, quickly get ready and leave home on bike, ride the bike for 30 kms, then board a metro for Gurgaon, and finally walk a km and reach office. In office complete the day's work in limited time as I need to rush to home bit early so as to avoid traffic. Rush to home and now is time to play with my sweetheart Aarvi. Finally have a late night food and sleep when my daughter permits me to do so! Phew! I had been religiously following this schedule for more than 2 years when one day I said Enough is enough! I need to quit.

During my stay in VNL I had learnt a lot of things. On a personal front my learning has been tremendous. I would like share some of learning

Patience

It is said "Patience is a virtue". I feel that my stint at VNL helped me imbibe this trait.
There were a number of instances like when you get stuck in massive traffic jams, commute in over-crowded metro, deal with tough people in office. A number of instances like this helped me in developing patience over a period of time. In all tough scenarios I kept myself inspired with following lines of Agneepath :)

“Tu na thamega kabhi tu na mudega kabhi tu na rukega Kabhi. Kar shapath, Kar shapath, Kar shapath. Agnipath, Agnipath, Agnipath”

Learn from everyone

I feel that you can learn from every person whom you meet in office, be it a junior or senior. There was a time when I was loosing my interest in work as I was getting very trivial type of work, but then I observed how my juniors are working very enthusiastically or a similar type of work and I realized that irrespective of the nature of work I need to work with the same dedication as if I am new to this project and there is always something to learn from it. I really feel lucky that in VNL I got to work with some good people from whom I could learn a lot.

Be Humble

My stint here taught me about being humble. Since my office was very far my place of residence and I can't bring my vehicle there, I need to daily travel in highly crowded metro and sometimes I do need to travel in overly crowded shared auto's of Gurgaon. See the pic below to see the pathetic condition of people travelling in a shared auto :)

On the Lighter Side 

Enhanced driving skills 

On the lighter side I had greatly improved my driving skills as I daily travel 50-60 kms via bike and had never been fined by a cop. I rode bike in every kind of weather be it on a chilly morning with blinding fog or in a daunting rainy day or in blistering summer. I feel that I had now mastered the art of sailing through congested roads and reach my destiny in time irrespective of traffic or weather.

Closing remarks! 

 After all these years of working I still love coding, I am still hungry for doing great work, for building a great product! Whenever I join a new company or start working a new product I still have butterflies in my stomach and I always compare my situation with this picture

 In every new project I start from being an ape and evolve to become a human being. The idea is how quickly I can evolve in a project is the key to success.