To be worried or not, when senior people leaving your company?

Senior people leaving the company is one of the biggest thing that affect the low and mid line of employees in a company. From that point a lot of question arises in them asking

  • Is the company doing good? or even some ask is it collapsing?
  • Why Senior people left?
  • Is that an Risk or an Opportunity?

I have come across this situation in a couple of circumstances in my career life. 1st time when my senior left the company after few months of my joining, Initially i felt like being at point blank don’t know how to architect a product and maintain it, as it was my first experience in a product company. Till then i was building non maintainable apps in service business. Another question i had in mind was whether the company is doing good, am i taking a risk etc.

At the end after around six months i was in a stage where i could manage the whole thing of course with the support of the junior team and the motivation from the director. We built the platform from scratch with maintainable and scalable architecture. With a lot of automations which saved manual human efforts as well. User base grown several times, at the time i left the company more than the salary or the position, what all i have learned was the most valuable for me. It took me to a next level, without those efforts it would have taken another 3 years for a professional to reach that position.
Let me explain how i overcome those in generic so that it would be helpful for you guys as well.

  1. Whether it be a senior person or a junior person, decision of leaving a company is his choice and that may be because of many reasons. It can be a personal issue, It may be change in his career focus on a long term. Final fact is that you don’t have to worry about that.
  2. Next is the thought on how the company is doing? As long as you receive your salary on date, don’t worry about this,  if you think like that you are doing bad to your company. You will have this in the chai and lunch conversations, obviously spreading the negative energy to others. This can bring a company down even if it wouldn’t have been. Put in your efforts as usual or even more (i will say why more in next section).
  3. Finally is that an Opportunity or a Risk!. This answer is the key for the biggest change in your career and life. For me at the stage discussed, it was like some Risk and Opportunity as well as i had that eager to do architectures and implement the same. Once i started moving, when the things was working the question i had then was what’s next and down the span of one year, have achieved a lot and skillset in my career profile doubled. Think in that line if you see that as an opportunity and put in additional efforts,  its great for you too not just for the company.

“When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.” ― Paulo Coelho

After this for almost 2 years i was doing architecture level consultaions for multiple startups. 4 out of 5 is well running now on the same base platform i have architected. 1 unfortunately didnt take of due to multiple reasons. 1 in content segment went the organic path and the other 3 going well in seed fund , series A stage. If i didnt take up the oppurtunity i got then i would have never been able to do all these., still i would be just another web developer.

Remember “If you are willing to do more than you are paid to do, eventually you will be paid to do more than you do.”. When you starts to do more dont think about the remuneration at that point of time, pay comes after hard work. It will take another few months for you to prove yourself. And the lucky part for you is how much ever senior the person is, that much time consuming is for another person to join, whether its difficulty in recruiting or notice period. So you have enough time to prove yourself, just take over and do that. Look in the mirror Say “GoodLuck” to yourself and move on!.

Feel free to ping me at shyam@shyamachuthan.com / visit www.shyamachuthan.com

Cheers
Shyam

Have you felt that your performance review didn’t go well this time? Then you should definitely read this.

After the performance reviews, most of the professionals have this feeling of “didn’t get as expected” unless they are in the top rating bracket in their company. Down the years it’s not surprising for me, as it’s not the person but his inner mind forces him to think so.

Let me start with a story, infact a real incident. In the year 1992 researchers from Cornell University studied facial expressions and emotions of athletes who won. While analasing the prize distribution ceremony, the interviews they have given after that the Gold Medalist was the happiest one. That’s not a surprise but the shock was bronze medalists seemed so happier than the silver medalists.

Interesting right, how a guy who positioned third can be happier than the one who got the second place. It’s our crooked mind playing behind this, the third one was so happy because he know for the fact that if he was not placed there he wouldn’t have been on the podium at all, but the one who won silver thinks only of the lost gold.

When you start comparing yourself with others you start forgetting about what you have earned. Counterfactual thinking sometimes makes us feel good about comparisons and if you are thinking positively then drive you to achieve more. And on the other hand it makes us feel worse, starts the frustration and you will soon end up stop loving your company / job.

How we can avoid this?

Once we start doing the comparison with others, we will stop evaluating ourselves, where the real Failure starts. When we stop self assessment, our career is pretty much done there. For growing ourselves we need to know what we learned, how are we getting updated day to day growing ourself.

  • Think of past six months what you were been and what you are now.
  • What was your technical ability in your profession, what all you acquired new.
  • Compare your self review with whatever performance review you got from your manager, speak to him and understand where you lack, set the goal for next six months and move on.

If you do the above, On your next self assessment you will definitely feel what your performance review is going to be.

Always do the self assessment in all factors, on a career level, on your technical abilities, on your financial wellness, what you learned, what all things you bought in last six months, how much savings you made, acknowledge it be grateful to yourself, your friends, your company, your manager and the whole surroundings which made you so.

#Gratitude #GoodLuck

Shyam Achuthan

Myntra is up with its RESPONSIBLE DISCLOSURE POLICY page for whitehat security researchers

Myntra is up with its RESPONSIBLE DISCLOSURE POLICY page for whitehat security researchers. Proud to see my reports also acknowledged there 🙂

Shyam at Myntra

Myntra says

A VULNERABILITY IN OUR SYSTEMS, AND RESPONSIBLY SHARES THE DETAILS OF IT WITH US, WE APPRECIATE THEIR CONTRIBUTION, WORK CLOSELY WITH THEM TO ADDRESS SUCH ISSUES WITH URGENCY, AND IF THEY WANT, PUBLICLY ACKNOWLEDGE THEIR CONTRIBUTION

And i should say that’s awesome. an acknowledge of any contribution is the best tribute to the work done. :-). I think Myntra is the first to introduce such a disclosure page for white hat security researchers. It clearly defines their urge to improve their systems technically and provide a safer and better user experience to their customers. The move shows how much they care about their own merchandise and the user data stored on their servers.

I have written a post last month about “Perceptions of Indian E-commerce Companies About Security And Ethical Disclosures?” on how reluctant are the Indian ecommerce startups towards the security bugs on their website as per my experience in reporting vulnerabilities to them. Myntra is an exception from them all.

How to report a security vulnerability / bug to Myntra.

All you have to do is to shoot a mail with all the details and proof the bug / security issue (screenshot, video ) etc to security@myntra.com. Myntra’s security team will reach you shortly to know more about it. If the report found to be a bug / vulnerability definitely they will acknowledge the same.

My suggestions to the Myntra team for the Responsible Disclosure Page.

  1. It would have been great if you can make that page little more appealing. i found it very difficult to read
  2. You have missed to add the seo titles and description for the page 🙂 . It would have been great

 

All the best for myntra.com keep improving. All the very best to all whitehat security researchers as well 😉 

 

 

 

 

Completed a great year in my career

Today i have completed a great year in my career. After college my career path didn’t had much great or point-able milestones it simply went off for the next three years, but have learned a lot of things through the years being in the startup world.  Thanking all the Team Mates of TunerLabs for the first 3.5 Years of shaping my career and especially for those who gave me tasks on some programming languages i didn’t even heard about that time. Its you only made me take up the challenge and now i could proudly commit am fit in all those.

 

Last year when we have decided to shutdown operations of TunerLabs, it was so hurting for me being a founder member and doing the shut down activities. I have really thought of taking it up and run for another one more year because of the confidence services/tasks i have delivered for the clients. But am not a business man and i cant be. I love tech and wanna explore that. Dont know whether you believe i have written my professional resume for first time after 3.5 years from college and having 3.5 yr exp, created linked in profile, read a lot on job application, interviews etc :-P.

Started applying to companies in Cochin, Trivandrum and Bangalore. Scared to take phone calls even coz i felt my 3.5 exp in a very small start up which is about to shut down and no body knows about the company as it had clients fro other geographies. Felt like i wasted my career start being with a budding start up for 3 years. But there lies the secret and my word to all the guys who are working or looking for a job in start up world. I got around 20 calls and about 10 telephonic interviews scheduled in 24 hours. That was so surprising!. For each call i felt special when questions was asking about the technology i have covered, my skill sets etc.

From each response i understood that Am Kind of a Big Deal!. This is what a start up company gave me, no its what a start up give to all its dependents, it will shape your career n skills and only sad part is you will be the only one who never knows it!

 

After 2 days i got here in Bangalore for a couple of direct interviews and got offers from a couple of companies. Now again another puzzle have 2 good offers , which one to select from

1) A well known company in mobile apps giving almost a lakh plus in additional comparing the 2nd one. A 100 people team.

2) A budding Company. But have met some great people out there during the interviews

 

Everyone including my wife and parents forced me to go with the first one being a great company and better salary. But i couldn’t make up my mind for that. Coz at that point i didn’t care about how big the company is!, i knew that if i can do a better thing for a small company then definitely i will be the only one beneficial. Money will go away but your knowledge and experience will never!.

Some how i convinced them all and Joined the Second company! – Srijan Capital and started working for its incubation CouponRani with a set of great people. I got a great Tea m there @Vivekgarg – A perfect Brain for a coder with kind mind set for a startup! . Lead by a great Angel Investor and Hands On Digital Marketer, Ravi Trivedi i was enjoying each days of work with learning a lot of new things.

Thanks a lot for the whole CouponRani Team for a wonderful Year here!.

After an Year @Srijan i am so happy settled here in bangalore, only difficulty i have faced in bangalore is climate, its been an year and i haven’t still got adjusted to it, and the Cops! starring at the KL registered cars n bikes!

Now who ever opposed me for my decision to continue with a start up itself admits that am now in better turn than some of the family and friends they were referring to in terms of career and financials!