I just arrived back home from a visit to Delhi . And there I met some old friends who were still slogging out in my old company. This is apparently a big shame considering some of these guys are way more talented than for what they are employed for. And most of them are paid pittance of an amount for the work they are made to do. So, I thought I would reflect back on my career and what I have learnt from my old jobs. Some real stinking graves these are!

• Jaldi E-Commerce Limited: It was the year 2000 I believe when I joined Jaldi.com as a web developer intern. I joined the company through my dad’s connections just to learn the tools of the trade. But well, the Aptech and NIIT graduates in the company were so awful that I had to take care of the department for most of the initial days. Until Kunal Sangar arrived. That man is an institution in himself. And well till date I respect him so much that I cannot describe it here. I owe a lot to him when it comes to me and web stuff. As for the company, it was an opportunity missed big time. It could have been the Baazee of today and it could have been the Daksh of today. It became nothing. The E-Commerce division got busted with the Dot Com Burst and the Call Center division never came into being once Daksh took some big contracts out of this company’s hand. So, what I learnt from this company? When you venture into the unknown, be prepared to do stuff you would have never thought you would do.
• KLG Systel: We were shifted to KLG Systel once the Jaldi.com got busted. Joined the multimedia application development team where we worked on a biggie project for Britannica. Met Ankur here. Again learnt a lot from him. My passion for forums and perhaps Blogs are attributed to him. We both slogged out for that project that went bust in the end with some bad decisions taken by the managers. Managers of the old economy who were managing IT projects. Maybe it would be unfair on my part to attribute all the failure on the managers of the company, but well… We were small fry and seldom did our suggestion made it beyond the ears of team managers. So well… In the end it was a big disappointment. Lessons learnt: Age and Experience does not exactly justify incompetence.
• Zed-Axis Technology: Nice small company. Young guns with big dreams. Hired some really talented people in Samrat, Puneet, Arunjeet and Taran. Then some jerks in me and 20 other team members. In the end all of us worked literally day and night to make a big NIIT project a success. But well again… The managers were as crappy as crap goes. Lessons learnt: MBA Degree does not generally guarantee talent, smartness and competence. In fact, they (MBA Institutes) literally take out commonsense from your brains.
• TravelGolf Media: The job offer from this company at the right time considering I had to leave Zed Axis to move back to home because of Mom’s operation. The job wanted me to work from home which worked perfectly for me. I gave a commitment to work for at least a year to an old friend which turned out to be one of the biggest mistakes of my life. The company was thankless, and the boss was like this arrogant jackass who ran the company like a circus ring where even the ferocious of the beasts were not treated with respect. It was a company where the project manager preferred to hire incompetent people to keep his position intact and well… the project manager’s whore got all the perks of the jobs. The boss apparently oblivious of all the bullshit happening under his nose went around with the business. And I quitted the day I felt the water ran over my head level. The move costed me a month’s salary which many people term as my stupidity but me takes that as a price I paid to retain my self-respect and dignity. Lessons learnt: Do not compromise yourself for the sake of friendship. Some people will use you, manipulate you and even trash you for the sake of personal success and greed.

That is it. Now, I am in a situation with 2 almost confirmed job offers from Hyderabad and Bangalore afraid to join yet another possible crap shit company. Preferring to continue this freelance venture of mine which is loosely based on the Wiki Concept. Might fail, might work out. But I would not pity myself to have sacrificed my ethics for the sake of money.

Money is still not an issue as Dad still wants me to leave all this bullshit and go back to what I left almost 6 yrs back… Studies.