5 years of 8 hours a day-5 days a week and 3 companies later...

I've worked at 3 companies in 5 years. Everytime I changed jobs, people ask me how I like my new gig. I reply with a mundane and abstract "I like it, it is interesting". Here is the full story:-

My first ever job search, which was towards the end of my Masters graduation, lasted about 4 months. I went through bouts of the usual job search frustration and depression during those 4 months. I now know that 4 months of job search isnt much at all - but how am I to know that then, I was far less experienced. Anyways, at the end of the 4 months I got a job as a software engineer at Google. At that time, Google was THE celebrity among companies. And so, I almost became a celebrity too! - my university invited me to write a column in their alumni magazine; the first question most guys I dated asked me was - "so what is it like to work at Google?" (and they didnt stop at that... all they wanted to talk about was the free food and the perks and what not. oh, yes, I rejected them all :) ); when my aunt introduced me to her friends, her introduction always ended with a special emphasis on "she works for Google" (as if that was what defined me... hated it when she did that). I am sure my parents had their share of boasting about it among their circle. So well, yes, it did make me feel proud of myself.

I worked with a team that developed a platform for testing user's satisfaction of search results. The idea definitely sounds fun and it is! My work did indeed start out being fun. So when people initially asked me how I liked my job, my "I like it, it is interesting" was an honest response. But work soon turned out to be not so much fun because there were seniors in the team who took all the fun work. While I had brilliant ideas, I wasnt good enough at professional coding (I was only used to "research coding" until then, which is basically writing crappy code that is all over the place) to take complete ownership of my idea and code it efficiently all the way through with no help. So the work I ended up finally getting was pretty boring and I had to work long-long-long hours on things I didnt enjoy working on (yes, the free dinner comes with a catch ;-) ). I had no clue how to make the situation better - (1) I did not know how to get much better at coding; (2) I had no guidance either: because of Google's flat hierarchy, my manager had sooo many reportees under her that she had no time for me. (And to top it off, she was a bad manager - and I did not even realize it at that point because she was the first manager I ever had. You know what is bad and what is good only if you have seen them both before, right?).

After 1.5 years at Google, all I can say is my next MS Program Manager role was God-sent. I wasnt even looking for Program Manager roles then - I did not even know such roles existed. It just so happened that one day the opportunity presented itself and I grabbed it. I will get to why I now think that the job was God-sent, but before that, I have to tell you that the transition wasnt a bed of roses. In fact, it was pretty much a bed of thorns.

Most people around me only had this to say about my transition -"Why would you give up Google? Are you insane? Do you even know to make decisions?" I gave them a long-winded explanation about how I quit Google because I wanted to become a Program Manager and Google did not have a Program Manager role. It wasn't true. The truth was that Google was past because I couldn't handle staying there anymore. Why didn't I tell people the truth? - because they wouldn't understand it... why ever would anyone give up on what in everyone's eyes was a dream job in THE dream company.

Now for the God-sent part: I took up the PM job at MS because it seemed like the best option for me at that point. I was happy about my new role, but didn't think it was God-sent until about a month into my new role. That is when a few things dawned on me that made me realize the transition was perfect after all:
1) I realized I wasnt carved out to be a software engineer in the first place. I was never actually interested in the nitty gritties of writing good code. Design Patterns bored me. I loved coming up with lofty product ideas, but when it got down to actually implementing it, I floundered. Dont get me wrong - people who write code well are very very smart people (in all likelihood, smarter than me IQ wise) - I am just saying that it wasnt meant for me.
I realized that I did not have inherent interest in writing code and that explained my impassiveness in getting better at it. Yes, my Google manager was totally unavailable for guidance, but if I were really passionate about my job, I wouldnt have let that be a blocker.
2) My first manager at MS made a great manager - and that was the first time I realized what it means to be a good manager and how much of a difference it makes to have one. My new job taught me how NOT to put up with a jerk of a manager by showing me one who is not.
3) Many of us from India are software engineers just because our parents thought studying computer science and becoming a software engineer would result in the best ROI (good salaries, great opportunities to "escape" to the US, perfect for putting on the matrimonial biodata...). Frankly, that was my story too. I succumbed to my parents wishes and ended up being a software engineer at a large company. With my new PM job, I had managed to cut myself free finally and do things that actually made sense to me. How many people get the opportunity to change their careers at this stage without needing to pursue another degree first?
4) I learnt what roles work for me. I dont know how good or bad my IQ is, but I do have a good EQ. Consequently, roles that use my EQ work better for me. For example, customer empathy comes naturally to me - I can step in the shoes of the customer and fight for a feature I want. I can argue for how performant the customer would expect the product to be, but I am not as good though, at actually tweaking code to achieve that performance (which is probably more an IQ thing).

After Google and Microsoft, I have now moved to a much smaller company, one that most people havent even heard about. Joining this company was also about grabbing an unexpected opportunity that came my way. I was only looking for the regular Program / Product management roles, when this option presented itself. I had 2-3 other job offers apart from this one, all of the others being the regular Product Management roles. I decided to take this up just because I felt this was the time and age when I had the flexibility to try something different - something that I woudln't have once I became a mom or once I had travelled far enough into my career path. In my current role, I consult with client companies to help their define their business and product strategies. I'll use another post, another day to write more in detail about my current job, but for now, let me just say that this is one more step closer to what I have fun doing.

When I met my aunt a few weeks back, she asked me -"What kind of a company is that? No one seems to have heard of it". I dont care... I am at a happier place :).

The point of this blog post isnt to deride one company or job role and hail another - not at all. The point is 3-fold:
1) It is a mere exclamation at how long and how much it took for me to even realize what kind of a job satisfies me. A lot of people realize their passion much sooner in their lives; some others dont need to go through multiple job changes to realize what I came to realize - it is all just basic common sense to them. But I am not them and I am what I am.
2) It is about how much I have come to realize that life is made more fun by going slightly out of your comfort zone now and then, to grab opportunities. That is what "God-sent" is all about.
3) Most importantly - it is a reminder to myself about how I once judged myself based upon how others saw me, but have since then realized that true freedom is the ability to judge oneself and the ability to use that as the only means of judgement.