From Chartered Accountant Aspirant to Blockchain Solution Architect to Youtube Creator
This story starts back from 2011 when I got my 12 standard results and confused father and son trying to find a suitable college. Being the first graduate from my whole family there was no one inside our circle we could reach out. We didn’t have smartphones or internet access to list top colleges in an area using Google Maps.
All I know was I am good at Computer stuff and Accounts so my choice, of course, was to join BCom CA. While I and my dad were returning to our home in my M80 bike after a long college hunt we saw this college Sri Krishna Arts and Science college. My dad was like “வந்த மலை போன முடி” translates to “Let’s try-scoring this mountain with a hair strand”. So we both went in and I was going through courses offered there and I someone in the crowd said: “You scored good marks only right you could take Bsc IT or CS”. That sealed my fate and I chose BSc IT in an Elite college without a donation for semester fees of 16,500 INR.
Then to impress a girl I had to have some skill so she could come and talk with me. I learned basic programming during a summer class 2 years back so I had the advantage of knowing basic programming. So I used that and got started getting attention. But still, I was lacking soft skills and confidence. Maybe because of my 2 pairs of clothes that got repeats thrice in a week.
In 1st semester remember getting an ‘O’ Grade in C programming and heads started to turn to my side.
To keep the momentum I had to keep that up so after college I spent a lot of hours in learning and keeping up my knowledge up to the level of my tutors. By 3rd semester tutors and staff will have word with me before finalizing some codes. In one lab session to show my skill I fixing projector connectivity issues during a computer lab session and got the attention of Head of Department.
At the end of the 5th semester, I did my college project on my own with VB.Net and got the project requirements from HOD. So I got closely monitored. I finished my college project within a week of time and hosted the web application. While everyone else was getting assigned to their Project staffs I finished my project. For my project binding money, I did a few more projects to my friend's circle and those were my first earning with programming. 2 Lunch, 1 Dinner, 900Rs Cash.
6th Semester I got an offer from Cognizant thanks to the skills I had in my arsenal. Then my only worry was to clear the semester without arrears even though I was a good average student. But in the offer letter, my role was mentioned as “Software Tester” but I was just happy that I got a job.
After college, I got an mail from Cognizant. My training location was in Chennai. I joined there on 27th June 2014 and I am a Programmer Trainee with a take-home salary of 12,637 INR per month with six working days. and on the seventh day, we had to wash our clothes. So no time for God. We were part of the Customized Java program where we will learn Core Java and Basic level of Java Web. We had a final project assignment that is to develop a blog as a CLI application as well as a Web application. I got the requirement around 10 AM and I delivered the project by lunch. When my teammates were discussing who should develop database, code, document (which I didn’t do though) and testing I surprised everyone with a completed code. My trainer was dumbstruck and told even top head of our training program will not able to do this at my pace. But I got criticized by one of my teammates that I have not followed a structure he thinks right so he doesn’t want any credit from the project. When we delivered the code in a format he wanted us to code the project judge asked as to why we complicated this simple task like this and I showed my code and he just gave a pat on my shoulders and left.
2014 December got into the Hadoop development project and got kicked out while we were into 2 weeks of the Knowledge transfer process. Then I got into a Support project in VB.Net application with a promise that I will be assigned to development later on. But gradually I forgot what I used to be and got into a sick comfortable zone. So I did not add up any new skills nor I saw any need to do that.
2016 I talked with my old project mate (remember the Java project in Cognizant training) and I was ashamed of myself for not keeping up with what I was good at. As my other friends were miles ahead of me in terms of knowledge and worth. In cases where they want to switch to some other company they can as they can sell themselves with skills, they added up with experience. Whereas I cannot proudly say I was filling excel sheets on a scheduled basis every month every day for the past 2 years.
2016 December I got a mail for an online coding competition about to be conducted at Cognizant global level. I enrolled and started to code. It was 5 web applications and I need to write Angular.Js code to consume some web API and design a good looking web page. I started to code around 8 PM after work and compromised code quality here and there and was able to complete all 5 before 12 PM. I got bonus points for early submission. But still, output mattered. Many architects from Cognizant global participated in this and I was kind of not sure whether I will get notified at all. After a month I got the winners list in an Email and there was I at #50. From 290K employees, I won the game and got rank #50 and cash prize of 3000 INR. Even though I proved my worth in learning programming without anyone else help and excelled in it I got continuously rejected for any development project opportunities. I got an escalation at the time for filing the wrong value in an excel sheet cell. My reporting manager asked “John are you interested in working with this project or not” and I said “No”. The very next day I got released from the project and next week I got a JAVA development project.
2017 January I got into this development projects I was scared that other Java developers will find out I am not good at programming as I don’t have updated skills. But to my surprise from a team of 6 JAVA developers, I was better than 3 of them in perspective of pace and problem-solving. In no time I was able to top them in programming also. The other two developers were only expertise in Core Java and not willing to learn and write test cases or code coverage. So I was assigned the task. I was initially bored about it and later I mastered writing test cases and understood whole project nook and corner better than the developers. With me being the only person working on frontend I had the edge over others in terms of skills. But in terms of seniority, I got removed from the project and got assigned to another Support project. This time even worse it is a US project. Night shifts and closely coupled with my earlier support project tasks. We used to pity the people in this project. But never in my life, I dreamt of being in this project. But I started looking for a job change and got a Java developer Role and soon relived from Cognizant after almost 3 years of service on 2017 7th May. During the last 10 days of my notice period, I learned Node.Js and Angular 2 and was good in theory and practical. But with no industry level experience.
I joined Orastays a startup that promised me to pay of 30,000 INR initially and reduced it to 25,000 INR later. In cognizant I was getting 15,840 INR at the time of relieving and I was in Coimbatore my home town during that time. So I took a loan amount of 1.3 Lac before moving to Bengaluru. Since the job I got was mostly work from the room and weekly once reporting I was in room most of the time. I was feeling lonely and scared by not having anyone to talk around me. My salary was supposed to be credited and got delayed. I was paying EMI out of the loan I took. I was wasting money. I didn’t see any office. So I kept on searching for Job. Using the skills I learned while leaving cognizant (last 4 months) I secured a Full Stack Developer role in PriceWaterhouseCoopers as a contract employee.
2017 May 17th I joined PWC as a Contractor from Intelliswift with a notice period of 90 Days. As I was a contractor there I had different ID cards and a bit low-level privilege facilities to use there. And if I am not able to deliver a code there was a very high chance of getting fired without notice. So I studied hard to become the person I was pretending to be when I joined. My managers were happy with my performance and I had a chance to be part of PWC. But since I was not having a professional degree (at least 4 years in college) I was not able to join. I started learning blockchain when I was here and posted some YouTube videoes on Hyperledger Sawtooth and Fabric. I was the first and only YouTuber to have some blockchain videoes on sawtooth at that time. This is the channel Programming with John. Since there was no more place to grow up there and I was still contract employee after 1.5 Years of contribution to the organization I had to move on.
2018 June I got a message from an hr recruiter on Linkedin checking if I was interested in a Blockchain developer role. I casually said Yes and attended the interviews without much interest. But when the technical interview came it was hard to a level I was never demanded before. I used my earlier hackathon skills and code skills to clear the round and liked the company very much. It was Accubits. I spoke with some of its developers before joining and they seemed very eager to receive me in Trivandrum, Kerala.
2018 September 17 I rode my Duke 390 from Bangalore to Trivandrum and joined on the 18th. I role was Blockchain Developer at the time of joining. I got some to know about how actual Blockchain development works. I was able to cope up with that. A few months later in 2019, I got a project that required me to learn mobile development. I learned to React and React Native later. A few months later for a Hackathon, I learned Flutter in a day with the knowledge-based of React.
2020 I am here being worked on almost all the departments in Information Technology (IT) field in India. I feel the job is no more demanding. So I started learning Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro for editing my Youtube Vlogs. After all these years I finally believe I got an identity I can use to identify myself outside the profession that is Kovai Rider.
I don’t know where this path is going to lead me to.
“வணக்கம் நான் உங்கள் கோவை ரைடர்”
“Welcome I am yours Kovai Rider”
“Until next time tata bye-bye from Kovai Rider”
