IS is ever ‘too late’ to learn?

It’s Never Too Late to Learn

We’re all born inquisitive, asking all kinds of questions as a kid. But then life happens and we’re left working mundane schedules. Our childhood and teenage zeal to learn and explore, slowly starts fading away. However, there are individuals whose stories are living proof that it’s never late to learn something new.

The story of Anshul Chhabra is one such example.

Anshul with his team, celebrating their biggest success!

Getting a hang of the completely different field i.e. Tech

Quite ironic but I was NEVER tech-friendly!

Instead, marketing and/or sales was my comfort zone and a job in any would’ve been good. But, life had other plans and I ended up as an Android Engineer in my first job. Being completely clueless about how things went, this was my first learning experience.

During the day, I learnt about the everyday workings of a corporate organization, and after office, dedicated myself to learning Java and Android. I started applying both these knowledge that I was gaining side-by-side, such that I ended up helping the company achieve its targets beforehand. For the next few months, I was just left with maintenance work. In fact, I identified and completed tasks all by myself!

I used this kind of free time to brush up all the skills I’d learnt and doing these repetitive tasks helped.

Getting tech on his fingertips

Foraying into Backend

Initial Setbacks

I was one of the very few individuals who actually had asked for a change of pace. So, a senior of mine took the responsibility of updating my skills. Next thing I know, I was asked to study modules of PHP, Kafka, Caching Gear, and Databases. Not only did I have to study them in 3 days but also develop a working model based on them, all by myself.

This was also the time when I learnt that the OS that this field requires is Ubuntu and not Windows; something that went a long way in my professional life. I moved my entire setup from Windows to Ubuntu and learnt to use databases like MongoDB that worked exclusively on the latter. FYI, I never changed to Ubuntu right away; it required massive screwups and a scolding from my mentors to ‘achieve’ this.

3 days of panic, fights, misunderstandings, and some hardcore day-night hustling later, I finally cracked it. I had figured out the backend structure of how the entire Class X results page and certificate worked on the desktop and mobile phones. This didn’t just boost my confidence but also sorted things out with my TLs.

Challenges kept coming, and so did learnings!

Redemption

Next thing I know, I was being assigned high priority tasks by the Product Manager herself as part of which, I had to design a number of different tools from end-to-end. Additionally I also assumed bug-solving duties. With this, I could now gel up and connect the dots between the frontend, backend and Android parts more smoothly.

What followed was one of the best moments of my life. At the company town hall, the only presentation from our team were the tools I designed and the bugs I’d solved.

Creating and testing tools, solving bugs, learning the lingo were the main steps to me nailing the backend. I finally understood the relation between backend and Android, which helped me optimize the APIs. Through this, I had reduced the response time between the 2 and also solved the company’s problem of rendering ads. This was my 1st moonshot!

Reality Checks

The learnings mentioned above were quite useful for me but the hard reality checks were still to follow. The ones that I did learn in successive companies include the following: -

1. Companies have their own domains and domain specific services.
2. Email verification (studied email marketing deeply, carried out hits and trials, and understood the process). For the first time, I realized the importance of weeding out the false/dead mails to protect the company’s domain reputation.
3. How bots work and the required tech for the same (these bots can be used for enhanced customer centricity and website performance)
4. The crux of marketing products through tech (chat bots, ads, etc.)
5. Workings of the e-commerce and merchant industries (product marketing, product ads, level of parsing required, etc)
6. Building the right connect with the founders
7. Figuring out the WHY behind writing each line of code
8. Every failed interview brings with it a lesson that would help you in your next interview
9. It’s always the quality of work that matters, not the time taken to do it!
10. The very system of ‘sprints’ and ‘alerting actions’, inter-team communication is as important.

Learning at Classplus

My journey at Classplus has been…..’adventurous’ to say the least!

All that hustle and learning eventually paid off!

I was initially rejected by Classplus but then it was founder and COO Bhaswat who took a risky call by giving me a chance to be a part of this clan. Since then I’ve always found something new to learn here, and I still am.

This was my 1st rodeo with ‘Memory Leaks’, a curse for any engineer! I did, however, get through this too (a story for another day!)

What I majorly learned here was that corporations didn’t need to function like machines. Working as friends and family gives equally good (even better) results! Moreover, it’s possible to get both quality and quantity out of the team. All it takes is organization and 1 step at a time, breaking the work and dividing the labor.

Some major learnings that I’ll be grateful to Classplus for are: -

• Management
• Process Allocation
• Team Building
• Grooming individuals to be more efficient
• Aligning and coordinating tasks
• Time management

If my previous experiences helped me go from 0 to 1, Classplus helped me go from 1 to 10. From merely writing code and developing the product, I learned to spearhead entire engineering teams, for which I’ll forever be thankful to them!