I am a software engineer in the back-end team at Appointy. We are essentially the backbone of this company. But what does it really mean? How did I get here? And where do I see myself going in the future?
The beginning
Back in college I was studying electronics & communication engineering and it didn’t really involve a lot of programming and web development. But during my pre-final year, I had to work on a project based on security systems with facial recognition which helped me learn a lot about programming and machine learning. It got me interested in things we could do through coding and motivated me to start learning about it.
During the same time I started competitive programming and got hooked on to it. Building logic and solving problems on different platforms became a part of my routine. Through all of this, I realized that I enjoyed programming a lot and wanted to start my career in this field. Little did I know how bad things were going to get.
Enter – the pandemic. All of a sudden we were facing very uncertain times, unsure about how the job recruitment would be affected. And it wasn’t long before we found out the implications. It was bad, really bad.
People started losing jobs and hiring rates began dwindling. I was almost certain that I wouldn’t be able to find a company which would be willing to recruit a non CS student for a software development role. And I was right. I had applied for way too many companies but, in vain.
Enter – Appointy. To me, it looked like any other IT company which would reject me simply because I wasn’t a “qualified coder”. It was essentially a start-up with a decent job profile, and to be fair, it looked like they were doing pretty good. All the more reason for me to be ready to see another shortlist not having my name in it. Little did I know how good things were going to get.
My Experience
The Recruitment
Appointy gave a fair shot to everyone who applied. The recruitment process was different from other companies’. We were given the task of creating an API using a predefined technology stack. Since I had no experience with Golang nor was I familiar with MongoDB (the database they asked us to work on), I had to learn about them from scratch. But the will to learn something new got me going and that helped me a lot.
Also, unlike other companies, I had the chance to talk to the CEO. To be honest, I had no clue I was talking to an executive head of the company for the first half of my interview. But him being such an affable person, it was like I was talking to just a regular coder. He talked about the plans he had envisioned for the company and I couldn’t even begin to comprehend his vast experience. Working in a product based company under a guy like him would be an opportunity I could not miss. And I didn’t.
I got in!
Since this I the first professional organisation I have joined, I am probably not the best guy to talk about things like work environment and relationships. But if this is how working in a company is supposed to be, there’s nothing more I could ask for.
After my first week of training, various new concepts like Protocol buffers, docker and GRPC were introduced and I didn’t know a single thing about any of them. Everything was new and challenging. But my mentors were really patient, helpful and I could reach out to them at any time. They were always here to help me out.
Right from the beginning I was given projects to handle. Responsibilities were given early on and I’m now starting to realize its importance. This has improved my work discipline and efficiency. Our mentors are always pushing us to get out of our comfort zone and work on challenging tasks. This is exactly what Nemesh sir, our CEO, had told me about Appointy. He has this concept of creating ‘Mini CEOs’ which is to train our employees such that they are capable of running their own companies someday.
For the future, I don’t really have anything planned yet. A few years down the line I want to be good at what I do and it would be nice to see my own product going live for usage. Right now, I have no clue what it might be, but there’s one thing which I am sure of – I am at the right place to figure it out.
