New Job with Wipro in Kochi

After that ordeal, I continued working for the start up until 2012. I then moved to Kochi to work for Wipro Technologies. I had attended the interview for it the previous September and had gotten the job. I was very reluctant to take up that job because of my difficult relationship with Computer Science even though I had built up considerable experience working as a Web Developer.

Web Development in those days was seen merely as a hobby which real Engineers in the US in big tech did merely as a part time thing. And so I considered myself as less of a Software Engineer and more of a hobby Webmaster. To think now, that was an inferior mindset. My best friend Viv adviced me to take up that job because he considered the Web stuff I was doing as a hobby too which wouldn't pay in the long run. And so I joined Wipro with a big inferiority complex and just didn't see myself surviving in the Software industry. I was there only because I had no choice. Thats what going with the flow does.

But I adapted. I saw it as a great opportunity to redeem myself and to start new life in a new city and come out of the relationship and career trauma I had experienced the past few years. It was now time to forget it all and build a better life. For someone who was completely written off by the whole world until then, this was a ray of hope. And so I packed my bags and drove from Trivandrum to Kochi on my Honda Twister bike, a distance of about 250km. I joined a group of 23 people all who came from a Computer Science background and underwent a rigorous training in Computer Science for 3 months. The imposter syndrome kicked in the first day and I knew I was in for yet another challenge.

For someone who scored 0 in Computer Science exams in college just a few years before, I worked extra hard to end up 3rd in the group by the end of the training. Until then, I had never been 3rd in anything in life let alone anything relating to Computer Science, so that was an incredible achievement. To think now, I did well because of a few reasons - The traumatic events of the year before had changed me for the better, I had grown up. I now knew what hard work really meant, what it meant to put the effort to get the result I wanted. It was also a do or die situation for me while feeling like an imposter. Lastly, I was paid to do this one job and I had no excuse to fail again. So the task was cut out and I just had to go through it and come out clean on the other side. And I soon realised that Computer Science wasn't that bad after all, there were parallels with it and what I did in the Web, all the previous failures had prepared me for it, I had it in me to work hard, and that maybe I could find my way through the corporate world of Software after all.

My salary jumped from ₹6000 a month to about ₹25000 if I remember correctly. In a world where I didn't have the support of parents, that would have pushed me well above the poverty line. I set my web hobby to the sides to focus on my new life.