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Working at a Start Up

Bikash Dash's photo
Bikash Dash
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7 min read

Working At A Start Up : The Pain & Gain

Today ( 1st July 2014) was my 30th day at VoiceTree Technology and I just wanted to share my experience at this start up via this post. It’s my first post in Medium so if you find any mistakes please excuse.

Boring Personal Stuff!! (Self Exaggeration :P)

Before telling my experience about VoiceTree let me tell give an intro about myself. I am an average CS grad from Bhubaneswar whose Twitter bio says- “An Avid Dreamer, Die Hard Googler and An Entrepreneur by Heart”. I was a self proclaimed geek at my college always into hackathons ,workshops and seminars etc. As all the guys from Bhubaneswar I also took courses from Hyderabad. Participated in Yahoo Summer School 2013 ,Both of the AngelHack Seasons at Hyderabad and was an active member of Hydroid- the Android User Group of Hyderabad . I was studying in Bhubaneswar but literraly living in Hyderabad. Freedom of Ideas always was and always will be my passion towards working in a start up. So , in college level I tried to run different startups from them three were blogs , one was custom apparel and one was web services start up. Obviously all of them were failures otherwise I won’t be working in VoiceTree as Associate Software Developer. So I decided I will work in a start up that would be very cool. Big Players like Infosys and TCS came and went from campus and I was rejected in the first round because I was not giving enough attention to the process. After most of my friends got placed I was very depressed and decided to follow the path of my seniors in the job hunt to Bangalore.

Job Hunt was a pain in the back for me. From food of south india to the large queues infront of MNCs , everything except climate was unbearable for me. Everyday It was a process of going through every job sites , giving so many telephonic interviews via HasJob and not getting selected was very depressing and hectic. Then one day my cousin Sanjog bhaiya pinged me in Facebook about my current situation and told me to drop the resume at this awesome company called “VoiceTree Technology”. I just researched about the company as we job seekers do :P , felt great . Then I gave my interview and got selected as an associated software developer. Got call letter to join within a week. I bid adieu to Bangalore and travelled to Rajdhani on first of this july. Let me tell you VoiceTree has a product called myoperator which is the JARVIS of cloud telephony. It manages your every call automatically. My primary role at VT is to develop myOperator and CODAC for which I have to learn Asterisk . I had a fair idea about PHP , HTML, CSS, JS, jQuery but I had no idea about what the heck is this “Asterisk”.

Working at Start Up

The Pain & Gain in working in a bootstrapped venture

I heard a lots of good things from my brother , Sanjog bhaiya So, expectations were at peak. I was at cloud 9 for getting a chance to work what I love to do!!

Before getting deeper into the post I wanna introduce the founder of VoiceTree , Ankit Jain , A BIT Mesra CS grad who started this company to feel the gap in the market in 2010. A typical entrepreneur who believed in himself and his team.

1st day at office was a great feeling which is indescribable , but I will try to explain. One of the reason I love to work at start up to learn the managerial skills from founder. I met Ankit Sir at the first day of my joining and he explained me how things work here and my role in the company.

That was a very memorable day for me at VoiceTree . Oh you don’t care! Ok ok I am getting towards pros and cons at a start up just bear with me.

Pros-

  1. Work Culture- Open Mindedness, Informal Atmosphere , Flat Hierarchies , Creative Energy, Get S#1T Done Attitude .
  2. Flexibility/Freedom- Setting own goals, flexibility on variety of roles/tasks. One day I am setting up a PRI , another day writing a cron.
  3. Steep Learning Curve- Learning by Doing, No one will teach you by holding your hands someone will be there to guide but you have to handle your errors on your own . Google and StackOverflow are your only friend :D
  4. Responsibility /Accountability/Impact- Working with Founders , making impactful decisions.
  5. Opportunities -If you do amazing work the entire company and all of its customers will benefit from it. And you’ll be loved for it.
  6. Transparency -You’ll get to see how the company grows, why certain decisions were made, and how the company reacts to competitors and business plan changes. All of this will teach you about business and prepare you to do your own startup one day.
  7. Being a part of Bigger than You — A start brings the bigger version of you , You have to write code , design , manage the network , publish blog. You’re like an one man Army. You are at the verge of making this product the next big thing , something meaningful and something different And the excitement is amazingly powerful.

Cons-

  1. Low Compensation- The financial incentives are less compared to the big players in the market.
  2. Uncertainty / Instability- Job Insecurity , not knowing the future of the business holds.
  3. Risks — A startup is risky because you’re building something from nothing. You’re doing something ridiculously hard because you believe in it and want nothing more than to see it succeed. And by the way, if you’re a good engineer you’ll have zero issue finding another job.

Above was the summary for a person who is looking forward to a job at a start up , now moving towards my experience at VoiceTree.

Working With Voicetree

As any other Start Up VoiceTree Inherits all of start up features I mentioned in above . Working at VT is Fun. Work culture is awesome , perks are good . Everyone is friendly here , You define your working hours . VT have bean bags :P , which i personally love to sit on . The constant guidance is one of the finest things about VT. They respect about “ Freedom of Ideas” . And what not from Pizza party to silly treats , everyone tries to achive the single dream . In the last month I learned much more than 4 years in my engineering career.

If you’re planning to join VT then mark my word , it will be a hell of experience for you .

This was my first experience in sharing something from ,my personal life. I am debutant mediumer. Please let me know if anything wrong you find here.

Signing off by writing the lyrics from Hall of the fame by the script-

“ Yeah, you can be the greatest ,You can be the best You can be the King Kong banging on your chest

You can beat the world ,You can beat the war You can talk to God, go banging on his door

You can throw your hands up You can beat the clock You can move a mountain You can break rocks You can be a master Don’t wait for luck Dedicate yourself and you gon’ find yourself

Standing in the hall of fame And the world’s gonna know your name ‘Cause you burn with the brightest flame And the world’s gonna know your name And you’ll be on the walls of the hall of fame ”

Good Bye!! ☺