My story begins on one fine evening with an email that I received a year ago. It was the turning point in my life as I was a fresh graduate without any know-how in the ever-evolving field of computer science. I had a four-year bachelor's degree, but this was not where my interests lied. To be honest, I did not know back then where my interests truly lied. I was ready to learn and experiment, and this is where my job in a small startup software house supported me massively.

My boss has been a real brick in the process of the development of my career. He started me off with DevOps; the simple one with CI/CD pipelines and YAML stuff. I also get to learn git and numerous diminutive shortcuts and tricks along the way. Moreover, my boss continuously encouraged me to read and practice repetitively. He was better than all the professors I encountered in my four years bachelor's.

It was a good two and a half month journey until everyone in the office decided to leave. All the employees met at a farewell dinner and went around the table with everyone telling only one reason to quit. They just could not handle the boss’s attitude towards them. I never felt that way but again I was just starting my career so what would I know.

This meeting was a real breakpoint for me but I built myself up again. I had to. My boss offered me the job of one of the employees that had left — front-end developer. I had a background with the angular framework from one of my semester projects in university. So, I decided to pursue it. Again, I came back on track but that is when the office had to shift to remote due to covid and I had to move back to my home.

Working from the comfort of my home was a tough situation (ironic). It did not let me push my boundaries and I got lazy day by day. My probation period ended and I had another quarterly performance review with my boss. That is when he decided to give me an opportunity to become a ‘Solutions Architect’. A solutions architect is a person who bridges the gap between the technical and business world; all in all he/she is the jack-of-all-trades. I accepted this offer and went on another venture of pre-sales as a part of it.

Till the present day, the startup has recruited very talented and experienced employees. I feel so lucky to have them as mentors and guidance at the early stages of my career. Right now I am working both in pre-sales and front-end development and I will say one thing: I am enjoying the heck out of it. The conclusion to my story is that I know people do not have the best of experiences in startups but you never know when you get lucky. You get to know plenty and learn from your superiors’ mistakes. You see a company stand up and built from scratch and one day you will be proudly saying “Hey, I was a part of it too.”