To the Job

I'm not a big Steve Jobs Fan but when he said, "Your work is going to fill a large part of your life,and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do." - I could not agree more.

I'm one of those people in the world who spend nine to ten hours a day at office, six hours a day. (Only Indians know how to slog it seems!) When 70% of my day time is being spent for something, I ought to love that very thing. And, I am fortunate enough to be in love with what I do. Then there are days when the stress and challenges build up to the extend that the EQ drops to zero and IQ goes haywire. You do not dislike your job but you just need to go on a break to feel the fresh air.

Last couple of months have done the same to me.Now I do not demand a vacation for some reasons but I definitely need to remind myself what this job means to me.

I created products from scratch. Ask an engineer working on a techno-commercial profile, when did he/she created something from scratch on his/her own. In my previous jobs of around 3.5 years I could never developed anything on my own entirely. Either the process was set or there were way too many functions working on it that as a junior or a mid level officer, there was little I could do. Making presentations in the same template, following up people or filling up excel sheets hardly fed my hunger of designing/developing something.

This job has given me exactly what my previous jobs lacked. A series of products evolved in front of my eyes and I was/I am a major part of the whole process. From picking our own customer calls to training a team of three, from struggling to code our own website to just picking up articles to post and give it to the IT team. From recording our founder's voice for our video to hiring a voice over for the same, from googling to find what is the name of the material we had seen somewhere to delivering products made up of the same material successfully. I won't take the credit on my own but when you are the first employee of the company, you can count yourself as the core part of anything happened/happening under the roof. The whole experience so far is more enriching than anything I did in last two jobs.

Beside my core work of developing products and establishing supply chain, I also handled finances for the very first time. Handling vendor payments, raising POs, raising invoices, following up. I also learnt a lot in IT section of the firm- keeping track of data base in the server, coding a bit, pushing data to the website, generating information and keeping a live deck linking to the customer care, and the latest learning basics of SQL to do sufficient job while we interview a person for our IT section!

And no, the list does not stop here. I learnt to work on the single conference table with other four to five people and collectively create mess. I learnt to coax people to keep it clean. I learnt to manage my diet when the pantry (a small cabinet) was filled with Paapi chocolates and biscuits. I learnt to enjoy home cooked food in the lunch break. I learnt to manage my subordinates and their stress as well (And I am still learning, to be honest) I learnt to manage to make our sweeper clean the office properly and to add- my director taught me that skill! I discovered joy of walking when the calls to vendors are being made.

I'm more than cheerful in the office now.I am more than 100% involved in whatever I do. I have decent salary if not deserving since last two years. I have a lot to learn on the way but I've two mentors to learn from. I've a couple of subordinates to count on.

I'm proud when we crack the order. I'm more than proud when we establish a system to help the client.

I'm happier if I recollect of my life without job satisfaction.