The Reason Why I Quit My Job I Loved a Lot..

When I first joined Consim Info Pvt Ltd (at July 14, 2012), the only thing I had in mind was to become very independent away from family, live on my own, have my own cabin in an office with lots and lots of dolls, need to have a lot of friends and that was it. I had no idea of earning more, search for better jobs, or any other deviation to move from my company. Consim had everything I wanted, starting from freedom, technology, social culture, and I mean everything. I completely loved my stay in the company and as I wished, I got a load of friends to hang around with and to be precise, I had been in a circle of friends whom people would refer as a gang for the first time in my life. As days passed by, I loved my job even more, as I grew to be a part of the R & D department of the company and also offered to work with a Mac such as I have and my life, it couldn’t get any better.

Meanwhile, apart from my office side, I learned a lot to live on my own by renting a house and living alone, taking care of me and coming to office by myself. It was the first time in my life I felt so independent that I am living my life all by myself and not depending on my family or friends to take care of me. I almost lost contact with my college-mates which give me the confidence that I can restart my life without any worries as there would be no one there to let the others in my office to know about my silent character and childish behaviour. Of course, I started to act different than what I was, but I guess it wasn’t enough, people easily found my true character very soon. No one was to be blamed, it was all my fault how people knew about me, but well, it wasn’t all that bad after all.

At first, as always, people started to think I’m a tech geek, technically very strong and has a wide exposure to modern technologies. Thanks to Sai Mam, Ram and Kumaran, I was offered to work on the LG TV applications which was completely new to me. The code was already well built and the application was almost ready for testing. Me and Chetna had to do only few minor modifications to make it work completely well and together we launched the LG TV application for BharatMatrimony within the first few months of our arrival. It was an exciting project to work on, and soon I was allowed to write the code for the IndiaProperty.com’s LG TV application from scratch. With the API they had built, I finished the project within two weeks, however, the timeline given the project was for nearly a month. Sankar, a former employee in my company congratulated me on my progress and I was pretty excited to soon catch with up others in building the other blocks of BharatMatrimony.

After the IndiaProperty LG TV application was finished, ready for taking it live, we held it up for future discussion and I finally entered in to working with the BharatMatrimony Team again. Headed by Kumaran, and having Chetna in my team, we had a lot of fun than any other team in the company and I was feeling very happy to be part of it. Soon, I moved from my rented house to a hostel and I started to live with my friends Dharani, Vishnu, and soon Vijayakanth.

Days went fine, however, I couldn’t focus well on my blog and my websites, which soon lost its hit rates because of lack of fresh content. Adding to those, I couldn’t concentrate much on working at hostel and therefore, my precious mac became dormant for months sitting inside my briefcase. I took it out when Prince joined the hostel for his training programs and only then found out that the battery of my mac had almost died as its’ electrons died out being idle. It couldn’t hold up its charge even for an hour, which made my cute little monstrous laptop into more of a arcade game box. And there’s more, I even bought a Reliance Data card to surf the internet, for which I had to spend Rs. 850 every month from my salary and the hard part was that I was paying it without even using it for surfing the web for an hour. Later, I tried to hook the modem up to use in my tablet, soon that too bricked and it wasn’t having any warranty, costing me around Rs. 13,750/- in loss again. Couldn’t blame anyone again, I was the one who haven’t used my possessions wisely, but I couldn’t help it either. I became very tired every night reaching the hostel and I couldn’t touch any but eat and sleep in my bed.

I made it a point to buy atleast something for me for Rs.2000/- every month with some savings too. With my first salary, I got myself a Wrist Watch from FasTrack, and then two games (Counter Strike : Global Offence & Battlefield 3) and finally a SkullCandy Headset. I was very happy till December, and after that, things started changing…

At January, my best friend Chetna, got placed in Accenture and in a month she had to finish the relieving process and move to her new company. While that transition was going, there arose several rumours inside the company that me too will leave the company following her. Well, it was obvious to make everyone feel that way, since already three of the freshers who joined with me had already left. While I was having no idea to leave the company, the rumours were so strong that people started questioning me about it. I couldn’t bare it, I felt so bad and I was totally disappointed in the way I was treated even after I was working with so much sincerity. I’ve even neglected two golden opportunities to join with my friends’ companies where they had referred me with much better salaries. Adding more to my sadness, I did not get any challenging tasks to perform, as the tasks which I had was very simple while others were working on something very big. In one case, I did not perform those simple tasks well, I made a few errors that made the files get reverted back from the server. I felt like was losing even more confidence from my lead, which made me think I’m a total LOSER. The events that followed these, made me very depressed, I cried for many nights, talked with my mom, and one day I even moved to the terrace alone and stood seeing the light house, not knowing what to do.

While standing there, I had a quick flash back of all my life, how I grew up, to what I am exposed to, and the people I’ve met before. I knew I was something, I knew I was more than I think I was but I did not know why I kept doing mistakes here. I accepted that it’s all a part of life to get scolding from my higher officials was all a part of learning and a part of growing up — just like the school days. While looking back through my life, I noticed something odd. I was big lover of games, and I’ve even got scolding from my dad, that I was fit only for playing games and not creating them. I’ve spent lakhs of money on gaming, holding every console that the Sony PlayStation Range had to offer, an i7 PC that’s worth nearly a lakh, and a monstrous MacBook Pro with the highest configuration (awarded as the best laptop in the world) available at the time when I bought it. With that spark of light in mind and also from the light house that stood in front of me, I asked to myself, “Why not I try something to do to the world of gaming?”. Although, it might sound like a stupid question to myself, I wanted to try it so bad. With Gaming rage filled full over my heart and brain, because of the hardcore gaming we’ve been doing every night with Prince, Dharani, Vijayakanth playing COD4 Modern Warfare, I wanted to take a leap of faith and believe that I can do it — or atleast try doing my best in the game development field. Of course, I did not even know what is game development, I had no idea — game development was like greek and latin to me but something told me to give it a try with the only life I have.

Web, was everything I know. I’ve been programming for the web from school when I was in 9th standard. I have tried basics in game development, using Game engines such as the XNA Game Studio, the openGL platform and DirectX, but still I was nothing in GameDev when compared to my knowledge in programming the web. I was trying to figure out combing my knowledge to match these two and I felt Game Programming (not Game Designing) would be a better option to focus my future on. So at that point, in front of the light house, just in front of the Terazza, I decided that I should jump in, open my mind wide open with belief and hope that things will go right and I decided to learn Game Development. Instantly, I called my parents and told about my decision, and like every other parent they denied my request at first. After a lot of crying for a few days and requesting me to give a chance that I could do this, they agreed. Chetna, Ishwarya and Prince were also a strong part of helping me take this decision, as they were the ones who made me realise what I was.

I soon started to look for Game Development courses throughout India and also in Singapore, and with lots of analysis, I locked ICAT (which is situated just near my hostel) would be the right place, where I would do my course and drive my future. I wrote the entrance test, passed it with a good score and successfully joined the course by paying the fees for the admission and the first term. However, the course was starting only in August and therefore I had to wait 6 more months to get started with my dream.

Meanwhile, at office, everything were running smooth. Oh-wait-No! That was the worse part. I once again, started learning more, I was given a little-challenging tasks once again, I became much more close to my friends, felt very close to my team leader and project manager and I was doing a lot of R & D — jQuery Mobile, Google Calendar, Underscore.JS, and what-not! Worst case, I was even offered to work on Mobile Technologies such as Android and iOS — which I wanted to work on so badly. I was once again having a lot of fun in office, felt like it was like my second home and I didn’t want to leave it. Although I thought about my decision for nearly a month, I felt I had taken a wrong turn. But my instinct was telling something else — it kept telling me, that I’m on the right track, I knew what I was doing and everything is going to be fine. With no other go, I continued, loved every minute I was there, made every person around me as happy as I could.

As I said in my previous post, the days were counting tick-tock-tick-tock, and 7 months flew just like that. And now, I’ve quit my job — with hope and belief that everything’s going to be alright, confidence built up by my friends and those in office who really cared about me, a letter truly inspiring written by Boo Boo (Abinaya) to chase down my dream and conquer it.

With high hopes and beliefs, a new category (I-Go-Gaming!) of my life begins..