• Going back to Corporate life felt Great — Until…

On a warm sunny afternoon in 1996, my colleague and I handed in our resignations at work. We were fed up with our lazy boss and even lazier colleagues and were convinced we could do better on our own.

I still remember the look on our boss’s face when we told him.

Young and naive, we didn’t have a clue of how to begin and automatically assumed customers would come just because we had launched our computer consultancy company.

And just as well…

Because our experience was nothing like we had ever imagined it would be.

Building a Company

Those were the pre-internet days so getting customers meant you had to go door-to-door to just about every company on the street and pitch for work.

Which meant you first had to navigate past the burly, mustached security guard at the gate.

If you managed to survive that, you came face to face with more often than not, a formidable-looking receptionist. She was the gatekeeper to your hopes of meeting the man in charge, but you needed to have more than charm and quick wit to be able to wrangle an appointment with the boss.

Our strike rate wasn’t too bad. 30% of the time we were granted an appointment and were asked to fix employees’ computers that were on the blink. We even managed to close a couple of maintenance retainer deals.

As the months went by, we managed to pick up more work and grew more confident.

As our client list grew, we expanded our range of services and hired a few engineers.

We were now dealing in standalone PC sales and service, local area network installations, and computer maintenance contracts.

We were busier than bees collecting nectar and enjoyed what we did. Our clients too loved us and didn’t hesitate to renew their contracts.

Not bad for two young guys who had started from scratch, you might think.

The problem was… in spite of all the work we had, we had a major drawback…

We simply did not know how to make money.

90% of the time, we were charging 75% less than what our competitors were charging.

Why?

I had no idea. I was the one who decided how we priced our services and I did a horrible job of it.

I’m not sure if it was the fear of making money that was holding me back but I somehow ended up charging the bare minimum.

The bare minimum didn’t even cover 2 months of our traveling to customers’ offices and back.

Yep…it was that bad.

Little wonder then that we made losses soon after we onboarded a new client; losses that rapidly accelerated and ultimately caused us to shut down the company after 10 years of survival.

Shutting down

It was 2005. A skyrocketing workload with revenue that was declining faster than a car going downhill without brakes meant only one thing:

It was time to step back and re-evaluate.

Our debts had mounted. We owed money to our vendors, we couldn’t pay for advertisements anymore, we couldn’t even afford to pay for the computers we took on hire.

But what put the last nail in our coffin was the rental for our office space. Since we couldn’t make rent every month the landlord was deducting the amount from the initial deposit, we had paid him.

Every day was fraught with tension thinking about how we were going to repay everyone.

It finally grew too painful for us to bear and we decided to pull the plug on our business of 10 years.

We broke the news to our customers and they were truly sorry to see us go.

But we did what had to be done and made a graceful exit.

At that exact time, the global IT scene was booming and I fancied my chances of getting hired into a well-paying corporate job. I had the qualifications, skills, and experience to back me up.

Heck, I even had the experience of launching a startup at the age of 25 and running it for 10 years (I know I also ran it into the ground but that too is an experience in itself).

Coming back to Corporate life

After two months of replying to job postings and writing to recruiters, I got an offer from a well-known MNC.

They were based in Bangalore which meant I would have to leave my hometown of Mumbai.

But the pay was great and I couldn’t afford not to take it.

And thus began my second innings as a corporate employee… my ‘Return to Work’ adventure.

The thrill I felt walking in to work at the big IT park was indescribable. I guess it can only be understood by someone who’s won a big break after years of just getting by… a break that has the potential to change his or her life.

No more worrying about business problems, or paying vendors, or rents to take care of. Being an employee seemed infinitely easier than running a business.

And so it proved to be for a while. Until the politics started getting to me after around 2 years of working there.

Fed up of seeing underperformers promoted just because the boss liked playing favorites, I quit, to join another company.

And it was this next company that changed my life and defined what my future was going to look like.

I had joined my new company on a Monday after quitting my earlier company the previous Friday, and I hit the ground running.

I never stopped for 8 years. In all that time, I grew not only as a leader but also as a human being.

If building a team was hard, I discovered that it was even harder to keep the team motivated and to get them to maintain an upward graph.

I had to learn how to be empathetic and fight for my team when needed. Up until then, I had thought of myself as a technically strong engineer but this leadership position made me think differently. I realized there was so much more to corporate life than mere technical skills.

As a leader, being able to get your team to give their all, and yet stay happy and contented for years, was a tough ask. But I more than managed. I excelled and earned my team’s respect and admiration.

Even my boss who was a man of few words, commented…” You’ve got a way with people. Congrats and keep up the good work”.

And I did exactly that. For 8 long years. Until I felt there was nothing more I could do.

I had grown the team from 4 people to over 50 people in 8 years. It was time for another challenge.

Moving On

But I loved the company too much to quit. So I accepted an internal offer and made a lateral move to head another team that did pure software engineering.

In hindsight, I should never have done that. Software development wasn’t my forte. My coding skills were mediocre at best.

I struggled and so did the team under me. I felt like I was a newbie once again which I must admit, made me uncomfortable.

Sadly, the boss I was reporting to wasn’t of much help either. He had great technical skills but was a terrible people manager. Sometimes, I felt like his only agenda was trying to prove that our team wasn’t quite up to it when it came to building products.

I in turn, did what I knew best. I fought for my team and pushed back on my boss. As you can imagine this caused even more friction between us.

But our team bravely fought on and things almost magically started to look better after a couple of years.

But just when it seemed that the storm clouds were disappearing, the business overall began showing signs of a slowdown. Top clients began deserting the company and the share price plummeted.

To make matters worse, the project that we were working on (which was supposed to be a huge money-spinner) lost favor with clients. It suddenly had no takers. Not one single customer wanted to pay for it.

After having spent tons of money on this project in terms of resources and time, the company flipped the switch on it. Shut it down. Just like that.

Moving Out

Three months later on another warm, sunny afternoon…. this time in 2018… our entire team was called into the conference room for an “important” meeting.

HR was there. We were being let go. Me and all the teams reporting to me… Immediately, as of that afternoon.

I had had it with corporate life and working for others. I took a few weeks off and thought long and hard about what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.

Although things didn’t end the way I wanted at this last company, there was no denying the impact it had on my life.

I had metamorphosized from an engineer to a leader; a sometimes fearless one at that. I had acquired the confidence to grow teams and build world-class products.

And I didn’t want to stop. I wanted to continue building and adding value to the lives of people.

It was time for me to test the entrepreneurial waters again. Could I get it right this time?

Only time will tell…

In Retrospect

I cannot go back in time and change things in my corporate career… but if I had to do something differently, this is what I would have done.

I would have capitalized on my core skills instead of taking up a job just for the sake of accepting a new challenge. If that meant quitting my company, then quit I would have.

I would have ‘picked’ my battles better instead of fighting for everything. By no means am I saying I would have tolerated injustice. I’m just saying I wouldn’t have sweated over the small stuff.

I would have fired my boss. Yep… I would have quit if my boss didn’t show signs of improvement. Although you can learn something from everyone, including a horrible boss, it’s not worth your sanity working with one for any length of time.

So that’s it for my experience of coming back to corporate life. It can be rewarding, yet heartbreaking for some.

In my case, it changed my life.