Time

Exactly today last year I took upon this job I have currently. I can safely look back at an year to date and think it is the best year of my career so far. Six months of it, I spent 12 hours per day another 3 months working 10 hours average. I just wanted to see if I can give my best and see what its like. So far I am extremely contented with the results as it was a labor of love.

I belong to a pre-sales group with the charter to convert a prospect into a customer within 4 weeks or less by making sure everything they need from a technical standpoint is in place. Now, this required cross functional liasing skills to make sure I delivered what my sales folks needed. Before I knew I was on the rolls of engineering, operations and sales while I properly belonged to marketing. Looking back, I am fortunate to be placed in such a role as I never have been bored with my job (yeah! there are always occasional dips but thats normal in any job?). Other than high sea piracy and hedge fund management there are very few opportunities to my knowledge that offered this kind of variety. Every week had some share of talking to the customers and making them subscribe to my religion (which is my companie's service) , administer a bunch of systems, write scripts both to measure and validate stuff, write code to build tools that make it easier,recommend product changes by passing on what I see in the field and ultimately evangelize the good stuff with both customers and other partners. Yes! I liked every one of these functions thought my core function is to analyse and report on HTTP related stuff.

Not many firms I know would give such a free rein to people just because they like doing. Just because I was doing something right enough to inspire confidence so that I can be let loose on the rest of the roles isnt actually good enough reason that many folks would say okay. As organizations grow, they dont like these kind of cowboy actions of a different team in their turf as it gets kinda feudal. As we all know, good growth of feudalism ultimately leads to some despotism which isnt uncommon in today's business. I chose my current organization over a much bigger well known one for precisely avoiding that problem. I thank my employer for allowing me to do what I believed would help us in the long run.

And today is a piece of history for us and I am proud to be a part of this revolution. We have our best quarter yet where closed this quarter with our best ever numbers. The number of customers have tripled since I joined and churn rate was practically zero. Our P & L statement looks fabulous and we might be on our way to an initial public offering sometime next year.Yes, these kind of things happen in the valley a lot but I am excited about this just like Z in Antz

And, y'know, I finally feel like I've found my place. And you know what?
It's right back where I started. But the difference is, this time I chose it.