Happy 16th Anniversary to my professional career
By: Varun Sankar
Tags: Payments, PayPal, Software Engineer, Scalability, It Professionals

Today (15th Dec) marks yet another milestone in my professional career completing 16 years and with all your wishes and prayer, hopefully the journey will continue as long as possible. I want to pause a moment and want to reflect on what I have learned throughout the journey.

As with every other engineer, to be where I am, It’s a hard-fought win. I am planning to summaries the journey into 3 parts which I have split into three “5–5–5”.

Starting with the first 5 years

I got the opportunity to learn and work on VOIP (Voice Over IP) specifically using SIP (Session Initiation Protocol). We had an amazing team which had a right mix of junior/Senior members/Managers. Both personally and professionally, I learned a lot from this team. This has helped me to set the strong foundations which only few engineers got. I would even go next level to set the experience as working in a startup company as we got the opportunity to work on all the phases of software life cycle. I got to code on C++ which is one of my “The” favorite language.

I felt exploring new technologies, domain, service and product companies early in my career would give me the right experience to shape up my career.

This explorer mind set helped me to take up a role as a software engineer in broadband industry worked on developing software for set-top cables boxes and DNCS. Got the opportunity to work with overseas customers. This was the first step to show my skills in debugging and problem solving. Fixing critical bugs not only helped me to become one of the domain experts but also got exposure to new feature developments. Part of this journey got the onsite opportunity to go and work in the “HongKong Cable” company customer site in HongKong. As part of the journey, fortune to have learned the importance of optimization and how to apply as testing was done in an end-to-end setup comprising set-top boxes, DNCS and network.

Personal Milestone: Bought our first home which was a distant dream then, Proud moment for my parents.

5 to 10 years

Then I got the opportunity to work in semi-conductor company. I learned about graphics cards and its interfaces. I also got to learn Visual C++ and importance of installers. Here I learn how to be vigilant. I learned that I am adaptable to any circumstance. Had a major surgery done during this time and could not walk for over 6 months. During this time, I felt how strong I am and can face any challenges that can come my way.

Now, I got the opportunity to work for DPI technology (Deep Packet Inspection). Got to learn more about the network protocols, insights into different areas of networks helped me to also established myself as a system engineer. I got to know exercise my leadership skills and lead a team of 5. Lot of appreciation for my leadership skills and mentoring abilities.

Personal Milestone: Got married and become Father as well (a boy) 

10 to 15 years

Then I got the opportunity to work as a contractor for a Financial company (Product company). During my initial days, I learned about how to do test driven development. Got the opportunity to lead and execute one of the critical projects at the time end to end. It needed lot of commitment, hard work and dedication to take the project to LIVE, in the process learned different tools, methodology, interaction with almost every domain in PayPal. I could as well establish myself as a SME.

Played a key role in one of the most complex initiatives — User Horizontal Scalability. This initiative enables PayPal to scale User to 10 times its previous scale with a marginal cost to infrastructure.

Now part of HERA (Highly Efficient Reliable Access) engineering team. PayPal HERA is a data proxy which sits between PayPal Databases and PayPal Applications. Was also part of the team which Open-source HERA, this helped me to learn and start contributing to open source. Also got the opportunity to learn and code in Go Lang. Overall , got experience in designing and implementing distributed and large-scale systems.

Personal Milestone: Second time father (a girl) 

To summarize, What I have learned so far

· I believe I can firmly say I have become one of the finest software engineers. It’s a journey of a thousand miles and it happens one step at a time. Long way to go though :).

· I become the best teammate possible. Being the best engineer means very little if I’m not a positive relational force. Team cohesion beats individual talent.

· I believe I have fairly able to maintain priorities. Software is not more important than my relationship with God, my family, my marriage, my friendships, or my health. Think about what your top priorities are. I’m not planning on sacrificing any of those things to be more “productive”.

Things to be remember

· The times we let the work take priority over the people. The work (product) always sorts itself out. The relationships, however, can be much more difficult to repair and maintain.

· The time we spent looking around instead of looking up and looking in. You don’t become a better teammate by being focused on what others could improve on. You get better by recognizing your weaknesses and strengths.

· The time we spent talking when we could’ve been listening. Nobody gets smarter or gains more empathy when they’re speaking.

· The times we were frustrated about something and didn’t communicate it openly and honestly to our leader(s). They can’t help if they don’t know what the problem is.

I would like to end the write up by thanking each and every one who stood up with me, encouraged me, criticized me without you all, I would not be in this position. Keep encouraging me, criticizing and come along with me.