Battling with the Norm

This is my story, the story of a woman who has earned respect from colleagues, family and friends for the person she is today.

I started my career with a strong love and passion for programming and making software. I was 16 when I was introduced to computers, since then I wanted to work with them. After finishing my school I joined College to study Computer Engineering from Gujarat University in India. In your final year you get placed in big IT companies. To sit in placements there was an eligibility criteria that you must have more than a 70% score in school and college. I was quite disappointed because despite having good results in Engineering, I couldn’t apply for big companies because of my low grades in 12th grade standard of schooling. That was my first encounter with the Tech industry and the “real world”. My classmates joined Multinational Companies(MNCs) and I started hunting for jobs. They started with a Rs.25000 monthly salary package and I started with a Rs.5000 monthly salary in MNC as a contractor. It was not easy to see others earning 5 times more than me considering I am equally good developer. I have always believed in this, “If you fail in something and you take it as a failure, you will never learn from it.”

As a contractor I realised no matter how hard I work the permanent employees are going to show my work and get promotions, but that didn’t keep me demotivated. I kept working hard to thrive to learn. During my contracting job there, I had some amazing project leads/managers who helped me to up-skill, and as a starter in the industry I feel I was very lucky. After around 2 years I left that job and started working at another small company in Ahmedabad as an Android Developer. Starting my job as an Android Developer was the best decision of my life! I started working on Android at very early OS releases. After a couple of years, there was high demand of mobile developers, which helped me a lot in my career progression.

I worked at few companies in Ahmedabad. I had many good and bad experiences, but one of the company I worked with I faced physical abuse, and is an experience I will never forget in my life. One of my managers was very biased about a female business analyst, and secretly he was dating her. He gave her unnecessary responsibilities of taking care of a tech team. I was working on an internal product with a few other developers in my team, and we all used to share AppStore account credentials of our company. One day my colleague was uploading a build onto the App Store and someone else by mistake cancelled that upload which made significant delays in the release of that project. To avoid this situation again, we suggested to our manager to give the responsibility to the Business analyst who was leading our team. He thought we were taunting him and he came upstairs and started swearing at us. I tried to convince our manager that we didn’t mean to say what he was thinking, but instead my statement made him even more angry. He threw the chair at me, twisted my hand and told me not to explain to him what I meant. I was forced to resign and leave the company at that time. The next day I got a call from my company’s director for a meeting. I went to office for the meeting and I came to know that my whole team had resigned to support me. This was my 2nd experience in the tech industry that I will never forget. I learnt that when you stand for the right thing, your team will always be there to support you.

The market for Android developers was so hot at that time that I got a job in a bigger and better company, where I joined as a Senior Developer. During the hiring process, I had a final interview with HR of the company. In India, most IT companies ask you to sign a 1 year bond which in brief states that, “If I leave the company before 1 year, I am liable to pay for the loss my company makes because of me.” I did not agree to that bond because I was very likely going to get married and I might have to move to the city/country my husband lives in. My parents were eager to see me “Settled”, basically married, and they had already started looking for a nice guy in our community. The HR manager, who was surprisingly female, assured me that in such circumstances the company understands and releases the employee without bond fees. I believed this and signed the bond. After 7 months of my service in that company, I got married and was supposed to move to Australia. I resigned and finished my 2 months notice period. The company had a policy that they do not pay salary to the employee, and settle the amount with 2 months pay and annual leave on the last day. On the last day, I went to meet HR for my final settlement, and I was given an invoice to pay a handsome amount for breaking the bond, and that I will not be paid to cover those losses. I was leaving legally but I still had to make loss of salary. I literally couldn’t do anything about it because my conversation with HR on joining was verbal and not in writing.

Lesson learnt. If you have any such important conversations, always get it in writing. But what was more disappointing is being a female in Indian society they expect you to move to the place your partner is and still you have to struggle for the rights you should deserve when it comes to leaving a job. In all above scenarios I have always fought for the rights I deserve.

After few months of resigning at that job I moved to Australia. In every true manner I have been blessed to have found such a supportive husband as well as moved to such beautiful country. I was fortunate enough to get a job in one of the biggest mobile development companies in Melbourne and joined there as a Junior mobile developer. It was a bit of shock for me as despite of having 5 years of experience in industry back in India I was considered to be new to Australian market and had to start as a junior developer again. Can’t complain because soon in a year I became senior developer in that company. Sometimes somethings are not in our hands and we have to agree to the Norm. I did exactly same because at that time I wanted an opportunity to to get started in Australia. After a year in the company I came to know my fellow male developer who is my best friend as well had 40% more salary than me. I am pretty sure it happened unknowingly by the company. It is also possible they didn’t find me as talented as my friend is. However during that time and researched and came across the fact that western countries are struggling with gender diversity and equality. Sometimes women are not taken as seriously as they should have been in the industry over men. Which made me think maybe I need to get better at presenting myself and raising voice for myself. If something’s not right I have to speak up and be upfront.

Don’t get me wrong, I am extremely grateful for the opportunity I was given to work in this country. This company gave me very supportive environment to work, learn and grow. I even met my friends for life here. I also worked under amazing team lead from whom I learnt a lot. I will always remember him with respect for grooming my tech skills so well. But it was time to move on.

I joined Isobar. I am working with this company since last 3 years and this is the first time I have stayed with any company for so long. In Australia all tech companies have Annual Review and Goal Planning for every employee. At the end of my 1st year I was invited to a meeting with my manager Kara and company’s Innovation Director Erik for my next year goal planning. In this meeting Kara explained me about the things I am supposed to do/achieve to become a Senior Mobile Developer. I felt something is wrong because I always thought I am hired as a Senior Dev, but I kept quiet in the meeting. This is the problem I have faced in most of the females I have worked with. We do not speak up as soon as we feel something is not right. We think about it, we consult with someone, we gather lot of courage and then may be later we will speak up. I did exact same. I kept quiet, I didn’t react, I thought, I consulted my husband’s advice and then thought to speak to Kara about it. Couple of days later I talked with Kara and Erik about it, and surprisingly they took it very sportingly. They went back talked with Technical director, Company’s CEO and in few days I was promoted to Senior Developer. Holy moly! They heard me and they fixed what was wrong. Not just that but they even made individual efforts to know I am happy about it. I was mind blown, this had never happened to me before.

During that time I got an opportunity to work with amazing startup company and their project as an isobar employee and in the end Kara had so much confidence in me that she proposed to make me Tech Lead of the project. I went to San Francisco for some work related to that project at Twitter HQ as well. When I was studying Engineering I always told my mom one day my company will send me abroad to work with a big company and going to San Francisco was like dream come true. I love Erik and Kara, and without them agreeing to be my mentors, I chose them as my Mentors and started taking their advice for things I thought I can do but didn’t know if it is the right thing to do. Also I had lot of things to learn, for eg. I studied in Gujarati medium school and hardly had spoken in English before I moved to Australia.

I got an opportunity to be featured in B&T influential women in Technology, and Isobar submitted profiles of few females from our company to be featured in. I was one of the 2 females who were shortlisted. I had no experience in answering an interview for myself before and I was hell scared. Erik pushed me to give it a go and write the answers and once I had done that he spent his lunch break to sit with me and write it down properly. A company’s APAC Innovation Director is helping a Dev to write an article, which could have been done by someone from the company else easily. And this is just an example, Kara and Erik spent hours to groom me to be better at public speaking and I do not remember how many times I would have given run through speeches in front of them. I remember when I was going to present at Pause Fest conference in Melbourne during one of the run through in front of Erik he told me I did 67 times “Ammm” and both Kara and Erik gave me so many valuable feedback which made me become a better speaker every time I presented at events. I am saying this not to promote Isobar or my mentors, I am saying it because I think it is necessary for us women to know that it is ok to be scared of things as they come, it is ok to raise and ask for help when you don’t know something, you show passion for things you want to achieve and there will be always someone to help you.

All the hurdles I have shared in this article have made me a better person in general. I raise my opinions with confidence and when need be I fight for my rights. With my story and life experiences I want to inspire and encourage those who have kept quiet and didn’t give it a go to fix it, because you thought you could not do it.

Disclaimer: This article is not about India vs Australia or I am not aiming to put down or promote any companies, this article is purely intended to share my experiences and how I learnt from them to become the outspoken and strong woman I am today.