My career with 1E started on 2nd Sep 2013 when I joined as a Senior Developer in one of 1E’s popular product called Shopping.
I had little knowledge about the product and the teams involved. This product was being run from the UK office which is undoubtedly the innovation center of 1E and had given birth to several 1E flagship products. India dev center was under the process of being built, I had a few other team members gradually joining the new shiny Noida office, it started with slight apprehension and I wasn’t quite sure that this is going to be a great decision from my career point of view as I was part of a new team and product which we were trying to set from scratch (I can definitely boast it as the best decision of my life now.)
There were high expectations, responsibilities, and ownership lying with this team to prove that this new team can properly handle a product by themselves.
I am grateful that I got the support of existing Shopping team in ramping-up this team from scratch. This team was also one of the brightest team in Noida office which didn’t leave any stone unturned and within no time, we were handling and working on new/existing features/issues of the products on our own. That’s how the journey started on a very positive and aspiring note.
Soon I started managing the Shopping team completely.
We had the entire Shopping product being run from Noida office. This was also the first product where we had all aspects of SDLC being managed from Noida and did the first independent release in Oct 2014. Then there was no looking back, we did two more full-fledged releases after that with several customer-focused features.
This was the phase when the India team gained trust and confidence of all the stakeholders and it was time to take more responsibilities all around. I was tasked to take the ownership of AppC v5 product which was another big flagship product in 1E’s kitty. This product is popular amongst the customers for its unique software reclaim capabilities.
I got promoted to Associate Technical Manager role in the month of January 2016.
This was about the same time we also started building another SAM product which was essentially complementary to AppC v5 product, however, was much bigger in aspirations and size. This product is meant to solve three major SAM issues
- Software Waste
- Server Licensing management and Renewals
- Audit Defence
This was totally a new world from SAM perspective where we wanted to enable our customers to manage their software licenses effectively and removing software waste from their enterprise. All the existing features from AppC v5 are already part of it e.g. S/w reclaim, inventory management, etc.
I was soon asked to manage and develop Catalog.
Catalog is the critical piece of the entire SAM story, we were facing several challenges around building a Catalog team in Noida because curation was never thought to be an exciting piece of work amongst seasoned programmers, nevertheless, we pumped in team bandwidth into doing curation in addition to building engineering pieces alongside. We did set up an efficient team of Catalog administrators who have been working dedicatedly enhancing Catalog content till now.
By the end of the year 2016, we had done the first AppC v6 release. The core features had LDCs and Compliance calculations for MS SQL, IBM, and Oracle. Meanwhile, we had also released two more efficient versions of AppC v5. This usage is more accurate based upon the file match logic of our new integrated Catalog. This phase was challenging to gain the confidence of all stakeholders and customers on the new Catalog.
I started engaging myself in various customer calls to understand their pain point and product improvement areas.
We also delivered several technical sessions to our esteemed customers. We made them feel comfortable in using the new product effectively. These sessions proved highly beneficial which were later testified by several customers notably e.g. Wells Fargo, Nationwide, Roche, etc.
Soon after, I got promoted to Technical Manager role in the month of January 2018. This meant I had additional responsibilities to manage SLA, AppC, and Catalog later. This has been a pretty exciting and rewarding journey with lots of learning. During the same tenure, my personal life was also blooming. I became the father of two cute angels.
I have grown manifold as a professional over a period of last 5 years. 1E is way more than just an Employee-Employer relationship to me. It’s a lifetime journey which will keep on mesmerizing me by countless positive memories.
