A Leader's Words
Senior Application Developer and Full Stack Engineer at Thoughtworks with almost a decade of experience working primarily as a Backend & DevOps Engineer. I've worked on Ruby & C# projects and am currently working on a Python one. I am an AWS Certified Solutions Architect and an Oracle Certified Cloud Infrastructure Architect at an Associate level. I also have reasonable experience working on GCP, primarily with Google Kubernetes Engine.
I'm also an aspiring public speaker who likes to give talks on soft skills and tech.
I also write blogs on various psychological aspects of work primarily to improve teamwork & interpersonal skills.
My very first manager asked me in a room full of peers (in training) what I wanted to do in life.
I replied that I wanted to help people.
He said that I could start right away by giving him my salary and started laughing. And then proceeded to mock me further.
I dwelt on that incident for a long time trying to understand why that was not something to strive for. Maybe it was too ambitious, maybe I was being unrealistic or, worst case scenario, it was a stupid goal.
That was almost a decade ago.
My motivation to help people has recovered back to the original state and I'd like to believe that I have indeed helped at least a few.
I've also realised how close I was to giving up on my goal just because a person in authority seemed to think so. And that has helped me understand why it's absolutely vital to have the right kind of attitude when it comes to being a leader.
Denigrating someone's goal or passion, even as a joke, can have far reaching consequences on how that person sees themself and their goals.
Have you had such a leader? Or maybe you could have been one. What was your experience?
Let's talk
