On Joining Miranj

I’ve been settling into my new role at Miranj over the past few days (31 days to be exact). I am a ‘web designer’, and we are based out of a beautiful new office we recently moved in, at Shahpur Jat village in New Delhi.

It has been fantastic so far, learning about the design, codes and coffee. At Miranj these things go in tandem.

As a web designer, I am a part of the four-member team who is working on a fun project (wait for the teaser). It’s rather surreal to work just feet away from design leaders of India who designed and developed products that I (we?) have been using for years. (Prateek and Souvik have designed and developed products like Build Your Community, Your Cabs, Meals Under 100, Mobikwik and many others.)

By the way, this is my first real job and I am yet to realize that, thanks to our office culture. We are allowed to come in whichever dress we want and can chose flexible time-slots best suited to us. We can even work remotely, WTH. Of course these things are intimidating at least for me, because in college days a ‘job’ meant working in formals in a 6′by 6′ cubicle, from 9 to 6, listening to rants of senior officials.

Prateek and Souvik blow my mind everyday by teaching me new things, no matter big or small. Yes, learning new things blows my mind. I have been keeping a note of things which I learn everyday from these guys and so far the number has reached 92 (on an average 3 per day). The number indirectly questions their recruitment procedure too… just kidding.

I had to turn down two other full time corporate jobs at large multinationals before joining this new young firm. I rather decided to be on a team of 4 that would change X or reinvent the way people use Y than hidden away under the corporate umbrella of some other tech giant.

And I am glad I did that. I believe, by working here, I would be able to make a large impact on the entire company compared to working for a massive giant and have little or no say in the product development.

At Miranj, the only hard part is dealing with the responsibility. I have never felt this responsible in my entire life. When somebody says to you, you have two weeks to do it, you don’t have responsibility, you have two weeks. When someone says, take your time, suddenly, the time means everything to you.

So, with that said, I should rather grab a cup of coffee made by Souvikand start analyzing the estimation for this week.