How My First Job Experience Shaped My Professional Career

Valuable lessons learned in the times of India’s biggest corporate fraud and a recession.

Photo by Hunters Race on Unsplash

This month, I am going to complete fifteen years of work experience in the IT industry. In this one and a half decades of my professional career, I have worked for three different multinational companies.

Looking back — each of these companies has provided me with plenty of opportunities and a great deal of experience to grow personally and professionally.

Throughout one’s career, the first job always holds a special place in memory and has the biggest impact on shaping the professional future.

I started my career at Satyam Technologies. Campus placement during my final semester of engineering helped me secure the job. It provided a great start to my career as, at that time, Satyam used to be one of the top four Indian IT service providers.

Through Satyam, I got to work for Merrill Lynch as my first client. I worked as a developer for ML. After nearly two years of working for ML, I moved to New York to work for Citigroup as a client.

Working with both the financial behemoths provided me with an excellent learning experience.