One year at Grene

Yesterday, I completed a year at Grene. A good year. The best part of this year was the return to active development. Return, did I say? Well, I wouldn't call it return exactly. I was hardly ever in active development. Circumstances forced me into management a little too early in my career. Apart from the first few months of my career, I did not do a whole lot of coding.

This year has pretty much been all coding, which I have thoroughly enjoyed. The joy of actually building something that works, the thrill of seeing people use something you have built, the high of receiving praise for something you have done are all indescribable!

Management is somehow not as satisfying. The primary reason for this is it is your team who is doing all the work. Yes, somewhere down the line, what you have done is the sum total of what your team has done. But still, despite that, the feeling of personally having accomplished something was never there.

This is what I like about my current job. I can see what I have done. I can identify a problem, very often, the moment I see one. I am totally hands-on. When I see what I have done it feels good. Because I know that I have built that, line by line, class by class, screen by screen.

There are some really good things about Grene. I have been given a good amount of freedom. Features were discussed and arrived at. There was no sales guy dictating how the product should shape up. It was all a joint effort. Everything was collaborative. My managers also have been very visionary in that they had a fair idea about what they wanted in terms of the high level qualities of the product. They gave me complete freedom in how to achieve those high level objectives. Very often, there would be a review meeting. I remember leaving those meetings all charged up and excited, unable to wait to get down to implementing those ideas!

Let's hope I continue to enjoy my work in the months to come!