School
This happened in the 1990’s.
I studied in my village until Year 10 (1989 to 99).
We do not have computers at home or school.
Everything is done on paper, pen/pencil.
No electronic devices.
Once I finish my schooling, I want to join a diploma program.
Why?
That is the best way to get a job and help my dad.
I do not want to do Year 12, and if I do not get into Engineering, it will be challenging to get a job early.
Also, my cousins are getting diplomas, and one of them is already doing work.
It is an easy path and less risky.
I had to take an entrance test in Year 10 to get into a diploma program.
I went for a coaching then wrote an exam and got a decent rank (around 500 something)
I got into a college near my village.
A lot of drama happened during my admission, which I will cover in future posts. (This itself needs a dedicated post)
For now lets call it lucky so i got a seat in college.
Diploma and Engineering
This was the first time I moved out of the village to study and visit the local town.
All subjects are in English. Yes, that is correct.
(All my primary school years are in local Language – Telugu).
I still remember i got 38 in my English first year and i thought i would fail.
Lucky again, I passed it. Overall though, I got a distinction.
What about computers?
We had computers at college, and I only used them in year 3 when running DOS commands.
It was not complex, but I didn’t understand computers.
Anyway, I completed my diploma with distinction (All 3 years included).
Many of my classmates got even better grades, so I am not special.
I will already love machines by the end of my third year.
Preparing for engineering entrance and getting into college in government quota was the most challenging.
It was a different story altogether about how I made it.
But i made it to engineering and completed by college with distinction again.
You wonder if I am amazing. Not really.
Many of the subjects I studied in engineering were already in my Diploma, so it was an easy transition.
My love for machines increased, and I wanted to design motors and transformers.
I have my dreams about how I need to go about them.
Change in direction
All my friends are getting jobs in IT.
On the other side, I worked with other engineers, but I wanted to join IT.
I had a conversation with one of my friends.
My friend helped me get into a small company.
No salary to begin with, but that’s okay.
I was looking to work in IT where I could learn skills and potentially earn in the future.
I was playing for a long time without knowing it.
Later, one more friend helped me to move to a training role.
Based on what I learned before, I started teaching them .Net.
Then this company got a branch in Delhi and they said, do you want to relocate.
I said Yes.
Delhi
I had the opportunity to move to the capital city of India.
This move changed everything for me.
I need to learn Hindi to begin with. My English wasn’t good either.
Four friends who came with me to Delhi plan to return to their hometown for various reasons.
For the work i did, I believe my managed was impressed.
He asked if I would like to stay back.
I said YES and continued to work with the team.
I learned and managed to speak Hindi in the next 6 months.
After all these years I can still manage to speak in Hindi.
No more challenges if I find someone now, we can have a conversation in Hindi.
This later helped in my career.
SharePoint (was MOSS 2007)
Soon after, my journey started as the company got a new project on MOSS 2007.
I had no clue, and so was everyone on the team.
My boss got someone from another company to help us.
It’s the turning point of my career.
I stayed there for another 1 year before moving to Hyderabad.
I worked in another company helping with support tasks.
I got good at what i do which lead to great opportunity.
In between all, I got married.
Joined Global consulting company
I moved to Bangalore and started working on SharePoint and MOSS 2007 projects.
I am still doing the support projects, but I have always been on the development side, not Infra.
After few months, I got an opportunity to move to Infra team and i said yes.
I started working on both the development and administration of SharePoint.
While i was on support project, I got time to learn new things and share with community.
I learned from the coaching call on how to become an MVP.
MCC and MVP
I started following and implementing what was said in the coaching call.
I started contributing to community forums.
Within 3 months, I got an MCC (Microsoft community contributor) award.
I started a blog and wrote blog posts.
Then, I started a YouTube channel and made some excellent progress.
Someone in the community nominated me, and I got the MVP award.
Manila, Philippines
In early 2014, I got an opportunity to work in the Philippines.
It was one of the longer assignments through my previous company’s Global Career Program (GCP).
GCP changed my career.
It is an excellent opportunity to learn and embrace the culture of the Philippines.
It’s different from what it is like in India.
It took me some time, but I enjoyed my three years in the Philippines before returning to India.
This is when I met one of my Avanade colleagues during one of the projects, and I have been in touch with him since then.
Later, I returned to India and worked there for another year.
Fast Track Program at Microsoft
I got an opportunity to work on a large project for Microsoft.
This is the time when a lot of Migration projects are happening from on-premises to the cloud.
I worked as a fast-track velocity manager for over 6 months before moving to Perth.
Perth, Australia – Power Platform
Thanks to the people I worked with, I traveled to Perth at the beginning of 2018.
Everything is new to me.
People helped me to find a place.
Elder one started school.
Younger one born.
I also started my first Power Platform project in Perth.
This was for 3 months to validate the features of Power Platform and show if it works as expected.
This includes running PS scripts to get the inventory of Power Apps and cloud flows.
The initial setup of configuring and testing DLP policies.
Connect to data sources such as SQL and test if it works well with the on-premises gateway.
Then, I moved back to Avanade and worked on a few internal projects.
Later, my colleague and now friend helped me join another project with a client, where I spent close to 3 years.
Over 3 years. I worked on multiple projects using Power Platform and its related technologies.
I moved to a different client to work on the Dynamics CRM project.
After working for over 10 years at one of the largest consulting companies, I decided to do something else.
Full-time employment to Independent
In late 2022, I took a step and decided to work at the customer end.
One of the best options is to work as an Independent contractor.
For years, I have been working as a consultant and providing solutions.
The last 14 months or so have been an excellent experience for me, professionally and personally.
In my role, I am doing the following things.
- Platform governance strategy and implementation.
- Platform administration.
- Adoption, training, and other related activities.
- Working with other members who do QA and Solution development.
- Presenting at Digital Influencers sessions on Power Platform.
AND much more.
Final Thoughts
Though there are a lot of ups and downs.
Many people helped me to grow as a person.
A lot of luck was involved in my journey.
Can you imagine how much your life has changed over the years?
If you think this is the only thing you work on in the future, think again.
You constantly change and your interests will change.
Also, if you do not have a computer background, do not worry.
You will start slowly but catch up as you learn the skills.
I hope you get the idea based on my journey 🙂
Next, learn one of the foundational aspects of enabling users to develop Power Platform solutions.