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Sakshi
Sakshi

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What I learnt after working in startups?

HELLO 🙌

It is better to make bigger contribution in small organization than making small impact in a big organization where your efforts are less valued.

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I worked at three startups during and after my college. All three were at different stages. One was just an year old, while other were running from more than a decade. Interestingly all three had major focus on different areas than just building and selling product.

Lets begin with first one. It is a startup based in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, India. This company is operating from 20+ years. 🏢

Highly motivated people with good number of customers and well doing product. So they had this Omnichannel order management, shop online and pick up from store thing. We were given good training in Java and Sql. 🔨

These guys were more focused on learning things deeply. They had 1 year service agreement and HR were always insisting to post learnings on linkedin. They asked us to make atleast 2-3 post per week. Their focus in that year was on branding on Linkedin.

Regular stand up calls and doubt solving sessions were helpful, I loved the way they celebrated festivals✨. These days they are promoting their culture across different social media platforms. But they ask fulltime employees to** work for 11-12 hours **sometimes, and only sunday off is given. The stipend was good and learnings also.

Now, the second startup, had best experience here 😎. This organization has 150-200 employees and based of Indore, Madhya Pradesh, India.

Work culture here is one of the worst I have ever seen, but the products are amazing💰💵. I got to learn a lot from founder, colleagues and mentors. People were helpful, they understand people's problem but at the same time there is a new thing, new idea and new way of thinking everyday. *This sometimes changes the plan sometimes twice in a day. * 😭

Working hours were hectic specially for interns. This place is best for people who have never ending hunger for learning, want to experience a growing startup.

I literally learned fundamentals here, most of my web dev learning and skills comes from here💡. Also many brilliant minds I met here, as a growing startup this company is doing so well, they do not ask to post anything on linkedin, just work, with less focus on mental health.

The stipend was good, like students really travelled from other cities to intern in this organization, and I do feel that internship can be turned into fulltime offer here, just stay here for six months and grind day in day out. 🔨🔨 *Learning culture is one of the best, work culture is below average. *

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The last one, was just one year old startup. So product was still not developed and funding was zero. I was more interested to see how this funding thing happens.

The idea they were working on was good but needed more brainstorming I felt this. People were good, but as no sales so salaries were very less🤦‍♀️, it was hard to save money there.

Again, the learning environment was good, work culture was okayish. I prefer working in a place where I can learn and earn well.

Best thing here was code review session which were very interactive, every one gets to know what others are doing, their challenges👍 and how they solved problems. For learning this place is 5/5.

Each startup had some pros and cons and at some point of time I felt like leaving the organization🏃‍♀️🏃‍♀️. But that's the part of a plan, we are unware about in beginning. At the end of day it was always a day filled with learnings.

Startups have this environment where people work 6 days in a week, some days they work for more than 10 hours and get lesser leaves, but learning and conversation that happen in a growing startup are the most valuable🥱. I never wanted to miss a single minute where someone is sharing their experience or plan on how to move to next steps.

The most important thing about working in startup is never ending learning and there were days when I was getting new ideas to start something by my own, from my own ideas. This can never while working in big organization.😇😇

Thanks for reading

Do share you experiences if you have also worked in startup or if you have your own startup would love to read.

Happy reading! ✌

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