Yesterday was my last working day at Microsoft India.
When I joined Microsoft in Oct 2001, I never thought this day would come. After all, joining Microsoft was a dream, and when I finally did join the company, I thought I am going to be here for life. However, when you have lived a dream for seven years, taken nourishment from it, enjoyed it the fullest, soaked in it ... it gets absorbed in you. And then you need a new dream to retain that same level of vitality.
Thankfully, there is a lot to dream about these days - there are changes happening in mainstream computing - some of which I have alluded to in earlier posts as well - which would precipitate a major re-architecting of a lot of existing software and lead to some completely new kind of apps. This opens up huge opportunities both on a business front and on a technology front. Then there is the India factor - India is the like a laboratory for the world right now because of it being the only English speaking country out of the BRIC nations. This creates even more opportunities.
With its assets, vision and execution path, I firmly believe Microsoft to be amazingly well positioned to leverage these opportunities and define the next era in computing. Of course there are challenges - the misconception on the role of the Client, the negative perception on Vista (some of it deserved, some of it just plain perception as demonstrated by The Mojave Experiment), the lack of online ad-inventory are perhaps the most important ones. But there is a ton of amazing work happening at Microsoft - the I/O changes in Vista, the emerging Parallel Computing platform, the work on declarative frameworks, innovations in languages, Software + Services platforms like Live Mesh, stuff like Sync Framework and Velocity are all about leveraging the opportunities ahead. And wait till you see some of the stuff coming out of Redmond in the next one year or so - it is wicked cool and a lot of public perception would change dramatically!
So if I believe so strongly in Microsoft, and I love the company so much, why am I moving out? Well couple of reasons:
1) I wanted to participate more directly in the changes happening in the industry - that means shipping a product. Something I could own end to end, and which I could see in the hands of people, making a difference to their lives.
2) All my life I have been a Microsoftie and while I have studied the other stacks academically, I have never really worked on them in a big way. So I wanted to explore some of the other stuff out there - technologies, techniques, software-development models, etc.
3) One day, I hope to run my own business, and that requires developing some competencies which I do not have today in full measure.
Now all of this can happen at Microsoft as well, but it would have taken time. And hence the role change - I want to move fast on this.
Of course making a change like this is never easy. The last one month has been an emotional one for me. The feeling is similar to what I felt while leaving school - a sense of leaving an institution where you grew up, where you laughed and cried, got angry and frustrated, saw success and failure, received support, love and respect, where you made some terrific friends and learnt from some great people. An institution that you have had the honor of representing, an institution that is a part of you. It is very hard.
So where does one go when one leaves a place like Microsoft? You need the same level of passion, energy, smarts and most importantly that attitude of changing the world and enjoying yourself to the fullest while doing it! Well, I guess I have been extremely lucky to find just such a place. It is a company called Directi - in my opinion, one of the most innovative companies in India. My role there would be to help build Directi's next generation of products and services which take advantage of some of these opportunities I talked about above. From what little I have seen of the culture and the people so far, it looks like a fun ride ahead. Folks here are smart, passionate and thoroughly enjoy the work they do - some really cool concepts and technology. I can't wait to get started!
