by Sajeetharan |  @kokkisajee

In a nutshell

Communities

Social Developer

Recognitions

Principal Product Manager Cosmosdb

GDE,MCT and former MVP

Top stackoverflow contributor

I'm Sajeetharan a.k.a Sajee

@sajeetharan

@kokkisajee

@sajeetharan

@sajeetharan

• 10 + Local commmunities
• 5+ Int communities
• 100 + conferences

What this talk is

• My personal experiences
• Things I messed up
• Things I got right
• Hopefully inspirational!

Let' me tell you a Story about Me & My career

• Born in Jaffna, Sri Lanka
• Studied in 14 schools
• Average Student in School and College
• Bachelor's in computer science and engineering
• Masters in Business Intelligence

From small town to Microsoft

From small town to Microsoft

2007

2015

2019

2018

2020

TN schools best web designer award

Became a Lead, Lead a team of 10 members

Became Microsoft's Most valuable Professional

Became first google developer expert from my country

Became an author of 3 books

2023

Travelled 17 countries, 100+ conferences, Previlege to work from SL

2010

Wanted to masters in games development but turned as a entrepreuner

2011

First Job as a Engineer was fired from Virtusa  

2014

Second job in product based company, double promotion

2017

Hired by Microsoft (first one from SL)

Product Lead Azure Cosmos DB

Learn

Reading

Learn from others

• Water-cooler chats
• Instant Messaging (Discord/Slack/Gitter/etc.)
• Stack Overflow
• Co-working spaces
• Meetups
• Conferences

Every student can learn, just not on the same day, or the same way.

- George Evans

Build

to learn and not to do is really not to learn. To know and not to do is really not to know.

-Stephen R. Covey

SpendMyCents.com

Filtered List

If it's a good idea, go ahead and do it. It's much easier to apologize than it is to get permission.

-Grace Hopper

I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.

-Thomas A. Edison

Teach

Those who know, do. Those that understand, teach.

-Aristotle

Teaching is nature's way of letting you know how sloppy your understanding is.

-Ashley G. Williams

Don't be afraid to try

You'll always miss 100% of the shots you don't take.

- Wayne Gretzky

Types of Employment

Freelancing

• Good place to start
• Can build small apps or websites for local businesses, family, or friends
• Can use platforms like Upwork
• Income is not usually stable

Contract

• Self-employed consultants
• Usually 3-12 months
• Sometimes contract to hire
• Usually no benefits
• Have to meet strict requirements like what hours you work

Full time

• Regular salary
• Best benefits
• Stability/Harder to let you go

Types of Companies

Start-Ups

• Usually < 100 employees
• Fast-paced work environment
• Values hard work
• Can be hard to start at a start-up, especially a very small one
• Might not have many mentorship opportunities
• Most burnout of any company

Small Companies

• ~ < 100 employees
• There are lots of small consultancies
• Fast career growth

Medium companies

• 200-1,000 employees
• Stable
• Well-defined systems

Enterprise companies

Medium companies

• 1,000+ employees
• Lots of processes and rules
• Good place to learn software engineering standards
• It can take years to start having more autonomy
• Lots of back and forth before making changes; hard to influence company in meaningful way

Setting a goal? where do you want to end up

Make a Goal

• Where do you want to be in 5 years?
• What lifestyle do you want?
• What style of work do you prefer?

Should you be a specialist or a generalist?

What I recommend:

Specialize in one language and a few frameworks (one or two) and tools to go along with that language, and generalize in the ecosystem that you are working in.