It’s been 6 weeks since I joined TubeMogul leaving Salesforce. The
decision to leave Salesforce was not an easy one, as Salesforce is one
of the leading and most innovative software companies in the world with
approximately 17 thousand employees. When I joined there 8 years back,
they had a little more than 3 thousand employees. So I saw Salesforce
rising at a pace, that is only believable if you live in Silicon
Valley’s startup atmosphere. I was in a good book in my own department
and had a good network of people working in different departments; as I
have been working there for so long. There were further growth scope and
no doubt Salesforce pays good enough to employees in Silicon Valley (I
have to assume elsewhere too). So why move out of Salesforce at all?
Here was my rationale.
I have been working in IT Applications Development since my early
years in Salesforce. The first half (4 years) I was working on a Java
based module and the last half I have been working on Force.com / Apex
(Salesforce’s own programming language developed on top of Java). During
the second half I started feeling that I am getting out of touch with
the Open Source projects and Java community; as being an application
developer, I didn’t get a chance to do platform development which allows
you to experiment with lots of cutting edge new open source frameworks
coming out or the JVM based programming languages. So I considered
moving within Salesforce to one of their platform teams but then I
became part of a very large project (Project Delight)
which I didn’t want to miss. The project took 2 and half years to
finish and it was a very good experience in my career, seeing first hand
how a large number of teams, each having its own development culture
can work together to achieve a bigger goal and what various types of
obstacles can come on the way. But once that project was done, I was
getting ready for a bigger role on the next big project. But then I
started feeling that the core problems that are awaiting me, we have
already solved many of those in my last project. So instead why not jump
into something completely new, where I will be hopelessly helpless?
That’s when one of my ex-colleague simply submitted my resume to a
software company despite my reluctance (confession: I am a lazy person).
But as my interview was scheduled. I started looking into what is there
in the latest java world and I saw that the companies are moving to
Java 8. When experimenting a few programs in Java 8 following the Manning book,
I clearly understood it’s a complete revamp of the Java programming
language. Lambda expressions, streams, functional style programming are
few that excited me too much and I was no more ready to get back to Apex
coding (not that Apex is bad, its just proprietary). I honed my Java 8,
data structures and algorithm, spring and other open source projects
familiarity for couple of weeks to get ready for interviews.
As naturally happens, I got selected by a few companies and rejected
by a few others during the interview process. The job market is so good
that I had at least half a dozen more interviews waiting for me the next
week before I decided to stop interviewing and pick the best I had upto
that time. TubeMogul was a clear winner in many areas. Of them are –
- They are complete java and open source shop
- They have different engineering teams where you might be able to move around over time – platform core (rtb), machine learning, big data & stats, ui, udb, appeng and more….
- They are the 5th best place to work in San Francisco Bay Area according to Glassdoor review of 2015
- They are a mid size company (500+ employees) making it ideal for a growing company and yet not too small to go bankrupt
- Their business domain Real Time Bidding (RTB) is something completely unknown to me. So it will definitely pose challenges to me in multiple levels (which is what I was looking for).
- They offered me a decent package. Although I humbly note that if you are working in Silicon Valley as a software engineer, most of the companies will offer you a good package; otherwise they won’t be able to attract or retain good employees.
- I liked talking to each of the 4 people who interviewed me in TubeMogul as well the recruiter who handled the whole negotiation process in a very professional manner. My manager Murtaza is a very composed man, something similar to Rajesh Misquita at Salesforce whom I admire a lot.
I did let my team in Salesforce know 6 weeks ahead of time about my
decision. I went to Bangladesh on vacation for 3 weeks to attend my
brother’s marriage in between. I left a good relation with the
management and peers before leaving Salesforce. I will always cherish
the memories of working in such a nice a big company like Salesforce.
But it’s time to move on.
When I joined TubeMogul, I saw my assessments were mostly correct.
Except Java, I think everything else was simply unknown to me or I have
used/worked on more than a decade ago. I still have not mastered the way
to explain what RTB industry is all about. One of the very first things
I did here is formed TubeMogul Chess Club. The pace of work is fast and
everyone is very friendly. Let me go through a few more months, but as
of now I believe my decision was correct to join TubeMogul.
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