Traveller’s Journey : Scissors to Salesforce

Fortune favors the BOLD !!

This is one mantra which I have religiously followed and lived in its true essence all these years. Am here today to spell out my journey before and after Salesforce. This being my first blog, there's a lot to tell, lot to listen, lot to share with you wonderful people.

Am not a professional blogger, so please bear with me on this attempt.

Will try and catch up soon.....

This journey can well be divided into two parts : Pre-Salesforce (2000- 2010) and Salesforce (2010 - till date).

Road to Salesforce (2000 - 2010): 

Coming from a financially backward uneducated middle class family, it is expected especially in my part of the world to follow your father's footsteps and do what your fore-fathers have been doing all these years.

My Dad's been a barber who migrated during his childhood days to the city of dreams -MUMBAI, managed to held his own. It was a distant dream for many in our community to get proper schooling those days but my father's hard work and dedication saw the sunlight as he got me enrolled into an English medium school - ran by Christian missionaries from Ireland. This itself was dream come true !!

10th Grade - Year 2000: People had many suggestions and inputs on what should be my career option after fairing decently in school board exams. At the tender age of 15, was informed well by one of my mentors - listen to everyone, process their inputs in mind and do what your heart tells you to do.

While everyone advised Commerce/Arts, my heart and mind said Science was the way forward.

12th Grade - Year 2002: Once again, question here was to run my father's barbershop or give a shot to become FIRST IT engineer from my small community. While I was fairly clear in my mind to join my father's business and pursue higher education in Mathematics, there was a hope to secure merit seat in one of the engineering colleges of Mumbai University.

Luckily, got a merit seat even though it meant me to travel 5 hrs daily to pursue my Bachelors Degree.

By this time, had already started learning the barber's skills from my Father in his shop.

First Job - Year 2006: Badly in need of one, landed my first job within 3 days of my final engineering exam. It was bit on non-technical side dealing with XML pages but went ahead with it to support my family financially.

Just 1 month into the corporate world , while everything was going well. There was some unrest in my mind since it was not a technical role. During an interaction with Sr process manager just spoke my mind that am looking for a technical role and am going to leave this job soon. 

Year 2007 - 2010: It was here where I was introduced to the world of .Net programming and where I grew from a developer to a team lead doing all sort of work from programming to setting up DB's , servers, LAN's etc...We dealt with projects involving websites and on premise applications to handle large international Jewelery exhibitions.

Though this job had everything in for me, was still feeling like being part of the crowd. Need to do something different to have that push to my career. That's when took one of the biggest risk of my life, signed a bonded labor to learn Peoplesoft ERP with one of the leading Indian IT firms.

Year 2010-till date: Bonded for 2 years in 2010 by a company to learn and work on Peoplesoft, had no clue whatsoever where am I heading to. Idea here was to back myself up to learn something new and give honest efforts.

As I said, fortune favors the bold - After 1 month of intensive training on peoplesoft, was not much excited about this product. Adding to that initial project assignment didn't had much to offer to learn in Peoplesoft either.

Decided to speak up with my PM the very next day, who as expected asked to me show some patience and adapt. This was followed up by a meeting with the CRM Head, who listened patiently to all my past experiences and introduced me to this word called - SALESFORCE.

Yes this was the first time ever heard SALESFORCE, took on this challenge from her to research and help her build a team on this. This is how the journey with Salesforce begins.....!!!

While I studied patiently through Force.com Fundamentals documentation and training podcasts (26 videos) over a period of 3-4 months, there were doubts raised by my colleagues on my madness - Imagine yourself in a Peoplesoft business unit of an IT services firm and you are trying to learn something where there is no support, no team, no projects and you have bonded yourself  for next 2 years (didn't had enough financials to break that bonded labor)

There were tons of questions in my mind:

• How do one learn Salesforce ? There is no team around, no one to help in learning salesforce, no documentation that can be referenced either.
• Who is going to give me projects in Salesforce?
• Will management support me if i do a certification? How will they get project with just 1 certified resource in their practice?

Had only one answer to all of this...

Am liking this product and platform, will work hard towards it and rest leave it up to destiny and god....

While I worked hard to do POC's , small projects. Fortune had to be on my side,  got a chance to train, mentor and lead a 15 member Siebel team on Salesforce.

This was the first and THE BEST project of my decade long career, where I worked with the best client, best implementation partners in Salesforce - later acquired by Salesforce.com and learned all the nuances of Architecting, designing and implementing Salesforce for a global client in flat six months. 

Have never looked back since then, have always backed myself against all odds, worked with multiple super-talented people in this community and learnt few key things which would like to pass on to my team members, friends, well wishers....

• Never give up, believe in yourself. There is an opportunity waiting for you.
• Give it back to the community. Keep Learning, Keep Sharing!!
• Customer's success is your success.

Since 2010 have seen multiple young/experienced professionals trying to learn Salesforce.

For young professionals .....

• Focus on Basic Concepts - Security Model, Data management, User management, Object Oriented Programming , Integration Patterns etc..
• Relate what you've learnt and implemented on how it will impact your end customer's business. You will feel good that you are making an impact on this world.
• Do not typecast yourself just an admin/developer. Aim for a being a consultant who can fit into either of the roles. 

For Experienced professionals.....

• You've been great all these years in your previous technology but that doesn't guarantee any success in this community.
• Start learning Salesforce from scratch as a fresher/beginner. Go back to your old learning days and you'll find learning Salesforce that much fun.

People who have known me for long, will relate to this journey at some point or the other.

Thanks !!