3 Mistakes

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Learning: Taking risk and failing is a part of life. We cannot always play safe and not get hurt. This fear of failing is something which one shouldn’t have if they want to succeed. I decided after joining Tech M that I will take more risks, I interviewed for the leadership cadre program offered by Tech M. Took a very huge risk and joined a startup which paid off big. Took another risk of leaving a well-paying job for further studies and joined MBA program at SIMS, Pune.

- Mistake 3: Became too proactive (Yes, becoming overly proactive also resulted big mistake)

While doing Productions Support for 2 of the most mission critical applications of AT&T in Tech Mahindra, I noticed an issue in one of the upstream applications which could have resulted in a big outage impacting a lot of AT&T data customers. I, being too “Proactive”, raised this issue with my Onsite Manager Michael Calderon who was 15 Years experienced in AT&T. I asked his permission for raising a triage (an investigative procedure) and inform the AT&T leadership about the issue. However, before raising the proactive triage, I came to know that the issue had already started impacting a lot of customers and no one knew about it. I raised the triage, got everyone updated about the situation, also pointed everyone in the right direction to resolve the issue, even when I was not responsible for any of it. I got a bit greedy and thought of all the appreciation and award that I would be getting, but it turned out that after the outage was over and 280K subscribers were fixed (that I helped find out), around 3K subscribers were not fixed in the initial sweep. This issue was escalated a lot and instead of appreciation I had to give explanation to everyone in Tech Mahindra as well as AT&T higher ups. I could have lost my job if I wouldn’t have convinced everyone that I helped to reduce the customer impact of 277K subscribers even though it was not my job to do that.

Learning: After this incident I realized that I shouldn’t jump into stuff without thinking about it first. Not to get too greedy and do the work that I have been assigned properly and use my knowledge and skills to make it better instead of looking for opportunities to make myself shine. Doing your work completely and by giving 150% effort in it will bear more fruits than going for glory hunting.

Mistakes are what that shape your personality and life. Without these 3 major mistakes, or as a matter of fact all of them, I wouldn’t have been where I am right now. Instead of being afraid of making mistakes we should be more concerned about the learning that we get from them.

Finally, even though I believe making mistakes is good, I think that learning from others’ mistake is much more efficient and effective rather than leaning from your own mistakes. It saves you from lot of mental and physical pain.