During my 8 years in IT I had never come across a person who is so objective. May be the word objective is coined for people like my boss. He was the CTO with my old company.
My initial impressions on him were that he is a tough task master. With in few weeks of joining in my company I had to work with him. To be honest, I was on my toes all the time and trying at least to come near to his expectations, let alone reach them. After three weeks or so we became comfortable working with each other.
During one summer afternoon my boss gave me some R&D work around Lucene which is a search engine API. Whenever any kind of work was given to me by my boss I always used to be on my toes but that day I think I grew complacent and did not give him proper feedback on the R&D that I had done. During a conversation with one of the big shots on the next day my boss had realized that I haven’t done my work properly. As expected he was furious, he told me only one thing, “For a person with your experience, if you are not responsible enough with your work then I will never give you work”. I had realized what it takes to work with him. I have never repeated that mistake during my whole stay with that company.
Although I was initially terrified working with him, but I have realized that I liked to work with him. He told many times that, ”you always should think vertically about technology. He said to me depth and knowledge you have about computer systems is what matters not the technology because the technology keeps changing. He always advocated me that, “every individual should share the knowledge they have, then he/she will learn new things and that is growing up the value chain”. He gave freedom for expression and thought process. He was there with me all the time through phone or mail or in person whenever my team or I was working. I have learnt to respect my work.
I have learnt so many things from my boss, I have seen lot of my colleagues benefiting immensely from his experience, knowledge and wisdom and becoming better professionals. I am sure many will benefit in the future too. My boss was funny yet tough, caring yet demanding and a leader who always lead from the front. I think I am one of those lucky ones who was associated with him and benefited a lot from him.
I know some people who once were my colleagues might not agree with me but I don’t really care about what they think of him.
Thank you for everything Ramesh Bhashyam, I truly am honored and very proud to be associated with you once.
