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Anushka Chhikara (host): Hello, and welcome to WiZR Voices, an insightful podcast for learners and career makers. I'm your host, Anushka Chikara. And today we're diving into the world of IT and development with our guest, Monoji Banerjee.
Monojit Banerjee (guest): Hello
Anushka: Monojit has 23 years of experience across the IT and development sector in India, with companies such as JP Morgan, Deloitte, Amazon, and Razorpay under his belt.
Anushka: He has a history of engineering and leading teams in engineering products across financial services. His skills lie in IT strategy and enterprise architecture, and he's a strong proponent of the open source movement.
Anushka: In our conversation with him today, I'm sure you'll find a lot of insider insights into what it's like working in the constantly evolving field of IT and development in India. So let's just get started. Hi, Monujeet. Thanks a lot for joining us today.
Thanks for inviting me.
Anushka: So Monojit, we have an idea of your pretty impressive resume so far, but I want to do a throwback, back to your early days, right? So what did you study in college and what made you decide to get into IT and development?
So I'll be very honest that I started off as a very confused young man, and I was not very sure what I really wanted to do.
So studying pharmacy from a primarily engineering college, that itself was an experience, but I think I owe a lot to those four years of my life, you know, that I spent in ITBHU with
some very bright people, where I first got introduced to how, you know, ambitious people
really are about their career, and how, you know, what kind of a big thinking that people have about what do they really want to achieve in their life. I think that inspired me a lot on, you know, what are the possibilities, right?
Otherwise, I was probably thinking too small, you know. Now having spent those four years, I think I was again not very clear that what I'm going to do next.
So I wanted to try my hands out with, you know, a career in pharmaceutics. While I tried a small stint with GlaxoSmithKline for two years, I quickly realized that, you
know, it's actually something that I don't want to do, right? It doesn't befit the personality that I have, or the skills or the competencies that I bring to the table.
So within one year of that particular job, I again started thinking that what should I do next? Or how do I make an exit, right? And transition to something else.
Anushka: Yeah, I think it's, I'm sure for people who are around that age group as well, feeling very confused about where you want to go in life can feel so daunting, especially when you look at someone like you who has so much experience, right?
So I'm sure it's reassuring for listeners to hear this. So you know, you did say that it wasn't really fitting with you, you were surrounded by ambitious people, you felt that drive from within to shift to something else.
What was the exact turning point, if you can remember back then that made you finally take the step forward and shift to?
I think when you are in a particular job, right, I think there's a realization that
happens eventually, or very soon rather, that, you know, you are not giving your best, right? Or the job is not able to bring out what you really have to offer.
I think that is the feeling that I started to have more and more as I start spending more time in that particular job. And hence, I think I started thinking that how should I what should I do?
The, I mean, the days back then, right, are very different from, you know, the day that we live, the current times rather, right? So there was no internet. So the information was very limited.
You can only get recommendation and advice from your relatives or friends or people you know. And your source of information mostly is your newspaper or maybe the state sponsored Doordarshan, right?
That is that's all media that is there for you to really make a decision. So, so clearly, I think it was not unusual that many people around me were very confused about what they wanted to do.
But at the same time, there were a lot of people who are very razor focused on what they really want to achieve. For me, it was, you know, learning from my mistake that, you know, getting into this
particular career and then realizing that it is not working out was the realization. But the realization was not about what I really want to do.
The realization was about that what I'm doing currently is not right for me. And yeah, and then there were so many other turning points, right? I mean, that is just the beginning of it.
It does not really, you know, it's not that by doing a basic discovery of your competencies, you are sorted. I think life throws you various challenges at every step.
Anushka: I think you've painted such a great picture of your 20s, you know, going through the failures, the trials and tribulations of figuring out what it is that you were made for or built for. You said realizing at some point that you have more of an analytical
mindset, you like problem solving really helped you discover what you naturally align with in finding your career. I think other things I found interesting is you also mentioned that in your 20s, you were having a lot of fun with your friends, right? Which is an important balance.
But at the same time, you were surrounded by people who are very razor focused on their career or also a very driven that rubbed off on you a lot to feel like, OK, if I'm not happy with my career path, if I'm not really thriving here, I need to make a change.
And so I think that resonates a lot with people who are in their 20s, which I feel like a lot of podcast listeners are in that it can feel so isolating, like I'm the only one who hasn't discovered it.
But once you have that first turning point and you have the courage to take that step, that really sets the momentum for the rest of the career. So I think you perfectly describe that. You know, another thing you mentioned is back in the day, the way of accessing
information about different opportunities was very different now than it is with the Internet. And that got me thinking over the last few years in your career, are there any notable changes in the IT and development sector that you can share with us that
really stands to the forefront of your mind?
Monojit: Let's let me talk about how I have seen the industry evolve in the last 20 odd years or
so. I think when I started off, technology was seen as more of a support function. So you'll have big businesses and then they will start automating some of their
processes. And technology will become then that support function, which helps business to become a little more efficient than they are with their manual processes.
And I think that was also a time when most of the IT jobs were around outsourcing, which means that there are consulting services companies that are working on projects
for bigger clients and bigger businesses in mostly in US, UK, or in other developed
nations. And India having that cost advantage, a lot of that IT work will get shipped to India. So that was the landscape when I started off in the industry.
I'm talking about circa 2003. And then around 2009-2010, I started observing that technology is becoming now more of an enabler for the business.
From being a support function, it is slowly transitioning into an enabler function, where you are now sitting with your business counterparts and you are talking about the long
term tech strategy, you're talking about the business expansion, you're talking about what are the various projects that the business wants to undertake and how can technology really enable those projects.
And this was also the transition time when the IT sector in India was, the landscape
was changing from the IT sector being primarily IT services, consulting driven, to also
a lot more bigger banks and bigger businesses, bigger enterprises setting up their captive centers in India.
So these captive centers will be like a secondary or a tertiary site for the primary site for these enterprises. And primarily I have seen financial services and then FMCG also.
So these big enterprises will set up their captive centers in India. So they don't have to really rely on a third party services company. They keep the talent in house, the tech talent in house.
They are able to nurture that talent. They are able to build skills and competency in house. And then they are also, you know, they have formed this talent pool.
Plus they are also enjoying the cost arbitrage, right, because they are paying salaries in Indian rupees, right, which is actually serving the business abroad, right, where the
value of such a service is, you know, much more expensive than what you pay in India. So that was that phase of, you know, captive centers, captive centers, services companies. I mean, none of them have, they are not going away.
They are here to stay. They are doing pretty good business even today. Then 2000, around 2000, I would say some of the early startups were like 2010, 2012 when we started seeing a lot of success.
But around 2015, we really saw this big explosion, right, of, you know, the startup culture where people were getting into, you know, setting up their own businesses, right.
And they were, that's where you see that technology from a support function to an enabler to now taking the driving seat, right, the technology driven businesses, right.
You see all these new edge startups where people are setting up some e-commerce websites or they have a SaaS product, right, and then they are able to quickly scale, they are able to get funding, they turn into unicorns, right.
Most of these companies you will see is that they are, their driving force is technology, right. So now technology has suddenly taken the center stage, right, for companies like
this. And sometimes these companies are also called product oriented or product companies because they are not really providing services, right, they are rather working on a
product that can then be sold to customers, right. So that was the next phase in the evolution, according to me, that from being service oriented, you become product oriented, right.
So the company started focusing on product and then building the product, then scaling and growing that product that became the primary strategy for growth, right.
So, and that particular phase is when you actually see a lot of reverse brain drain also happening. From there, now you see people no longer aspiring for that, right.
They would rather do something, create value in India, right, because they have seen, they have, they have been so many role models in this area where people have really scaled
from absolute zero to a large unicorn, right, and have created so much wealth as well as created a very good personal branding, right. We have so many examples.
So I think that has become very aspirational for the Indian tech employee to look forward to. So that's why you see a lot of tech talent now, you know, not
really thinking about going abroad and and trying to, you know, settle down or trying to get a job with one of the giants, but rather be in India
and join one of the startups, one of the product companies that resonates with your idea of, you know, how technology should shape up or what kind of product really makes sense or
what kind of disruption you think should be introduced in the Indian market, right. And yeah, I think that is right now the flavor of the current times, right.
Anushka: Yeah. And it seems that these last 7 to 10 years with the startup scene is what you seem to really enjoy working in as well, right, with high level of ownership, the need specific
to Indian society and just seeing what kind of unique products that we can build, you know, natively within ourselves. So, you know, on the more human side, right, what is the culture like in working in this kind of space?
Maybe you can tell us on a high level and also on a day to day basis. Sure.
Monojit: So here also, I think I would like to talk about my journey, right, and how I've seen the culture also evolve.
And I also feel that the culture, the engineering culture or the tech culture of an organization is a reflection of, you know, the values of an organization also, right.
So, so again, when I started off, the traditional culture was command and control, right, where you are basically looking up to your superiors to
give you instructions on what needs to be done. So that was the role of a manager, right. So it was a very manager driven hierarchical organizations, right, when I started my
career. You'll have manager, you'll have manager of manager, right, and the work will come from top and it will cascade down. And it's very deterministic, like the manager is determining that how the work should be
executed, what is the right way to do it. And as as they're directs, you are pretty much executing the vision of your manager,
right. There's no debate, right, there are no counter arguments on, you know, about are
there any alternate approaches possible to execute the same piece of work. So it's very command and control. There's a command and then there's an execution. So that was the model when I started my career, right.
Then I think with the advent of agile, right, with the advent of newer, you know, development methodologies and people opening up about, you know, empowering their teams
and their team members, I think that shift I started seeing in about after 2010-ish, right, where you see that organization shifting from a command and control to more of a servant
leadership kind of a model where the manager is not really supposed to issue instructions.
The manager is there to be the guide, the coach, the mentor, this support system for the team, right. The execution, not only the execution, but the planning as well, the strategizing, the
planning, everything needs to be taken care by the team. The team owns, you know, the goals and the objectives that needs to be achieved and accomplished by the tech function.
The manager is someone who has great amount of experience and who also has, you know, the right kind of relationships within the organizations and the know-how of how to navigate
the organization so that they can help their team when their team requires a certain level of, you know, guidance or if the team is blocked and they need to be unblocked.
So that servant leadership model, right, where the manager becomes your support system and not someone who is telling you how to do your job.
So what really happens is that, you know, as a tech employee, you have shifted from working in a solution domain where the solution actually comes from your manager to now
moving to a problem domain where the organization gives you a set of problems and you need to figure out the solution. So then how it helped really is that first of all, a lot more tech employees started
feeling more challenged. Right. Earlier, if you tell someone that, hey, go and write this piece of code. Right. I think it used to get a little boring and monotonous for a lot of tech employees
who were looking for, you know, a little bit more challenging piece of work. But the moment they started dealing with business problems that, you know, we need to
solve this business problem or we need to make this process efficient, then I think they had to really brainstorm. They had to debate. They had to, you know, dive deep into the problem statement,
understand the business process, gain some expertise of the actual business. Right. And then, you know, propose a solution and that solution also then needs to be
agreed. Right. It needs to come organically from the team. So I think that that shift of culture has been, I think, a boon for a lot of people who
are really aspiring to do, you know, add a lot of value to the organization where they where they, you know, see themselves as not someone who just, you know, is writing
certain lines of code in a day, but rather they started seeing themselves as people who are actually solving business problems. Right. Because now they're dealing directly with the problems instead of someone, you
know, giving them a solution and asking them to really implement the solution.
Anushka: Yeah. So taking a bit of a side angle to the career space itself. Right. I think when we think of IT and development and cities in India, the first thing that comes to mind is Bangalore.
But other than that, and of course, including that as well, what are some interesting cities and geographies for people who are starting their career in IT and development and want to grow their career as well in the space? So Bengaluru definitely tops the list.
Monojit: I think when I started my career, there was, you know, saying that if you throw a stone in Bengaluru, there is a 50 percent chance that it will hit a Java developer. Right. So that was the vibe in that city.
Even today, I think Bengaluru is unbeatable when it comes to tech. You can just see the tech, the startup ecosystem that thrives in Bengaluru.
You go to a pub, you go to a coffee shop and you all you hear is people talking about tech. Right. So Bengaluru is the the Woodstock, right. Of of tech and unbeatable so far.
But then we have also seen a lot of action in cities like Hyderabad. Right. Hyderabad, I think, is a great place to start your tech career or to even establish
your tech career because a lot of good companies, a lot of great work happening in Hyderabad. Right. Big companies have have set up their shops in Hyderabad.
Plus, as a city also, it's a relatively, you know, the especially if you talk about the the the tech parks in Hyderabad, it really appears to be, you know, it has the right
ecosystem for someone to have, for someone to come in from a different state and settle down, you know, has the right kind of support system.
Then Gurugram, right, is another great location for for tech employees to really start their careers. Great companies, great facilities for, again, someone to live on, live
on rent. Right. Good infrastructure. And then you also have this, I mean, Mumbai has been, you know, mostly in the financial
services side, you will see companies like captive centers for large banks in Mumbai. Right. Then you have Pune, where you'll see a lot of services companies as well as some captive centers.
Right. And then then you have this, the, you know, the tier three cities like, you know,
Jaipur, Indore, you know, these also coming up, Bhubaneswar, right. So, so, yeah, this is it all.
I think it all boils down to, you know, that what kind of opportunity that I think you cannot really choose a city in the end. Right. I think the city chooses you, honestly. Right. That has happened to me also.
It has happened to people and people have decided after coming to a particular city to move to a different city because, you know, they had a certain preference for a particular
company. So I think it's it is while there can be good cities and bad cities, that is your personal preference. But people have made career in every kind of cities in tech.
Right. So it all depends upon which company and which particular role really works out for you.
Anushka: So in a post pandemic world, are there a lot of remote opportunities for people who are growing their career in this space?
Monojit: Sure. I think post pandemic, I have seen companies experimenting with various models. There are companies that have started calling employees back to office, like completely
back to office all five days in office, right, working from office. And because they felt that they were losing out on collaboration, they were losing out on
the valuable face time, which they feel is very important, you know, especially when you are working, when you when your when your role requires you to collaborate heavily with
other functions. And then I have also seen companies that are very comfortable with a
hybrid arrangement where they are OK with with certain roles coming to office. Right. That to not five days, maybe three days in a week.
Right. And they are OK with some of the roles to be fully remote. Like these roles can actually work out of, you know, Himachal Pradesh, Goa. Right. People have been doing that.
But then there are certain roles like a product role maybe, right, that needs to really talk very frequently with business counterparts. They want those product roles to be, you know, coming to office maybe three to four times
in a week. So, that hybrid arrangement is also working fine for a lot of organizations. I think it is a win win situation for, you know, for the employees as well as the organization where if a role can be actually done remotely.
Right. I think what what is really going to happen going forward is that there will be roles that will be identified as remote roles. Right. For example, let's say a designer role.
Right. Just picking up a random example, a designer role. It can be categorized as a completely remote role. Right. They may be they need to travel to office once in a quarter.
Right. Or a developer role. Right. That is working on a long term project where there's enough enough clarity and
there's a roadmap for the developer to really have their line of sight and book of work sorted for next one month or so. So, these kind of roles can also maybe only need to travel once in a quarter where they,
you know, get to where they meet the entire team, you know, the entire team brainstorms and tries to understand the long term roadmap. Then they go back to their remote locations and start executing.
But then there always be roles which would, you know, which cannot be really executed remotely. Right. There will be roles. Right. You cannot eliminate those roles or cannot make those roles completely remote.
So, I think that is how the that is how the industry is going to shape up. I think, according to me, where you will see that there will be certain set of roles which
the organizations will continue to, you know, have as remote roles. But then the organizations will also insist on certain roles to be in office more and more.
Anushka: So, there seems to be a pretty healthy future for a hybrid slash remote working space in this career as well. Right. And along that line, since people have more ownership over their time or also a
lot of free time, they're looking to reskill and upskill. And in a career space like IT and development, that's pretty crucial in growing your career. So, can you suggest, based on your experience, what are some areas of reskilling
and upskilling that people in this space have to focus on if they want to grow their career?
Monojit: So, I think in tech world, nothing is permanent. I think if you need to constantly be on top of, you know, how the landscape is changing
for now. For example, today, if you talk about today, what I see is that a lot of development is being done in Node.js and Python. And then you also have this newer languages like Golang that a lot of companies are
working on. Now, these are while Node.js is JavaScript based, right, I mean, most of these languages are very new, right, to people who have been working in this industry for a long time.
These are these were not the predominant programming languages when I started off. Right. But now the amount of development that happens in these languages, I think it is
important for every technologist to have to reskill or upskill themselves so that they are also aware of these technologies. Right. Because a lot of tool set, a lot of scripting support can only be done if you
are aware of these technologies. Right. So, so I think the number one important thing that you can really do in tech, you
know, if you really want to advance your career is to constantly learn, is to constantly upskill, you know. So I think the importance of reskilling and upskilling cannot be undermined for someone who is aspiring to build a career in tech.
I also want to talk about the, you know, the concept of T-shaped developer. Actually, T-shape can apply to, you know, any any function or any role.
But the the idea of becoming T-shaped is only possible through reskilling, upskilling and cross-skilling. Right. So basically, the idea is that you have a depth. Right. So it's like the letter T.
You have a depth, which means that let's say I'm a Java developer. My depth is Java, which means that I have subject matter expertise of Java.
Right. And I have, I understand the, you know, the details about, you know, my core skills, which is Java. But I also have a breadth.
The breadth can be, for example, let's say I'm working in a product company that is trying to build a CRM system. So my breadth can also be something like I understand the sales processes.
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Right. My breadth can also be another technology or a tool, which, for example, can be a database. So my project, I work with a MySQL database or a Postgre database. So that can be my breadth.
Right. Where I have working knowledge, right, which can be superficial. Right. But it's functional. Right. I'm able to get my way through.
Right. It can be a certain business or a softer side, softer skill that really requires, that is required in my role for me to be successful.
Right. So, so I think for you, for someone to be successful, this depth is definitely this core expertise is the most important.
But if you don't have this, the breadth, you know, across the spectrum of skills that you must have, I think it will be impossible for you to really succeed in your role.
So, so while you should continue to scale yourself, right, and become a better expert in your, in the, in the depth, in your core expertise, you should also make sure that you
continue to acquire the breadth that are really important for your, you know, for your role to be successful. Yeah.
Anushka: So while you've shared a lot with us on how to grow your career, transition your
career, I want to ask you a question on the other side of it. Right. So where have you typically seen people's careers falter in IT and development,
whether it's common mistakes that you've seen around you or also personally experienced in your career path?
Monojit: Yeah. So one of the reason is that you don't belong to tech, but you are here for the
money, right, which is you're trying to be an imposter. You think that you'll be able to get your, you'll be able to hide your deficiencies or
your lack of interest or your lack of competency in the basics that are really needed for a person to be successful in tech, but eventually the, with time, I think the reality will
catch up. So this is one of the reasons. The second reason is where, you know, you are, you have not understood what the organization really needs.
The organization needs X from you and your team, but you continue to focus on Y, right?
So there's a serious misalignment of expectations between what the company expects from you and versus what you deliver.
I think that's where you are working hard, but you always have the disconnect that why am I not getting rewarded? Because you are working hard, but you are moving in a direction that is not helpful to the
organization. So this is the other reason why, where you see, you know, careers not really shaping up the way people expect them to be.
Anushka: So amidst all the chaos and competition that definitely exists in the tech world, right, what keeps you personally inspired and what are some ways that you keep the teams that you lead inspired as well in their careers?
Monojit: The major inspiration for a tech employee is to see their systems live in production. I think that is the most fulfilling and the satisfying experience when you see the code
that you have written is now actually being used by the business, right, to derive some
value out of it. There, I have been part of projects where we have worked long hours, we
have worked six months to nine months, you know, working endlessly, working weekends, and then the project has not seen the light of the day.
I have been part of and I know that it is heartbreaking, right, because you work really passionately for a certain cause, for a certain project, and then seeing that that particular project was of no value to the organization, I think it is heartbreaking.
I think it is very important for the leaders to be cognizant of what their teams are working on, right, and to make sure that whatever the teams are working on is actually useful to the
organization and will actually go to production one day. The other big inspiration that I derive from is that how the tech team is able to make a
positive change in how the organization really operates, right. So, it is a very slow and gradual process, right, it does not happen overnight.
But if you can just, if you, when you are able to, you know, see the difference that the tech organization has made in the last one year or two year or three year or even five years,
right, when you compare from what the state of the organization was five years back versus what it is today, and you see the contribution of tech, right, that also, I think, gives you
immense satisfaction that, you know, your contributions and the value that you have brought to the organization, right, because of which the organization has been able to come to
this particular stage, you know, that, that definitely inspires me a lot for the next set of
five years or 10 years, right, that what are the possibilities that of me, then, or what are the possibilities of the tech function taking the organization from the current stage to a completely different stage.
Anushka: Awesome. So, we're pretty much wrapping up with our episode now. And I just wanted to do a lightning round of sorts where I quickfire three questions at you, right. The first one is if you
could travel back in time and give one piece of advice to your younger self who was just starting out their career, what would that advice be?
Monojit: Write more code, go deep into technology, learn as much as you can, no need to rush into becoming a people manager.
Anushka: My next question, which you have touched upon in quite a lot of detail as well, but I just want to ask it again is, what is one mistake that people should avoid in this career space?
Monojit: Is to underestimate the knowledge or the learnings that you can get from younger team
members, right? I have, there are occasions when I have been surprised by the amount of learnings that I've got from an intern who has just joined the organization.
Anushka: Yeah. And in the spirit of being a constant learner, what's one book or video or piece of media that you would personally recommend?
I'm not much of a reader, honestly. I listen a lot, definitely. I listen to podcasts. But I would like to talk about this book, which has been a blessing for me. And I'm sure many from my
generation, which is Let Us See by Yashwant Kanatkar. I think the way it simplifies the C programming language and makes it, you know, palatable and
easy to consume for someone who has zero background in programming. It has helped me a lot. It has, I'm sure it has helped a lot of people from my generation to become good programmers.
I would definitely recommend people to find a copy if they can.
Anushka: Well, you know, we're at the end of our episode now. And I just want to thank you again so much
for giving us time from your busy schedule to actually share so many insider insights that people wouldn't have access to and from conversations with people like you. We really appreciate you coming in and sharing your time with us.
Thanks a lot for inviting me. And thank you for tuning into this episode of Wiser Voices. We'll catch you in the next episode with a new career space so you can grow wiser every day.
This podcast is a production of WiZR. I'm your host, Anushka Chhikara. Achyutanand Dwivedi is the head of audio and video production and our executive producer is Loveleen Sehrawat. For more information on how you can grow your career with Wiser, visit wiser.in. The link is in the show notes. And thank you for listening. We'll catch you in the next episode.
