Thank you Enterprise Commerce - `Home away from Home`

Hello,

Each one of us has been navigating the significant changes in our life since we are born.

One significant change happened to me back in 2008 when I joined my college (Army Institute of Technology, Pune) for my engineering course. Memories of day 1 are still fresh and one thing which I cherish the most is our hostel. As I stepped first time into the hostel, I read a one liner “Home away from Home” from the notice board. This one liner made a significant change in my perspective and outlook, this just not simply helped me in navigating but thriving my four years stay in the college campus.

As expected, the next significant event happened in 2012, when I joined Microsoft as a campus hire. This was a very big event not just for me but my full extended family, as I was one of the first in the family to do something apart from farming or joining armed forces.

Back then there was an awesome program MACH, as part of which campus hire gets to change teams every six month across the company in the initial two years. As part of MACH, I got an opportunity to work in four teams, four managers and three organizations across Microsoft India. And yes, this was the time where I got an opportunity to talk to our CEO back then Steve Ballmer and even create a bit of chaos on the floor by sending a genuine kudos to him as an appreciation for his energy and enthusiasm which I witnessed in real as part of MGX conference.

As I graduated from MACH in 2014, I had an opportunity to choose a role/team/organization. Back then the world used to be little different with different roles Dev, Test and SE in an engineering organization. Dev skills were something which I was passionate about, and testing was something which did not come naturally to me. Dev positions were hot as number of applicants were higher than the available positions. I was so childish that I even applied for Indian Army in parallel as a backup plan in case I do not get a dev role. I know it seems crazy to me as well when I reflect in time. Oh yes, some of you might be thinking why not consider any other company apart from Microsoft. This is a bigger story which I will leave for some other day. In one of my MACH rotations, I worked with Ordering team in Enterprise Commerce, and I loved my manager @Vittal Panduranga Rayasam, my mentor and overall experience in the team. Given the popularity of @Vittal Panduranga Rayasam, back then it was one of the hottest jobs. I did not have the courage to talk or apply for that job. Suddenly out of nowhere I crossed my mentor in galleries of Building 2 (yes office has its own magic) and we ended up talking about my plans post MACH. My literal answer to his question was `I have no plans yet`. He was surprised and that’s where he talked about Vittal’s team and how eager they will be to have me back in the team. And guess what I applied and got the opportunity.

This is how my friends I found my second `Home away from Home` in form of Enterprise Commerce in 2014.

I still can’t believe that it has already been 8+ years in my Enterprise Commerce family. Over these years officially I got an opportunity to work with primarily four major groups/teams (Ordering, EA Portal/Ibiza Billing, Microsoft Payments, Data API) and eight awesome coaches in form of my managers (Vittal Panduranga Rayasam, Prem Narayanan, Bhupesh Guptha Muthiyalu, Vaidyanathan Krishnan, Sivakumar Samudrala, Sowjanya Uriti, Vidhyasagar Alvarsamy, Shashank Madiraju), tons of virtual teams and the teammates with mind boggling superpowers.

Apart from my official coaches, Because of EC I was fortunate to connect, meet, listen, learn, influenced,?to some extent copied behaviors from amazing mentors and leaders like Amod Kumar Sharma, Asim Mitra, Chandan Gurjar, Degant Puri, Gaurav Singh, Hanumantha Rao Kurudi, Ivan Trindev, Madhavi Mallampati, Mani Kumar Nagavarapu, Mrudu Pallavi, Murali Krishna, Nadanasabapathy Ilamathy, Neha Wadhwa, Pandu Ranga Vadlamudi, Projit Mitra, Ram Mada, Ramoji Ryali, Samya Ghosh, Sandeep Dhankar, Sarma SSVP Kovvali, Seema Lal Gulabrani, Shraddha Patle, Shwetha Sunkara, Srinivasa Rao V, Sudhakar Reddy Kamazala Muni Venkata, Sudhindranath Byna, Sushma K, Vaidyanathan Kuppuswamy (VAIDYA), Varsha Rani Sharma, Vibha Valsan, Vikram Sinha and many more.

As I am looking back the memory lane, I don’t think I can do justice to the overwhelming emotions full of gratitude to my home.

I am thankful to each extraordinarily insightful and selfless leader, mentor, and teammates, you have no clue how that small/long conversation has contributed immensely to the person I am today personally and professionally.

Thank you so much !! It means a lot !!

I am super proud and will always cherish the work we have done, teams we have built, product we delivered and the live covalent bond/relationship we have created.

I wish everyone all the very best and I will always lookout and cheer for the great work and milestone my home achieves down the line.

On what’s next for me, I am moving to a team to explore my passion around open-source projects like https://dapr.io within Microsoft in IDC.

Stay connected, Thank you again!!

Surender