Team players can achieve positive results, says Sankalp Agarwal, Co-founder of TravelTriangle

What I did in the first 100 days at work in touch with most of them.

FRESH OUT OF IIT-Kharagpur, I was really excited about joining Adobe. What intrigued me most was my first step into the big corporate world. I started off by meeting a lot of people and made over 100 friends in the first 100 days. With their help, I tried to understand the corporate structure and all about KRAs (key result areas) and KPIs (key performance indicators). I also interacted a lot with product managers & the UI/UX team. This helped me better understand my role and what I was developing.

The worst mistake I made

I WOULDN’T CALL it a mistake, but it was something I was unaware of as I was new in the job. As a coder I had to correct segmentation faults thrown by the system. I had my own way of treating them and it took me more time as I did not know about the ‘debugger’. Once I started using it, it helped me do my job in one-tenth the time.

The best leadership lessons I learnt

MY MANAGER TAUGHT me to focus only on my job at work, which I think helped me deliver faster and I was able to deliver better and more scalable solutions to complex business problems. The other thing he taught me was to be a team player. And to be honest, I have learnt that when you are a part of a cohesive team, you are able to do much more and deliver positive results.

My biggest innovation

WHEN I JOINED Adobe, I realised that we were putting too much effort into rewriting some codes for various operating systems. So I created a mini-compiler which automated the task at the initial level itself.

How I had fun at work

I PARTICIPATED IN the World’s Largest Jigsaw Puzzles. Along with 17 Adobe employees, we solved the 24,000-piece puzzle & got an entry in the Limca Book of Records. We worked non-stop for 108 hrs & 43 min.

The best friend I made on the job

I MADE A LOT of friends at Adobe, especially in the first few days itself. We joined as part of a huge fresher group of 30-odd trainees, and I am still What I did in the first 100 days at work in touch with most of them.

How I managed my work-life balance

SINCE I WAS not married then, I used to stay at office till odd hours, learning coding techniques. When I was not doing this, I was at the gym.



(As told to Brinda Dasgupta)