ZestyBiscuit
ZestyBiscuit

Hardwork and consistency pays off

TLDR;

Did B.Tech in ECE from a tier 3 college. In college, explored different avenues and finally found deep learning and computer vision to be the most interesting. Did lots of projects, research paper etc. However, being from a tier 3 college, making a career in this domain wasn’t easy. Graduated in 2020, joined a startup as an intern with a stipend of 35k per month. 6 months later, the internship didn’t convert, although I worked really hard and my manager liked my work. Joined another startup with a salary of 6.5LPA. Although I had better offers, I decided to go with this one ad they were providing WFH (it was peak covid time). A few months into this startup, I realised the founder had no goal, no vision, was given random vague projects, founders would pick up any project that their client would somehow talk about, assign it to me without doing any market research, and few months later scratch that. I realised, there was no future here, and for no reason, one of the founder kept micromanaging me (although the colleagues and seniors were great). And by that time, I also realised I was severely underpaid, as one of my close friend, who was a year junior to me was paid higher. I decided to leave that place, during a time of mass resignations in 2022 (the founders did try to retain me, but I was adamant as I didn’t see any vision and founder was too rigid to listen to anyone). I worked there for 1.3 years, at the same salary.

Later on in August 2022, I joined a series C funded startup, with a base pay of 14.5LPA, at nearly 2 YOE. While the hike was well above 120%, in some time I realised that this was the salary that they paid to IIT campus hires. Felt a little demotivated, Also, the culture here isn’t exactly good and sometimes gets quite toxic. However, I kept commited to my work, and come March 2023, I got a 10% appraisal, for which the VP personally had a conversation, I conveyed that I had higher expectations considering I joined at lower pay (1/n)

19mo ago
Talking product sense with Ridhi
9 min AI interview5 questions
Round 1 by Grapevine
ZestyBiscuit
ZestyBiscuit

The VP did agree to that, and my manager and VP had a few conversations around this topic from time to time. A week back, VP called me and congratulated me, saying that he decided to do a off cycle appraisal for me and gave me 26% appraisal, making my base pay 20LPA. I was on cloud 9. I didn’t arm twist my company, nor did I even ask for a higher pay, I was offered it right away.

Now many of you might say, dude whats the big deal. People with 2 YOE make 69LPA. Well, good for them. But I just wanted to write this post, To convey that don’t get disappointed when you see such CTC polls on grapevine. Everyone has their time. I’ve had many other failures, I keep trying to move to PM role(after working in startups, eventually gained interest), appeared for CAT(didn’t score that well), tried many things to come out of this tier 3 college status and make a career for myself. Just keep working hard, stay committed to your skills, good Karma, and success will surely follow you.

DizzyWaffle
DizzyWaffle

Super!

SillyJellybean
SillyJellybean
Tekion19mo

Why specifically 69 though 😂🌚

GroovyBoba
GroovyBoba

Bro..... That's not what TL;DR means

PerkyBiscuit
PerkyBiscuit

op is too happy, let's just let him have his day

DerpyPancake
DerpyPancake

@bro 💯💯 Bro

FuzzyNoodle
FuzzyNoodle

You're a champ 💪

ZestyDonut
ZestyDonut
Gif
DerpyPancake
DerpyPancake

Good for you, OP! So happy and proud of you!! ❤️❤️

JumpyMuffin
JumpyMuffin
Contlo19mo

So cool OP. You will go places. Congrats 🎉 Also, what role are you in?

ZestyBiscuit
ZestyBiscuit

I’m Machine Learning Engineer

SparklyPanda
SparklyPanda

I'm currently in a similar situation, probably even worse. I did my btech in a non-cs related subject from tier 3 college and started learning programming and computer vision from scratch after graduation.
I got into a remote internship at a startup and I worked there for 6 months for no stipend at all. After that I got into another startup as a cv engineer at 4.25LPA. Got an off cycle hike to 6LPA. And now I just completed a year and my salary got hiked to 7.7LPA.
It has been a long grind till now as I had no programming experience until I graduated and the grind still continues while I try to manage between work and cs courses that I take up to compensate for the lack of a cs degree.
But tbh even though the salary I get is not up to the market scale or like the salaries we could see here on Grapewine, I enjoy working here. People are friendly and appreciate what I do and I feel that's what matters. So, I guess it is best not to get intimidated by the salaries people make around you and do you best work where you enjoy it.

FluffyNarwhal
FluffyNarwhal
Meta19mo

Nice one dear

SqueakyCupcake
SqueakyCupcake

I don’t care good things are happening to you, instead it should have happened to me.

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