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)