Sometimes Luck is bigger than hardwork

I studied from tier 3 college in tier 2 city. I got placed in one of those mass recruitment companies. I was an mechanical student, so the only interview question I was asked was if I can speak marathi or willing to learn it since the posting was going to be in Mumbai.

Usually I have heard that the joining comes late for such company but to my surprise the joining came 1 week after the 8th sem exam. I was put in the manual testing team but the work was boring but I kept doing it for the initial year. And on one fine day, my project lead asked me if I wanted to move to development. I said yes. Usually they would do an interview for that but for me that never happend as the dev team was short staffed and need people immediately. So here I was, learning to code and fixing small bugs which no one on the team wanted to fix but I liked that as it was lower risk issues. So even if I messed up it wasn't a big issue.

Stayed in this company for 3 years Starting package - 2.7 LPA After 3 years - 8 LPA

Company 2 interview process was fun because the person doing my tech round was leaving the company that day and I was the last candidate she was interviewing for that position and even though my interview wasn't that great she passed me because I think they wanted immediate replacement as she was the only one working on the team I was interviewed for. I would say I was lucky to be at the right place at the right time. I came to know all this later when I had joined the company.

This company was product based company and I was working on WPF application here. Work was good but since I was the only one there, it was kind meh because you learn from your peers as much as you learn from coding. I was thinking of moving to some other tech or company for good 2-3 months to discuss this with my manager. And one day my manager told me they are shutting down that application and I can chose android, iOS or backend to move. I chose android because my crush at that time was in that team.

Starting Package - 12 LPA from 8 LPA After 5 years - 23 LPA

After 5 years in company 2, I was promoted to Engineering manager but I didn't like the fact I wasn't supposed to code and managing people was way more tougher than I anticipated specially during appraisals and performance reviews. So I decided to find a new job. To my surprise, I got selected in the first company I interviewed. In my mind my plan was to use that offer to negotiate with other companies I was going to interview but sadly this was begining of covid and most companies backed off mid process so I was now left with only 1 offer at hand or to continue at company2. I decided to join the new company.

Company3 got acquired by a big FAANG level company after 1 year of my joining. The work was great, people were great and now my salary was also great thanks to the big comapny. I really didn't put any hardwork like grinding leetcode or geekfor geeks. And yet I am earning around 1 CR pa. So in ending I would say that luck plays far bigger factor than hardwork. Starting package - 32 LPA from 23 LPA Revised after acquistion - 45 + 8 LPA variable Current package - 72 + 16 LPA variable Apart from package I also have stocks of which vest quaterly.