16 September 2019: the day I joined Lenskart. I was excited to start a new journey, and because of what I had read about the company on AmbitionBox, Glassdoor and Linkedin. While taking the decision to join, it was important for me to ensure that most of the aspects about the organization were on point: the team, the culture, and most importantly, the Codebase (which is critical for a Developer).
I started working on my first task within a couple of days of joining, and I was quite glad to know we were following MVVM (one of the most used design patterns) and UI was built programmatically. Moreover, the standards set by the team were quite high and truly a must.
One of the aspects that I felt added the most value was the collaboration: communication and cadence among the teams were regular and in-depth, weekly team meetings were held to discuss new technology, followed by design discussions to understand and improve the ways of implementing new features.
Overall, working on new technology to improve the performance of the app was always a focus. I believe this focus has the biggest potential in helping develop the team members to be better and quality coders.
Within six months, I was already performing well and was given a POD to handle. By this time, I also had a lot more freedom to work on end-to-end features and really exciting ones like revamping the entire Cart Screen, adding Mosaic Widgets, enhancing PDP/PLP experiences etc.
And that is what Lenskart is all about: they believe in you and enable you to deliver some exciting cool features.
Our native AR experience, for instance, is even appreciated by Apple.
The best part is — we got together and celebrated these milestones. We also celebrated new joinees and welcomed them by taking them out to nearby restaurants/clubs, including Managers and Team Leads joining in. Every Friday, we also used to go to a college ground to play Cricket; Foosball and TT were part of our daily routine in the office. Honestly for me, it never felt like joining a new company!
About one and a half years had passed by when I started toying with the idea of exploring a new career path. I started considering other roles and organizations, and eventually moved out of Lenskart. Within six months though, I started feeling like I was missing something.
I had also reflected long about the work environment I would thrive in the most, and I felt my personal preferences and values were more suited for an organization with strong Startup Energy. And only one name would come to mind, so I considered joining Lenskart back.
It was a challenging time — I didn’t know if this was possible or what I would say. I took a chance and spoke with the leadership — and they were more than happy to welcome me back.
I rejoined Lenskart after five months of moving out and by the way, it wasn’t simply a ‘return statement’! I have more responsibility now, I’m managing iOS releases and also training interns under me. I’m elated to be back :)
