Sachin Vyas

“ Switch jobs every year? Red flag Stay underpaid for 5 years? Ideal employee “ Someone I know was recently rejected in the final HR round at an organisation. He had cleared all the technical interviews. Even the hiring manager gave a green signal. But the HR said something that stayed with him: “Your resume shows too many short stints… How do we know you won’t quit early again?” But here’s what didn’t show up on the resume This person wasn’t unstable. He was holding an entire family together. He lost his father in his mid-twenties. Became the only earning member overnight. Paid for two siblings’ education. Cleared a housing loan before 30. And silently let go of his own dreams , just to keep things running. He didn’t switch jobs out of restlessness. He switched because he had to. Because each switch brought: A little more salary to survive. A little more peace from toxic environments. A little more time to breathe. But none of that gets noticed All HR saw was: “Four companies in six years.” They didn’t see the 2 AM anxiety attacks. The skipped meals. The birthdays spent debugging code while praying the EMI wouldn’t bounce. The promotions declined because the cost was mental health. They didn’t see the human. Only the timeline. And here’s the bitter truth When he asked for a raise internally, he was offered a 5–10% retention hike. Six months later, the same organisation hired someone from the market at a 40% higher salary for the same role. So where did your “economics” go then? Where was your “loyalty matters” logic? You reward outsiders. Ignore the ones who stay. Then question the ones who leave. That’s not a red flag. That’s a mirror. Job switches aren’t instability. They are acts of survival. They are exits from places that drained dignity. They are the only way some people could protect their peace. They are the quiet decisions no one claps for , but everyone should. So here’s to the ones who left Who walked out of burnout. Who chose sanity over security. Who said no to being underpaid and overused. You are not a problem. You are the proof that staying silent isn’t the only option. Let’s stop calling them job hoppers. Let’s start asking what made them move. Let’s normalize career movement without judgment. Let’s start seeing the stories behind the timelines. Let’s stop filtering out the ones who left. And start fixing the reasons why they did. If this resonated with you, Follow account: Sachin Vyas , Please also feel free to connect me via connection requests !! You are the only motivation I have to keep sharing stories that rarely get spoken out loud. And if by any chance you’ve read this far , drop a like, so I know these conversations matter. And tell me in the comments: What are your thoughts on this? Do we judge job switching too quickly? Have we stopped seeing the human behind the resume? Let’s talk. Honestly. Openly. Without filters.

“CTC? ₹45 LPA. But respect? Still goes to the ₹50K government clerk.” A few months ago, I was at a family function. One relative ,with the usual polite smile ,asked what I do. I said I work in tech. Software engineering. He nodded, paused, and then said: “Accha… but are you preparing for any sarkari exam on the side?” I didn’t know whether to laugh… or explain Kafka stream processing to him. That wasn’t the first time. And definitely won’t be the last. You could be building high-scale systems for 10M+ users. Fixing critical bugs that stop payment failures. Running services used by real departments, public infra, or national platforms. But in Indian society? If your job doesn’t come with a pension, badge, or fixed chair , you’re still seen as “not settled.” The perception gap isn’t just about salary. It’s about lifestyle. Government job? Fixed timings. Zero escalation. Weekends off. Respect from relatives. Time for evening tea. Software engineer? Long hours. Late-night incidents. Slack never sleeps. Even Sundays feel like a buffer window for Monday bugs. And yet : You’re solving real-world problems. Shipping features that directly impact lakhs of users. Contributing to platforms like UPI, GST, or public services digitization. Still, you’re the one who gets told: “Private job hai. Kabhi bhi chali jaayegi.” “CTC is okay, but what about peace of mind?” “Sarkari naukri mein toh respect milta hai.” Because here, comfort > competence. Stability > skill. Perception > actual contribution. A ₹45 LPA engineer owning complex backend infra is seen as “unstable.” A ₹50K/month clerk forwarding files is “secure.” People don’t see what you build , so they don’t understand its value. They don’t see the midnight deployments. They don’t see the pager alerts. They don’t see what breaks when your system breaks. This post isn’t a rant. It’s just a reminder. You don’t need validation from society to know your worth. But that doesn’t mean the disrespect doesn’t sting. If you’ve ever been made to feel “less” because your work isn’t government certified , you’re not alone. We may not wear a badge. But we’re still building the backbone of modern India. If this post made you feel seen , give it a like. Drop a “read that again” in the comments. Repost it for someone in your circle who’s quietly living this life. Some truths deserve to be said and shared. And despite it all… the misunderstandings, the comparisons, the silence, I’m proud to be a software engineer. Not because it’s easy. But because what we build… actually matters

“From 3.5 LPA at TCS Ninja to Tech Lead at Cisco (60+ LPA) in just 6 years “ Here’s the story. I graduated from a Tier-2 government college. No brand tag. No referrals. No network. In 2019, I joined TCS Ninja at 3.5 LPA, a purely service-based environment. Relatives said, “At least you got a job.” That night I realized something else. I had to survive the cost of living and send money back home too. 3.5 LPA was not a milestone. It was responsibility. Year 0 to 1 (TCS. Purely Service-Based) - Days at office. Nights on DSA, recursion, trees, graphs. I failed more problems than I solved. Some nights I closed LeetCode in frustration. Then opened it again. Then came real backend work inside a service setup. Java, Ruby, OOPS in production. Normalization in real databases. Watching seniors split one massive table into many to fix performance issues. After one year of silent effort, I cleared the internal exam and moved to TCS Digital at 7 LPA. Year 1 to 3 (Preparing to Break Out of Services) - I stopped preparing randomly and started preparing seriously. DSA daily. System design every weekend. Failure analysis after every rejected interview. I started giving interviews seriously and cracked: Microsoft, Qualcomm, Paytm, WazirX, Talentica, Zoomcar. Some rejections shattered confidence. Some gave clarity. I chose Zoomcar for one reason: to move into a purely product-based engineering environment. Zoomcar Changed Everything (Year 3 to 5. Purely Product-Based) - Real microservices. Real traffic. Service crashes. Retry storms. Consumer lag. Queue backpressure. Partial outages. Hotfix rollbacks. Every line of code now had real business impact. I stopped asking, “Is this in my scope?” I started asking, “Is the system safe?” At 3.5 to 4 YOE, I got early promoted to Senior Software Engineer. Not by waiting. By owning systems. Cisco (Year 5 to 6.5. Product + Hardware + Real Networks) - Joined as SDE-3. This is where product engineering met real hardware and live enterprise networks. Enterprise software. Physical switches. Real traffic through real devices. Here I learned where monoliths still win, where microservices truly make sense, and how AI is reshaping real-world systems. I revisited advanced DSA through real systems. While working with networking topologies, I could see graph traversal inside real infrastructures. Topological sorting appeared in real configuration flows. From that point, Dijkstra, MST, and graph traversal became patterns running silently inside production systems. Within a year of hardwork - Promoted to Module and Tech Lead. If you relate to this or were like me in your early days, remember: Your college, salary, and connections don’t define your future. Daily effort does. Build skills quietly and let years of work create the noise that excuses never will. If you have doubts about careers, interviews, or job switching, drop a comment below. Stay tuned and don’t forget to follow: Sachin Vyas