From 5 years of career gap due to UPSC CSE preparation to Associate Vice President of Wells Fargo - Adithya's journey of transition from preparation cycle to a career in tech

Like many, including me, Adithya during final year of graduation was filled with aspirations to do high impact work. He wanted to work among people, be part of change in society, and work across different sections of society. And like many others, he decided that being an IAS officer would be the best career to work towards creating social impact.

In the year 2012, he graduated in Computer Science Engineering from BNMIT, Bangalore. Though he had a good offer from Flipkart, he chose to join Evolving Systems, a lesser known company, with much less compensation, only because it was closer to his home and hence he thought he can cut down time on travel and give more time for UPSC CSE preparation. Also, he thought Evolving Systems would require less efforts in terms of work as compared to Flipkart thereby allowing him to concentrate on UPSC CSE.

"I was always passionate about coding and hence had chosen Computer Science Engineering in grad. However, by the time I graduated, I was filled with notions of working for the country, and in my idealism, I did not have a good understanding of what are all the different ways in which an individual can contribute to society. Being an IAS officer seemed to be the most direct way to work for the betterment of society. Despite being good in my field, liking to code and having good offer at hand, I optimized my life for UPSC preparation"

After working for less than a year, in January 2013, he decided to quit his job and delve into UPSC CSE preparation full time. He went to Delhi, the mecca of CSE preps, and joined Sri Ram IAS coaching there. In 2014, in first attempt, he cleared prelims but failed to make it through in mains. As luck would have it, he had failed in the mandatory regional language paper. He stayed back in Delhi, prepared harder, taking no chance in mandatory papers as well and sailed through mains in his second attempt in 2015 and made it to the interview. He missed the cut off for interview by 10 marks. He then came back to Bangalore.

"By now, sunk cost had set in. After having missed interview call by whiskers, I felt I was almost there, and it was just a matter of some more effort and persistence. I was in a toxic frame of mind and could not think of anything other than UPSC. Going on social media would be depressing, seeing my batchmates abroad, doing well in life, and even those who were in India had a good life, were working in great companies, and had surged ahead in their careers, while I was in the same place I was when I graduated. My friends in the US were buying Benz, Mercedes and what not, and here I was, even having to take money for a banana from my mom. So, I totally stopped all social interactions and focussed single mindedly on preparation. I moved to Vijayanagar in Bangalore, which is like ORN of Delhi, and took help from Mr. Vinay of Insights IAS, who was a good friend of mine. Somehow clearing this exam seemed to be the single way of proving my worth, of getting the confirmation that all the time I put in for preparation all these years were worth it."

Adithya, did all that was possible, and left no stone unturned in terms of preparing for the 2016 attempt. Once again he cleared prelims, and like a sage in penance, prepared for mains. However, he failed to clear mains. Though he restarted preparation for the next attempt, he realised then he was in a very bad frame of mind, and was under depression. He made a conscious decision to focus on his mental health, and started to think beyond UPSC. The itch to code was still alive in him, he thought of exploring the possibility to go back and work in tech. But making that decision was not easy and meanwhile he gave the 2017 prelims and cleared it. However, he took a strong, in fact very bold decision, to not write mains. He was not able to prepare, and realized the whole preparation cycle had caused him depression and nothing was worth risking his mental health.

"When I wrote the 2017 prelims itself, I had already started thinking outside of UPSC. I had started focusing on my health in general and mental well-being in particular. I even sought professional help to come out of my depression, but it was not very useful. I tried to not stress myself about preparation and started preparing for tech interviews. I took out my old books and got back to revisiting algorithms, data structures and databases. Though I was in a very bad state of mind, I had a slight hope that coding was something I had always enjoyed and was good at. I had even went to the final stages of ACM ICPC during my college days, and I remembered these achievements to gain confidence. UPSC was not working out for me, and I took the hard decision to not write 2017 mains"

Adithya started applying to companies on job portals, but 95% of them never called him for an interview. He even took help from his friends in the IT sector for referrals, but this also led to dead ends. After great difficulty, a friend working in VMware set him up for an interview there. He did quite well in the interview but the hiring manager was skeptical to take him on due to the big 5 year gap looming on his resume. The hiring manager was skeptical whether he would be able to work at the pace required for a private enterprise given that he was eyeing a government job all these years and did not understand the kind of efforts that goes into preparing for the civil services. He did not get that job.

"I do not blame the companies or the recruiters. It was of course better for them to hire a fresher who was more in touch with the basics, than hire me who was 28, and hardly had any experience, and more or less was a fresher in terms of skills. They did not want to place their bets on me. I hardly got a few interview opportunities, as most companies would reject me at initial resume screening itself. In those interviews, I was honest about my gap years and talked about UPSC preparation, and said that I had stopped preparing and wanted to get back to tech. But they were not ready to take a chance. The guy who had bagged an offer from Flipkart before graduating, was now toxic to even tier-2/3 companies."

Though this was extremely disheartening, Adithya did not give up. He continued brushing up his tech interview skills, and kept applying everywhere. He was now ready for any coding job and had no restrictions on the company or pay scale. Finally, he got an opportunity to intern at a small company called Tavant for a very meagre stipend. He took it up without second thoughts.

"At that point, I needed something, anything to boost my self-worth. Even the less salary, when it got credited to my bank account, helped gain this self-worth. I started working hard. I was anyway used to studying for 12-13 hours for UPSC, I spent the same time upskilling myself and working hard in my internship and secured a job offer there. I was competing with folks younger to me by 4-5 years at least. While this was bad in many ways, it helped me. They were in their early 20s and were easily influenced by distractions - parties, friends, movies etc. But I had single minded intent to do better at my work and I focussed on that. I was put on a high growth career trajectory in the company and my salary tripled within 2 years. I was also enjoying the work immensely, and it provided intellectual satisfaction and the ability to create things with code, something which I always had loved even from high school days."

After proving his mettle in Tavant, Adithya got an offer from SAP labs and moved there and worked there for 1.5 years. Just this month, he interviewed and got the offer to join Wells Fargo as Associate Vice President. At the time he was deciding to quit UPSC CSE preparation, it always bothered him how he had to start from scratch, while his peers were 5 years ahead of him in their careers, he always felt the pain of how he would ever bounce back. But now, in hardly 4 years, by starting from rock bottom, he has now more than attained parity with many who started a career in tech 10 years back. He is now financially well off, doing work he loves, and at the same time developing other interests and pursuing his hobbies.

"Mine is not any typical story of success, and many might not even consider me successful, as I am only working in an IT job like many others. But, I am happy, and moved on in my professional as well as personal life. I found my life partner and I am getting married in a couple of months. We have plans to move to Germany for a couple of years and work from there. Being in the private sector, in the tech domain, has given me this freedom to be location agnostic, especially due to Covid. I am also in a good position financially, which also provides the ability to pursue some costly but interesting hobbies. My colleagues are also driven, there is a healthy competition, and they motivate me to be a better version of myself. They have a life outside of work, some fascinating hobbies/interests which they are passionate about and share with others. While in my early 20s, I was only thinking of working for society, without having a clear idea why or how, now I realize all these things - like a good meritocratic work environment, peers I can look up to, pursuing interests outside of work, good financial independence, spending time with family is all very important to me and I am thankful I did not get into the Civil Service, as a civil service job might not have given me these things. I am in close contact with some of my friends who have cleared the UPSC CSE, and are in wonderful positions now, but they have their own issues and are not exactly happy, and I wouldn't for a moment want their lives, I am pleased with the life I have. So, probably it all worked out for the best."

The perception of success is very individualistic. But more often than not, even if we do not realize it explicitly, we tend to go with the societal perception of success, either wanting fancy degrees or designations or some kind of social approval. However, in reality, it takes a bit of exploration to know what we really want to do, and all things that are possible as well as practical. Preparing for UPSC is one such exploratory process. However, the issue is, it has a lot of sunk cost, and getting out from failing in UPSC to looking towards other careers is hard given the time and psychological commitment given for the exam. It is not even an indicative exploratory process, as preparing for the exam doesn't give one any correct exposure on the actual nature of IAS or civil service job, whatever the show TVF Aspirants may say! Hence, it is important to try to know oneself, take calculated risks even if one aspires to be a civil servant.

"Me and one friend of mine from preparation days, who is now working in NABARD, sometimes meet nowadays (prior to covid, of course) in Vijaynagar to have tea. Around us, we see so many aspirants, with books/notes in hand and getting irritated if tea is even a minute late. Every minute seems precious for them, and a minute lost would hamper their preparation and dream. I want to tell them to relax, let the preparation not consume your entire life, which will lead to burn out despite the outcome of the exam. I had also thought, if I don't clear in two attempts, I will quit and go to the US for MS. But, it didn't happen, restricting oneself is not easy, once you get invested in the exam and it seems like you are almost there."

"So my one small advice would be, work for a while before you plunge into full time preparation, probably give an attempt while working, see if it is something you can manage. It's okay if an attempt is spent this way, UPSC gives you 6, and really shouldn't be writing all those. Get to know the exam, and see what works for you, and then go fully into the preparation if that's something you want to do after getting to know yourself, and the opportunity costs. Also, if you don't make it, don't be hard on yourself, but stop feeling sorry for yourself, and take action. I started from rock bottom when I took up the internship with Tavant. But now, I am joining Wells Fargo as Associate VP and I have more than caught up with my peers. The beginning might be hard, but with time, with effort, especially with the kind of efforts we put for UPSC, we can do well elsewhere, where it is not an 'all or none' scenario."

You can connect with Adithya on Linkedin. You can also drop a mail to hello.beyondthedream@gmail.com if you have specific questions for Adithya regarding how to get back to a career in tech after gap years.

If you are preparing for the UPSC exam or trying to transition out from UPSC preparation, check out : beyondthedream.in