Week notes - March - the last of it
Drive to Chennai, haircut, work situation
The last week was quite intense with quite a few things happening.
On Monday I had a 1:1 with the CEO, and it was sour (to put it plainly).
I’m a little hesitant to write in detail about the work situation, mostly because I’m worried about how these things are perceived. I’ll give it an honest shot though.
Most of the team has been on the brink of a burnout, there’s very little clarity on where business and product is headed and all-in-all everything has been quite chaotic. I think over the last few months I’ve become somewhat of a ‘punching bag’ for the CEO + ‘cheerleader’ for the rest of the team (to whoever it mattered at least).
After my product sense course I was really pumped to bring in some semblance of clarity into business + product ops. So I proposed a few initiatives to the CEO. However they were shot down without any fair justification and I was asked to work on something else. This was a product research project. I generally like research work, so I was excited about taking this up too. I went back after a couple of days with findings + a proposal for next steps.
My proposal was shot down without reason, however they were accepted immediately after the marketing consultant echoed my thoughts. I liked the validation of being right, but the lack of trust was evident. I also felt quite demotivated to do anything. It felt pointless.
The following Monday was the 1:1, during which the CEO said some pretty mean things to me. They were so mean that I shut my computer down immediately after the call and sat for a good few hours wondering if I was just reading too much into it. I could not understand how there was any place for personal attacks in a professional setting.
It hit me later that night that not only was it mean, but it was also insulting. There was no real feedback or specific criticism that I could use. After a brief discussion with Abhinay I decided that I’ve had enough and that I couldn’t let myself be bogged down by this anymore. I was losing my confidence, self respect, and had to stand up for myself. So I set up a follow up meeting, informed him that I was resigning my role.
This was the highlight of my week. After much thought I decided that I was going to work on Genledger (with Arvind) for the next couple of months, see where that takes us before I decide to look for another job. We’re quite excited about me spending more time on Genledger. We are still in the problem space exploration + pre MVP, and are feeling quite excited to start reaching out to people for interviews. I’ll share more over the next couple of weeks. I’m still on my notice period at my current org, so there’s still a lot to wrap up there. A lot of KT stuff.
The only way to get closure on this whole week was to give myself a haircut. I cut it shoooort this time. I love it. I love cutting my hair and I’m quite proud of how far I’ve come (skill-wise). Next week I’ll top up the colour because why nooooot. This is my tattoo-equivalent thing hehe.
The only other highlight of my week was driving down to Chennai to drop mom at home. Parents are facing some unnecessary trouble from the neighbour (used to be dad’s friend), and I thought okay let me go down and put an end to this + maybe take care of other work too. I’m so tired I could cry haha. A lot of grown up things are happening this week. I even parked my car in alwarpet, called abhinay and cried for a good 15 minutes. I was like - Abhinay I’m so angry I could cry and went on..
Important things though - I still have to see if we can redo some tests for dad to get a sense of where his health is at, take parents’ new little rescue puppy to the vet and check if her spine or tailbone can be fixed, visit the bank and close my old account (hello, sbi, can’t believe i need to come in person for this) and a few other things.
A couple of months ago someone threw a new born baby pup into the dustbin wrapped in plastic. Some ragpicker found this because he was looking for plastic, and left the puppy at the side of the road. Parents found her on their walk and brought her home. They weren’t even sure if she was breathing when they found her. She was, barely. She was covered in ticks, couldn’t stand and had a faint heartbeat. With constant love and care she’s getting better now. A vet has been advising dad on what he could do, over the phone. Now that I’m here though we should take her to a vet in person and get her checked (and fixed) up + get her vaccinated.
Now that I’m in Chennai, I’ve been craving for the veggie bake from eden garden. Maybe I’ll take parents there for dinner tomorrow. I also met my grandpa and he gave me his pentel pen. Favourite kinda gift. I’m going to treasure it :)
Chennai trip is nice and all…I miss Abhinay so much though. It’s only been a couple of days, but feels like weeeeeks. Arvind and I are planning a trip to the bay area (we’re budgetting and stuff, to see how many MF units I need to sell to make it lol). I started wondering about how I’d manage staying away for that long. Gosh. Will find out when it’s time. I’m also quite excited about the possibility of visiting nyc with Abhinay. Funny story though - I haven’t yet completed my visa application, so all this is quite premature. I guess it’s just an emotional time, so everything feels heavier than usual.
Can’t wait to get back home, can’t wait to see GG and absolutely can’t wait to get started with Calisthenics. (and oh also maybe the pink tabebuias). I’m also bonding well with my parents this time, this trip is going to stay close to me for a long time :)
Ending this week note with a photo of croissant. IYKYK lol.
Fin.
Good call on cutting out the toxic CEO and best wishes for whatever's next :)