ePragmatic - practical solutions

Working @ iCode

It took me 6.5 yrs to understand the lifecycle of Product development before I got excited and exited the cycle at iCode.

Talking about iCode, it was a great start up company back in Bangalore during 1997-98 when Internet boom had started in Silicon valley and our co-founders traced back to India for tapping the talents locally for what is called "Cheap Labor". I don't like to call cheap labor, it sounds cheaper and doesn't look professional in an IT industry, so I rather call "low cost resources".....

Joined summer of 1998 as Webmaster, and agreed to work in night shift which was a change in work culture for my mom and pop, who know that working in office means regular shift as my father was a government employee as a Wielding Master/Instructor.

I was happy getting the job, told my mom and made her to feel good about my job.. My mom is typical housewife she questioned me what kind of job will you do in night, so I told my mom "I'm Webmaster", manage the entire site blah blah ...

All she could understand was I was some kind of a master and she responsed with a smile on her face saying "Your grandfather was a Head master in a School, your father was a Wielding master and now you're a Webmaster... so you should be doing a good job ..." the reason she said this was, the word "master" being repeated in our designation in the family, so she concluded that I was a master of Web.... I was damn surprised the way she thought about my job :)

Now after working in night shift for a year got a break to work in mid-day shift and worked on interesting project called "iShop" an e-Commerce proto-type, this project opened the doors of E-Commerce, came across one of the best sites Amazon, cdw and others...

I quickly advanced further into e-commerce product called "Accware Online" now part of Everest Standard edition, equipped 15 memeber team consisting of 8 web developers and 7 web designers to develop out of the box solution along with 2-3 DLL guys. The product become a huge success due to team work and our customers our solution. This was the best thing that could have happened to any developer, a kind of instant gratification.

At this juncture iCode grew from 100 to 200 employees and keeping my rhythm I wanted to move to US for better opportunities (and also my wife was wanting to work in US...) so dropped here with 2 suitcases to explore North America continent, it was the second country I was visting, after my Kenya visit from previous company on a project in Mombasa & Nariboi.

I kind of liked this place, the network of roads amazed me. I have driven most on route 66 as it became popular destination to drive into Captial of US, Washington DC.

Here i'm after 4 years of stay in US without a green card (as i missed the bus) and reside now in Fairfax county, looking for a job in Product/Project Management or Technical Lead position as I quit/resign/laid off (you can perceive it anyway) as far as INS is concerned, I'm not working anymore :)...

My experience @ iCode was transforming as I moved from different roles of software life cycle, it was challenging and an experience to add to my resume. Worked in development, design, analysts, developement manager, product manager etc...

My Accomplishment
a) Everest, is winner of Codie award for best software product category 2004
b) Customer's acknowledging, E-Commerce the best out of the box solution
c) Was the inventor for patented technology in search engine optimization for E-Commerce websites

Last 9 yrs has been a journey and I enjoyed every bit, working with my colleagues back in India, US, Canada, Kenya and UK. If your are interested in my resume, pls email me to HarshaS@Gmail.com :)

---