How often are you greeted by one Cooper as you walk in for a discussion with your next potential employer. Seldom, at least in the IT world. Oh and in case Cooper didn’t really ring a bell, it’s a handsome, playful ball of Retriever furs we are talking about. We bonded in the first sight and if only Cooper could speak, no alternate job offer could have ever matched that. But, guess it was better that way, for who knows Cooper would have said, “Dude, seriously, stop playing with me and focus on your interview. It’s POSTMAN not your regular stuff … woff ! woff ! “

So here’s another of those very unique and interesting experiences I had with the folks @POSTMAN. And if you’re a developer, either you already know of POSTMAN or you are just primitive, in which case here’s something to get you back to the future: https://www.getpostman.com/apps
Now although I have recently been lucky to have discussions, in person and over technology, with the class of people called co-founders of yet another phenomenon called start-ups, this particularly was unique with respect to quite a few things (including Cooper of course).

To begin with, it was my first time ever that I actually witnessed firsthand of what I had only heard of until now, revolutionary stuff all taking place in `that` magical garage. Be it Jobs’, Gates’, Bezos’ or that Menlopark Google’s or Disney’s, all of these magical garages were the birthplace of some of the biggest names we know of today. POSTMAN clearly was not a garage, guess primarily due to economic growth, allowing entrepreneurs to move on and think outside the garage now, but it was not a picture that anyone would usually paint of an office, a corporate or even otherwise. An apartment with 2 floors, each having a 3 BHK flat, brewing with coffee and ideas, with the hall reserved for some COD, GOW, FIFA, WWE or Cooper time, the balcony overlooking the kitchen and folks who were trying to figure out the age of a wine bottle I suppose.

But this was just superficial. The real fun was when I had this discussion with a young gentleman who looked in his late 20s, or so I thought, until he broke it across (and which anyone would otherwise also guess after speaking to him for some time) that he had been working in IT since the late 90s or so and has been a part of some great products of its time. And maybe I have not spoken to as many co-founders, but I hardly have seen a few who are so transparent in their discussions about a lot of stuff, their company, your candidature etc. and even less have I seen people sharing across their pretty insightful professional experiences with you on a first meeting. Ok, now there were a lot of instances where I was in disagreement with his views or ideology, but worth appreciating was that although he was strong about his points, he wasn’t obnoxiously arrogant about them and was instead quite open and humble to discuss about them, which to me justified his maturity.

Of the many things we discussed, the ones that fascinated me was stuff around how and why POSTMAN grew from a few hundreds to now over a million developers. Why was POSTMAN not just a make do product, but one that had a solid ideology behind its engineering designs. How exactly were the engineers die hard geeks at what they did and why were they happy doing it. And all of these was accompanied with examples, often more than one, which you could actually see in their product or their work culture. Why was ‘flat hierarchy’ and ‘management transparency’ not just 1337 speak (or so some would believe)but rather stuff you could see in front of you and relate to. What were the challenges that POSTMAN was aiming at next and what scale meant to them. And am sure, even if some of us might have had the above talk sometime, with someone, but this one is hard to beat. It was my first time that I was taken around that house (which some would prefer calling an office, not me and also not the POSTMANs am sure would), introduced to the engineers and finally even take a peek (officially, no shoulder surfing or any of those stunts) at their systems, what they were designing, what they were currently working on, what they had in the box for me, what was the roadmap ahead etc. I mean that’s like what happens after you join a company right ? It was amazing. It was a nice feeling to realize that I was considered for the offered position @Postman. And that reminds me, even before this entire Cooper and the following picture was laid out, there were 3 rounds of talks (technical and otherwise) that I had with the co-founders and engineers @POSTMAN on different occasions laid over a period of a week or so. The discussions were mostly around architecturally what were they looking out from a potential candidate and questions which were, I guess, to primarily measure the technical acumen of the candidate. I have had better technical questions asked in other occasions though, but this still was nice in the terms that it sort of portrayed where they were facing difficulties and how were they planing on addressing them.

Things were all in place except for a few things that I spoke about where we were in disagreement. And although I felt that I could fill in the gap @POSTMAN and so did they that they could match my aspirations or vice-versa, but guess this is a skill am yet to master (and it’s a hard one to), you have to make tough decisions in life. And you don’t mostly get the best of both the worlds. Compromises and shortcomings are meant to be made and accepted. And so I slept over the discussion, with the ball in my court and the next morning spoke to the same guy (who only looked in his late 20s, but actually was a C employee @POSTMAN) expressing how hard it was to let go off the offer I had been made from POSTMAN at that point in time, due to a few, but strong enough, points that made me take that decision. Later that same day, I went through the LinkedIn profiles of some of the team I had met in person @POSTMAN and I was not surprised that the decision I had to make was actually hard. Those guys were among the ones you would always want to learn from. Sheer brilliance. And not that I regret giving it up, but I am glad I did polish that skill I have been trying to master.