Why I left my job and became jobless

Hello everyone,

This being my first post on rohinhoods, let me briefly introduce myself. I am a Computer Science graduate and an MBA from Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi, at present I am working on building a new venture with four team-mates. It has been around 3 months when I quit my first post-MBA job with Vodafone in a pursuit to do something that I enjoyed more than what I was doing, and since then quite a few people have asked me why did I quit my job, this post is an answer to that. 

I had joined Vodafone less than 2 years ago and had started working as an ASM barely 9 months ago. I was lucky to get Ahmedabad (City+semi rural) as my territory, perhaps the most challenging and visible territory in the Gujarat circle, and I was performing reasonably well. From being placed as one of the bottom-most territories for past many years, my team was able to get us to become the best territory in Gujarat for the last quarter, and it wasn’t just one or two members doing well, each one of my team members had contributed to it by performing at his absolute best. I liked and respected my team and I am confident that the feeling was reciprocated by them. I was reasonably confident of a good rating and a promotion for myself as well as most(if not all) of my team.

So, I understand that from most peoples’ perspective it was an odd decision, which was even more odd considering I wasn’t switching for a higher salary rather looking to ‘build’ a start-up(employee/founder title was and is irrelevant for me). But, if you think from my perspective, the answer was as straightforward as any because of the following three reasons.

1) I strongly believe that most people earn a major portion of their money in last 10 years of their life, and gains a major portion of their learning in the first 10 years. Even though I was doing pretty well in Vodafone and earning okay, I didn’t think I was learning enough or was being challenged enough. 

2) I think a person is shaped by the people he interacts(works/lives/plays etc) with more than anything else, and so I’ve always placed a very high emphasis on the kind of people I work with. So much so that whenever people ask me which sector/company/profile I want to work in, my answer is inadvertently the same, I want to work with a great team and most of the other criteria have little relevance for me(I accept that every time I answer this, people look at me as someone who has no clarity in life).

Now, there were quite a few awesome people in Vodafone, from whom I did learn a lot, but in general there was a good deal of dissonance between my core value system and theirs, e.g. I believe in giving my team a lot of independence and in-turn ask for complete accountability, I always acted just as a supporter, someone who can make their problems go away while they focus on their tasks, but in larger companies most people believe in micro-managing, the common belief being that the more pressure you put on someone the better they perform. So, even though I had and have much respect for my seniors and colleagues, I knew that I couldn’t become like that and had to move on.

3.) I am by nature an impatient person and I like to move things quickly, for me short term success or failures are immaterial as long as you are experimenting and learning, but in a larger organization decision making is often multi-layered and unidirectional, and thus things don’t move as quickly. Actions are judged purely by results and hence people avoid taking risks and prefer taking short-cuts.

And so even though I wasn’t sure of what I wanted to do, I was sure that this was definitely not it, and decided to take a break to figure out what exactly I do want to do.

If you have had similar experiences in past, please do share in comments.

Ranjeet Pratap Singh

(Linkedin: https://in.linkedin.com/in/ranjeetpsingh)

(Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ranjeet.p.singh.3)