Pay it back

I once drove 20 hours straight because I did not have money for a motel along the way. When I reached Bay Area, I gulped down some water and slept hungry the night before starting my job. The next morning, I requested my first manager on my first day at my first job to lend me a little bit of money so I could do groceries. He took me out, gave me more money than I needed at that point, and told me to take my time returning it.

I am not telling you this sob story to elicit sympathy (though all of us have one of those moments in our lives when we truly wonder if we will ever make it). I am telling you this story because I owe a lot of my meandering career to a series of people like that first manager.

These days, I try to do at least 1 call/interaction a week that involves mentoring someone who is rethinking their career, planning to go back to school, or starting something new. When I was in Flipkart in India, I used to do weekly events called office hours where I would meet local startups and entrepreneurs, and try to help with whatever topic they would bring to me.

Before you think I am writing this to toot my horn, let me clarify that these interactions benefit me a lot more than you think. For one, there is no way I know enough about technology, startups, careers etc that these conversations are a one-way street. Every person I meet, every startup idea I discuss makes me smarter, teaches me new things, validates my pattern matching skills for many of the recurring issues in life.

But secondly (and this point matters a lot more), I am actually fulfilling my end of the bargain by taking the time to pay it back. Every job I have had is because someone helped me out. My break in Google was because of an amazing manager like Vic Gundotra, my internship and my job post MBA was because of a couple of Wharton alums who decided to help me out. When I landed in US at 2am in the morning, another student from my school, someone who never met me showed up to pick me up, and then let me sleep on his couch. Almost all consequential steps in my early career is because of the generosity of someone who never expected anything in return.

Aren’t humans just amazing? We can crib and cry over this social media fueled negativity of angst, war, terror and vindictiveness, but we forget that most folks around us are loving, kind people who find beautiful ways to help each other get ahead. We literally ride on the shoulders of our friends, families, colleagues, even strangers to get to where we are now.

And it is so key that when we actually get ahead, we pay it back. All this is not an act of kindness, it is just our end of the contract, the other side of the bargain. Ideally we would all just keep trying to help each other regardless of our state of careers and stage of life. But there is no question that those who get ahead have a special responsibility to do so.

And so even if I would like to think I am being a good person by spending time helping, mentoring, supporting, advising, I am not doing anything of the sort.

I am merely paying it back. Its my end of the bargain.