I started my tech career back in 2002 fresh out of college. It was the era when VB6 and ASP were the latest technologies. I was happy to find a job and wanted to give it my best. It was a small company but with a good, closely knit team.

It has been only a few weeks since I started working there, and one afternoon while I was engrossed in troubleshooting a problem, someone tapped on my shoulder and asked, ‘Ready for lunch?’.  I looked up and it was one of the seniors in the organization.

I told him to go ahead and I will join him shortly after troubleshooting/fixing the issue.

He gazed at the screen for a few moments, pulled up a chair and sat beside me, and said, Let’s fix it, and then we can go together.

That issue turned out to be anything but a quick fix, it took almost a couple of hours where he kept on telling me to try different things, sometimes taking the keyboard and trying a few things himself, but at the end of it, we were able to identify the issue and fix it. And then we both went and had lunch together.

When you are starting your career or new in a company, you are hesitant to reach out and ask for help (back then there was also no Stack Overflow or so many online resources to refer to, so you were on your own mostly).

This simple gesture from my senior stuck with me throughout my career and even after 2 decades in the industry, I remember that incident fondly and recount to many of my colleagues.

What that gesture did for me early in my career was to teach me teamwork, leadership, and most important of all kindness.

I have tried to carry that throughout my career and have tried to help freshers, team members along the way as much as I can and try to pass down the same philosophy to them.

You never know how a small gesture from you can impact the others, and what changes can that bring about for better.

Forget tools and technologies (they will always change), forget the big corporate speeches about vision and mission, the real difference can be and is usually made by people working on the ground and true leaders emerge from there. If you can be anything in the world, first and foremost “be kind” or at least try to be. That’s what