[ad_1] ഈ ഉപന്യാസം മലയാളത്തിലും ലഭ്യമാണ് Here is Hari reading his own story aloud. I will never forget the day I turned 22. I was officially at the lowest point in life as I woke up that morning. While my peers were employed with multinational companies or pursuing higher education at top universities worldwide, I had just been fired from my first “job” and was broke. Things were so bad that I had even become a pariah in my own family. Setting aside all those negative thoughts, I pulled myself out of my bed and switched on my computer, which lit up with a partly-written blog post on the TinyMCE editor of WordPress 3.0.1. That sight filled me with hope. I felt a strong creative urge to continue writing and started typing away. After completing that post, I leaned on my chair, marveling at my creation. All my negative emotions had now disappeared. I realized that even if I failed in life, I would always have two things with me – my blog and the open source software that powered it (WordPress). And that was all I needed to trudge onward. Little did I know that this open source software (that powers 40%+ of all websites in the world today) would eventually become my raison d’être and give me a life I could never even dream of! Discovering WordPress I was born and brought up in Thiruvananthapuram, in Kerala, India as an only child to engineer parents. Since computers and programming had always fascinated me as a kid, I enrolled in an engineering course with a specialization in information technology after high school. My goal was to take up a career in technology. I even had lofty dreams of pursuing research in computer science. My batch had a four-month break before college started, and during this time, I started working with my friends’ web services startup. One evening, while working on a client’s website, I was introduced to WordPress. It was a revelation. You could create and customize websites from an admin panel without needing to hand-code in HTML! I loved it and wanted to create a WordPress website on my own. However, since I did not have the resources to purchase a domain and hosting package, I did the next best thing – I set up a blog on WordPress.com. As the cliche goes, that was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. 🙂 Thriving with WordPress during tough times Soon, the holidays were over, and college started. With high hopes, I stepped foot into one of Kerala’s top engineering colleges. However, within a few days, I realized that I was a misfit in this system. The Indian educational system is designed for rote-learning by default and rejects everyone that does not comply. My ‘radical’ dreams of thinking out of the box, finding knowledge outside prescribed textbooks, exploring the practical side of concepts, and even furthering original ideas – made me an outcast. I was disappointed, disillusioned, and eventually lost interest in academics. To add insult to the injury, my friends kicked me out of the web services startup, which was my saving grace during this ordeal. During this challenging time, it was WordPress that kept me going. Pouring my mind into my WordPress blog helped me survive the trauma of college. Fueled by curiosity, I tried to find practical applications of core computer science concepts taught in college by tinkering with WordPress code and creating mock websites. Slowly I started earning pocket money through freelance projects and Google AdSense. I eventually bought my own domain and moved to self-hosted WordPress. All-in-all, WordPress not only helped me survive college but taught me more than college ever could. By the end of four years, I had learned PHP, MySQL, web designing and development, open source philosophy, and even became a better writer thanks to WordPress! Even as the nightmare called college went on by the side, I collected a bunch of professional accolades. The most memorable ones include being an honorary speaker at one of India’s top engineering colleges, getting a chance to interview Richard Stallman himself, winning an international essay competition, and becoming a freelance journalist with one of India’s national newspapers. Life was challenging but promising! Presenting at NIT Calicut – one of India’s top engineering colleges, as an invited speaker Selected as a runner-up for Mindful Leadership co-organized by University of Dayton, Ohio and Loyola Institute of Business Administration Finding out about Automattic My love for WordPress encouraged me to add a question about Matt Mullenweg, the co-founder of WordPress, in a trivia quiz that I hosted at an intercollegiate quiz in my third year. The question went unanswered, but while preparing for the quiz, I learned about Matt’s company – Automattic, Inc. Automattic owned WordPress.com and had 30+ employees working remotely from all corners of the world then. Since WordPress was everything to me, working for the company that runs WordPress.com felt like a dream. I believed that I had a real shot at making it to Automattic; since it was a fully distributed company, I could work remotely from India without having to worry about work permits or visas. The “Happiness Engineer” role seemed like a perfect fit for me, and I decided to apply right after graduating from college a year later. A glimpse from the same quiz that I hosted where I would shortly ask that question about Matt that would go unanswered! However, life would have other plans for me. Dreams come crashing down – but not without hope! History teaches us that every misfit meets debilitating failure early on in life. After surviving for nearly three and a half years, my crash came in my final year. Since I lacked the minimum attendance, I did not graduate with my batchmates and was asked to repeat my last semester with my juniors. It was a major blow – not just for my ego, but also for my existence. Nevertheless, I did not lose
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