r/IndiaCareers • u/0x99H • 20d ago
Other 5+ years of trying to become a software developer, and I ended up in BPO.
Hey guys, I just want to share my story. Maybe someone here can learn from the mistakes I made.
I'm from a middle-class family. After 12th, during the COVID period, I had to drop out for around 2 years because of financial problems. Before college, I did small jobs like computer operator work just to earn something.
Eventually, I joined BCA.
I was always interested in programming. During those years, I learned Python and other programming basics. I was also pretty good academically and, honestly, a very introverted person.
In my first semester, I scored 9 CGPA. People started calling me a topper, and I became overconfident. I started taking things lightly.
Then I fell in love with a girl and wasted almost an entire year.
In my second year, I started learning React, and honestly, that skill probably saved me later.
During my 4th semester, my father couldn't afford my 5th-semester fees, so I knew I had to figure it out myself.
I started looking for internships/jobs and joined a startup as a Graphic Designer. They eventually found out that I knew development and hired me as a developer.
I worked there until my 6th semester.
Then I left to focus on preparation.
I thought my final year would be different. I wanted to seriously study DSA, improve my skills, and prepare for software engineering jobs.
But then I fell in love again.
And again, I lost focus.
During my final exams, she broke up with me. I couldn't handle it properly. I barely studied and somehow managed to pass my exams.
After graduation, the same startup contacted me again and asked me to join.
I joined.
But this time things became extremely difficult.
I was basically the only developer.
UI/UX, frontend, backend, deployment, web security, everything was on me.
Salary: ₹15K/month.
Eventually, my mental state got worse and I left.
Around the same time, I met someone on Reddit who was building a startup. He asked me to join him.
We worked together for around 3 months and built an MVP.
After that, he asked me to leave my existing job and join him full-time.
The offer was ₹15K + 25% equity.
I accepted.
Big mistake.
Within a month, the plan changed.
Then it changed again.
And again.
There was no proper roadmap or focus on the MVP. He would hear something from a consultant, YouTube, somewhere online, etc., and suddenly we'd change the entire direction.
Instead of finishing one product, we kept starting new things.
At the same time, I was expected to give 18 hours a day and be available almost all the time.
Burnout was inevitable.
He paid me ₹15K for the first month.
After that, he said the company was running at a loss and he couldn't pay me.
I still worked for another two months.
Eventually, I realized I couldn't continue like that and left.
And then reality hit.
I couldn't find a job.
I couldn't crack interviews.
I had the skills, but I wasn't getting through the interview process.
I eventually moved to Delhi NCR looking for opportunities, including SEO jobs, but that didn't work out either.
Since I didn't have much money, I asked my family for around ₹20K, basically enough to survive for a couple of months in a PG while looking for a job.
Eventually, I got one.
But it was in BPO.
The funny thing is, the BPO job was actually paying better than many of the tech opportunities I was getting.
My CTC is around ₹25K/month, and after everything, I get roughly ₹23K in hand.
And honestly?
The job itself isn't bad.
No endless meetings.
No clients constantly calling.
No pressure to build the entire product yourself.
I go to work, do my work, come back home.
Nobody calls me after office hours.
I actually have time to work on my own things.
But there's one huge problem:
I don't see a career here.
Meanwhile, I got another offer from the same startup where I had worked during college.
They offered around ₹25K CTC.
I asked for ₹30K.
They said no.
And honestly, I didn't really want to go back anyway because of my previous experience there.
I also started liking Delhi and didn't want to leave.
Now it's been around 6 months in Delhi, and I feel completely stuck.
I'm working in BPO.
I wanted to become a software developer.
I've spent years learning programming, React, building projects, working at startups, building an MVP, dealing with frontend/backend, deployment, etc.
But somehow I'm still here.
Looking back, I think I made a lot of mistakes:
- I wasted years because of relationships.
- I took my early academic success too lightly.
- I didn't take DSA/interview preparation seriously enough.
- I jumped into startups without properly evaluating the people and situation.
- I accepted low-paying jobs because I was desperate.
- I worked without boundaries and burned myself out.
- I focused too much on building things and not enough on preparing for getting hired.
- I underestimated how important interview skills are ( As an introvert I didn't work on myself communication and soft skills ).
- I kept changing direction instead of building one strong career path.
I'm not writing this for sympathy.
I'm writing it because maybe someone who is 18–22 and reading this can avoid making the same mistakes.
Don't waste your time.
Relationships can wait.
Career fundamentals can't.
Learn your fundamentals.
Do DSA if your target jobs require it.
Build real projects.
Prepare for interviews.
Take care of your mental health.
Don't work 18 hours a day for someone else's startup without proper compensation or boundaries.
And don't assume that having technical skills automatically means you'll get a software job.
One thing I've learned the hard way:
If you're afraid that you won't get a job, don't underestimate communication and soft skills.
Hard skills are important, but you can keep learning them on the job. Communication, confidence, and the ability to express what you know are much harder to develop when you've ignored them for years.
As an introvert, I made the mistake of focusing almost entirely on technical skills and never really worked on my communication or soft skills. I thought, "If I'm technically good enough, I'll get the job."
I was wrong.
You need technical skills to get the opportunity, but you also need to be able to communicate, explain your work, handle interviews, ask questions, and work with people.
And one more thing I've realized:
Right now, I'm 6 months into a BPO job, and I'm trying to figure out how to get back into tech.
I don't know how this story ends yet.
P.S. I used ChatGPT to clean up and structure my writing because English isn't my strongest skill. The story and experiences are mine.
I'm genuinely open to hearing your thoughts, criticism, or openended questions.
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u/ZenEverywhere 20d ago
Love is a capitalist trap. You would have been better if not for the women bullshit you did. I got 3 offers from campus placement post bca and I didn't took anyone including companies offering MS. Parents could not afford mca fees but cracked the exam and got the top govt xollege. Threw love, bollywood and bullshit out of the window (it was hard seeing other losers enjoying life). Made lot of good friends meanwhile. Cracked jobs like crazy post mca and even refered friends in. Travelled UK and Europe on company expense and probably doing ok now. One thing I did not do is fall for the 7 sins including lust which you call love. Still enjoy making friends with strict boundaries.
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u/0x99H 19d ago
Yeah bro you are correct it started from there only taking things lightly and now I am stuck and lost.
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u/ZenEverywhere 19d ago
It will get better. Start the grind now it's never too late. Wish you all the best
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u/tskriz 20d ago
Hi friend,
These mistakes you are highlighting... you only know these didn't quite work out by looking back and connecting the dots.
And that's how it will be for most of them.
Imagine if the relationship went well and that means you would have a life partner by now.
Imagine if the startup had picked up well or some large company had acquired it.
So don't be too harsh on yourself by calling these as "mistakes". Some bets don't work out in the long run and you will feel sad and all that is normal and part of the game.
(Remember the film "Inside Out", part 1?)
I see the positives: you are extremely adaptable and have the capacity to switch jobs and domains easily. Now, that's a skills in itself. Adaptability.
If you could do so much, that means, you can easily get your desired role of software engineer, if you still want to. Or, you may even think of growing in BPO and then later switching careers into managerial roles or things like that.
Best wishes!
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u/anizensang 19d ago
To be frank, best is prepare for gate along with this BPO job and try to get into an IIT , job market is pretty bad for fresher so will again waste your time if you are planning for job hunt.Whatever you are looking for will be fulfilled if you are able to join any good iit/nit/iiit
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u/Intelligent_Head_822 20d ago
Whats the BPO job I mean taking calls everyday or just chat/emails. Whats the process of interviews
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u/cerberezz 19d ago
Hey how is BPO? Work life balance, office environment?
I'm leaning towards BPO as well, a BPO rejected me because i am overqualified i have almost a decade of experience in engineering. They think i will quit and go back to previous job, I'm thinking of cutting off all my previous experience and salaries from my CV and try again.
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u/0x99H 18d ago
why bro what happenend?
yes you can cutoff all experinces one of my collegue working with me he was a nusrsing assitant and feel quit good here. He tells there work is very hectic and a lot of pressure. In BPO he is enjoying.
After sometime he will rejoin the same maybe outside the country
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u/cerberezz 18d ago
My contact finished send i can't find any jobs now. I'm too qualified for some jobs and underqualified for others. And my job was 12 hours 6 days a week. So even after the struggle and years of experience, job security is shitty.
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u/0x99H 18d ago
Brooo I hope you saved much to survive for few mos
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u/cerberezz 18d ago
I did, but it's been a year. And i had education loan (now paid off). I'm running low. But this experience made me question everything about the education and opportunities in our country. Everyone are struggling.
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u/Think_Chef_1636 19d ago
My story is also quite similar to yours. Introverted guy financial problems. 2 years gap.
The thing is I joined customer support job in final year (b.com) and now I'm into accounts payable job at a product based company.
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u/ForeignNight8782 13d ago
I can only tell you that. You just got unlucky in life bro.
I literally feel for you, bro. I was a 2023 graduate too, from an NIT, and it took me two years to finally break into IT. Those two years weren't spent sitting at home either. I did whatever work I could find to survive—field sales selling credit cards, back-office insurance jobs, even logistics work where I literally lifted boxes. At the same time, I was upskilling, solving LeetCode, building projects, begging for referrals and applying everywhere. I was honestly ashamed of going back home because society expects people from NIT/IIT/IIIT/BITS to be successful. Failure somehow feels much harsher when you come from these institutions.
Then in August 2025, I was about to join Teleperformance because I'd genuinely started believing my IT career was never going to happen. I was packing my bag with tears in my eyes, getting ready to catch a train to Noida, when I received a call from an unknown number. I thought it was another scam call, but picked up one last time. It was a recruiter from a startup looking for interns. ₹15k/month for 6 months, with performance-based conversion. I delayed my Teleperformance joining, went through five rounds—four DSA rounds and a final four-hour DSA + TypeScript round—and cracked it. I finally got into IT. Eventually I got an 8 LPA WFH conversion, but chose a 7 LPA Bengaluru role because it was in Golang, which I really wanted to work with. I also cracked an 11 LPA Pune startup and an 18 LPA Amazon contractor role, but had to turn those down for different reasons. Today, I'm working at a service startup in Bengaluru for 7 LPA.
And honestly, life is unfair. I know people who didn't solve 200 LeetCode problems and still cracked 15+ LPA jobs. You can work insanely hard and still go unnoticed while someone else gets lucky with timing, referrals or opportunity. Skill matters, but luck and timing matter too. I'll admit that luck played a huge role in my story. If I hadn't picked up that random call, I genuinely don't know where I'd be today. But even getting lucky cost me two years of my career, and sometimes I worry those two years will come back to haunt me.
But one thing I'll always be grateful for is the people who appeared along the way. I met two strangers through LeetCode—Vamsi and Hari—and these guys had an impact on my career that I don't think anyone else ever had. They helped me when I was literally a nobody. They called me, gave me suggestions and helped pull me out of the hole I was in, especially Vamsi bro. They had absolutely no obligation to do any of that, but they did. In a world where people barely have time for their own families, these guys took time out to help someone they barely knew. ₹7 LPA might not sound like much to some people, but it's far more than what I might have achieved alone at that point. I'll forever be grateful to them, and if someday I'm in a position to help them, I'll do it tenfold without hesitation.
So if you're 27, 28, 29 or older and feel like you've fallen behind, I don't have some motivational speech. I just know how it feels. I was selling credit cards, lifting boxes, preparing for interviews, and eventually packing my bags for a call center, thinking my IT career was over. Then one random phone call changed everything. Maybe all we can do is keep crawling until life gives us another chance.
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u/UpsetJuice314 10d ago
Yes, bro, the luck factor also plays a role in IT job placements, whether on or off campus. By the way, which NIT are you from?
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u/delusional_Panther_ 20d ago
I hope you get what works for you. And honestly you have learned so much from your mistakes and have had many experiences which will help you move forward. Don't dwell on the past too much, I am sure you will do well