A Reflection on Culture and Career Corner
I will be honest with you.
When I watch these Culture and Career Corner conversations, I am always listening for the moment when someone says something they did not plan to say. Something that comes straight from the gut, not from a script.
This episode had several of those moments.
Anamika hosts Culture and Career Corner, a series of conversations with IT By Design team members at different stages of their journey, from different parts of the world. What comes through in every episode is the same thing. What it actually feels like to be part of something built around people first.
This time, she sat down with Harman, a Senior Systems Administrator and Azure Engineer with over five years of experience, and Manish, a Quality Analyst who joined the team in December 2024. Two very different professional paths. One consistent thread.
You Come for the Work. You Stay for the People.
Harman was direct about it. She came in with a strong technical background. Cloud infrastructure, Azure hybrid environments, identity management. She knew her craft.
What she did not expect was the people.
“Every day I get to know something different. Whether it is regarding my work or maybe a different culture, a language, or even just food from a different tradition.”
That sentence says more about IT By Design than any company description could. When someone with five years of enterprise IT experience says the most surprising part of the job is how much she is learning from the humans around her, that is a culture signal. Not an HR talking point. A lived experience.
Manish came from a completely different background. No technical roots. A little nervous on day one. He admits it without hesitation. But within a couple of months, something shifted.
“I started feeling blessed because of the team I had around me. And after one year and five months, I know a lot of technical stuff now that I simply did not have before.”
That is the shift right there. Not a training module. Not a certification. A team that pulled someone forward.
Driven, Diverse, and Deeply Human
When Anamika asked Harman to describe the ITBD culture, she delivered something I did not expect.
Three words. Driven. Diverse. And deeply human.
She was not reaching for something polished. She was reaching for something accurate.
“We have skilled professionals from different parts of the world. Different backgrounds, different ways of thinking. It is not just one culture. It is multiple cultures interacting with each other. And what diversity does for me is bring different energy.”
She also described a strong sense of accountability woven into the work itself. When you are supporting global clients around the clock, she said, you cannot afford to be anything less than committed. The culture reflects it. Everyone shows up with that mindset.
Manish added a layer from a different angle. For him, culture lives in two places. The way people work together, and the way the company invests in the growth of its people.
“You can walk up to anyone, literally anyone, and have a real conversation. Get your doubts cleared. Get a second opinion. Nobody is too senior to stop and help.”
He also pointed to the LMS trainings, the AI learning resources, and the new course platform available to every employee. Not something he took for granted. Something he compared directly to previous organizations where that investment simply did not exist.
Three Lessons That Actually Land
Anamika asked both of them to share three life lessons. Not career tips. Life lessons. The kind that have genuinely shaped who they are.
Harman went first.
Growth has no finish line.
She said it simply, but it carried weight. The moment you think you have learned enough is precisely the moment you start falling behind. Every challenge adds another layer to who you are. Never stop.
Her second lesson was about sharing.
“The smartest people I have met in my career were not the ones holding information to themselves. They were spreading it. When you teach, you learn twice.”
There is something almost counterintuitive about that in competitive environments. Knowledge hoarding feels like protection. But Harman has watched what happens on the other side of that behavior. Stagnant water attracts mosquitoes, she said. Keep flowing and you stay fresh.
Her third lesson was about balance. And she did not frame it as a wellness suggestion. She framed it as a performance truth.
“A well-rested, grounded professional will always outperform a burned-out one. Work hard. Live to the fullest.”
Manish came at it from a different angle.
His first lesson mirrored Harman’s instinctively. Learning never stops. The moment you think you know everything, you have stopped growing.
His second was about process.
“Always believe in the process and the procedure, not the result. The result is the outcome of the process. If you keep focusing only on the result, the steps start to fall apart. And when that happens, the outcome follows.”
Simple distinction. But it is the distinction between someone who grows under pressure and someone who collapses.
His third was the quietest lesson. Take time for yourself every day. Your hobbies, your rest, your inner life.
“That is the fuel to your soul. It keeps you going. And when you wake up the next day, you are ready for whatever comes.”
What This Conversation Reinforced for Me
Culture is not what you say it is. It is what your people say it is when no one is watching.
Harman and Manish each arrived with different backgrounds and different levels of certainty about what they were walking into. And both of them described, without being prompted, a place where they felt genuinely supported. Where growth was expected. Where the people around them pulled them forward.
Harman picked humility as her favorite ITBD core value. Always be respectful. Always be modest. Everyone makes mistakes. The question is how you handle it.
Manish picked Your Community. Because what keeps people going is knowing the people around them have their back. No matter what kind of day they are carrying through the door.
We are not just building careers here. We are building people.
That is the bar we hold ourselves to at IT By Design.
