Tribute

At the time when my chapter with Juniper is being finished today after around four years, I thought to reflect on these years not to discuss my mundane journey but about my impression of this organization and its superlative growth in the era.

Growth for the sake of growth is the philosophy of cancer cell. In my short career of little over 10 years, I have seen very few companies which have a clearer idea as to how to grow, why to grow and how not to overpay for growth. Juniper is definitely one such gem.
Juniper Networks was born on February 6, 1996 in California, and standing at 14 and half years, this teenager has seen a little more, done a little more than what a teenager sees and does normally.

Since I was part of the bottom on company, so my account by no way is authoritative, rather offers "bottom-up" view of things as seen from ground zero. With per employee revenue of roughly around 0.5 million USD, which is roughly 10 times that of our Indian IT servicing giants who despite being multi-billion dollar companies are still scrounging the means to grow non-linearly.

What struck me was, despite being born in the era, when companies were founded to be sold like babies conceived to be adopted while still in, while many blue-eyed boys simply added .com to any damn prefix in the morning and secure a valuation of $100m by 5 o clock in the evening, Juniper was conceived to take the biggest player of its domain by its horns and shake the networking industry irrevocably.

This company built on the promise to deliver on its own, solving the toughest challenges in networking industry by not just making more colorful power points and selling them on wall street but but solving them in reality, shunned many offers to be bought and stands tall with more than 30% share in service provider market.

If I am asked to write the strongest aspect of it, I would write it as extraordinary capability to not only conceive but execute ahead of others, in time and better.

Talking specifically of India center, I have seen this growing from little more than mere experiment to competence center which is now contributing in most of companies ambitious growth stories of future. Hopefully this center will eventually blossom by finally coming in from conception to deliver stage on its own and creating solid IP for company, I am sure all the rights seeds are there.

I have personally believed that Juniper has been to networking industry what Google has been to Internet and Junos is to Juniper what Windows is to Microsoft. I wish that in due time this company really unlocks lots of its latent value and shines for lasting time.

Humans are like trees, they tend to grow roots if allowed to stay at a place for little longer. I am also feeling the same at this point of parting ways, but believe that taking a step forward necessarily entails a step in reverse. If at all I miss anything its going to be the people I worked with. The team which we grew from infancy to maturity, the environment of frantic and crazy work to sedate moments of reflection and lots of cherished moments of learning in between.

I somewhere read, there is no such thing as good or bad work. There are either good teams or not so good teams. Turning challenges into opportunities is virtue of fighter spirit and I wish the team I worked with, bask in its glory for a long time in company. Being an industry where even the trespassers are recruited, somehow Juniper has managed to scale and maintain the quality input.

I read somewhere, dreams are not something which you see when you sleep, but dreams are which do not let you sleep. As I see around I find Juniper as one of those restless companies which are almost infected with this huge hunger to grow with the audacity to dream almost unattainable thus far for others. I hope this remains like this for ever.