Readers, welcome back to Tiger Tales! We hope you’ve been enjoying our Women’s Day series. It’s time for another unique story. So, here’s introducing to you our woman of the week!
Hear it from Uma, an all-rounder at home AND at work! She’s got some useful tips on how to manage household and work commitments while chasing your dreams.
Uma hails from Bangalore, India. She studied Computer Science and Engineering at Vemana Institute of Technology in Bangalore. She started her career with Vtiger in 2011 as a developer and has worked here since then. That’s 11 good years… Wow! She lives with her husband, Srinatha, and her 2-year-old son, Sudharshan.
Uma currently heads Vtiger’s Open Source Team and manages all the open-source version’s responsibilities.
- She interacts with Vtiger’s global open-source developer community, analyzes their ideas, and works towards accommodating them in the open-source CRM to improve it.
- She plays a crucial role in the open-source marketplace. She reviews external integrations for data security, product security, coding standards, and performance, approves them, and adds them to the open-source CRM to enhance it.
- She also manages the bi-annual and quarterly releases of Vtiger open-source.
- Finally, she develops and maintains the wiki documentation of Vtiger open-source to help CRM users.
Going ahead, Uma plans to moderate and update the documentation coming from global open-source developers.
Phew… that’s a great deal of responsibility, Uma!
What’s more interesting is that Uma’s passion is her job. “I love coding and developing new things! I love that developers have their perspective on customer requirements and strive to implement them. I am happy with my role at Vtiger. I chose Web Development as an elective in my last semester. My subject teacher, Syed Akram’s love for coding inspired me to become a developer.”, she says.
Uma also invests considerable effort to keep herself upgraded in technology. Here are some things she does:
- She follows Reddit to catch up on trending technologies.
- She is currently doing a Javascript course on Udemy, which she finds extremely helpful.
She also appreciates her team for sharing their knowledge and helping in improving her skills. When it comes to personal growth and learning, Uma follows Mindvalley’s programs. She has presently enrolled in a course on how to become a fast learner.
Coming to Uma’s personal life, we talked to her about fitness, hobbies, and family. Uma likes to take care of her physical and mental health.
“Are you a fitness freak?”
“Yes, I practiced Yoga for two years and learned almost all the asanas. It helps in maintaining one’s mental and physical health. I also trained some of my co-workers in Yoga. These days my husband and I go jogging every morning. I’d rather say he’s my fitness coach. Starting your day with exercise keeps you energized all day. I also participate in marathons when I get a chance.”
Uma follows Sudha Murthy for her simplicity and attitude towards life. She also reads her books and recommends Grandma’s Bag of Stories to mothers. She loves cooking and playing Kho-Kho. She also loves learning new things and doing online courses in her free time. She surely knows how to put her time to fair use, doesn’t she?
But when the pandemic hit us, our daily routines were disrupted. Working from home became the new norm and indeed a challenging task for working parents. “Life of a working mom is complicated. Earlier, my son stayed with my parents during the weekdays and I would bring him over to my place for the weekends. But since the lockdown, we brought him over to our place, my husband and I. Every day I figure out a new plan to manage things. My son doesn’t like it when I am working on my laptop. He doesn’t demand that I play with him, but just wants my presence around him. So, I give him some time while I cook and finish my work when he’s asleep. Sometimes giving eight continuous hours to work becomes tough, so I highly rely on time management. And after my husband is back home, he takes care of our son while I dedicate a few hours to my work.”
Uma’s husband, Srinatha, is very helpful and encouraging. He doesn’t know cooking, but he does help her out in other household chores. Especially during the lockdown, Srinatha became more supportive than ever. As they say, an understanding partner is a blessing indeed, and Uma believes that marriage is an equal partnership.
So, three cheers to you, Srinatha!
Although Uma has had moments of frustration and the feeling of giving up many times, today, she is proud of her life.
“Are you happy about the way you’re currently managing your life?”
“Yes, I am happy about it. It was slightly challenging for me to adjust to a new life and a new routine in the early days of my married life. But I believe in having patience. We all have a learning curve, and it’s different for everybody.”
Talking about her professional goals, Uma passionately says she wants to explore Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in the coming days. In her personal life, she definitely knows the importance of relationships. So, she always tries to maintain a work-life balance. She also wants to work towards making her son a good and successful human being.
Uma has defined her own ways to lead life. She isn’t a quitter; instead, she believes in finding a way out of every tough situation and chasing her dreams. Her mantra to life is – Simple Living and High Thinking.
We’re proud of you, Uma! We hope you continue being yourself and achieve all your dreams. 🙂
Readers, we hope you enjoyed getting to know about Uma S. Stay tuned as we have more stories to tell about other fabulous women of Vtiger. See you in the next post, folks!
