Eight Thoughtful Years!
By Kuldeep Singh
- 7 minutes read - 1399 wordsIt was more than eight years ago when I was looking for a change, that led me to an organisation whose name was relatively unknown to me at the time, but its interview process left a lasting impression.
People around me who knew it, made me realise where exactly I was landing—the microservices concepts I had been talking about all the time, the Agile practices we were trying to live, XP, and even the Selenium and Martin Fowlers of the world. Much of what I was passionate about had its roots here - Thoughtworks.
That made me even more curious to explore it, and then on, it has continued to amaze me over the years. It felt just yesterday when market leadership put me in the spotlight to share my journey with fellow Thoughtworkers. 📕 My Thoughtworkings is just what I learned immensely from colleagues around me.
Eight years passed just like that.
Eight thoughtful years - the years made me “more of me.”
For me, the original three pillars of Thoughtworks—Sustainable Business, Software Excellence and Social Justice—were never just statements on a wall. I lived them differently.
Here is how I experienced them.
Pillar One — Excellence 🚀
These eight years gave me countless opportunities to bring out the best in myself. I was not just delivering solutions or building teams; many times, it felt like I was on a mission of continuous research and development journey. I got the opportunity to build my first enterprise blockchain project for commodity trading, explore AR/VR ecosystems, work with operating-system customisations, understand the emerging spatial world, and contribute to inventions that eventually resulted in a couple of patents.
The journey did not stop there. We went deeper into hardware, firmware and IoT at scale, and explored how engineering practices need to evolve when technology changes, while the underlying principles remain the same. Today, that journey continues into the world of AI, AI/works, Agent/works and whatever comes next.
One thing I have realised during this journey is that it is our mindset for achieving excellence allows us to stand strong. Many of the things I worked on are started from scratch. We had to build not only the technology, but also the teams, practices and sometimes even the path forward.
Excellence isn’t about inventing something in a corner. The real test starts when you share it with people, make it useful, improve the experience and create an outcome.
Individual excellence can take us somewhere, but what helped me much more was building on collective excellence—working with the strengths of people around me and bringing the best out of each other. That is one of the biggest things Thoughtworks taught me.
This philosophy has also been central to my journey of building high-performing teams.
Create an environment where people can do their best work, excellence follows.
And yes, seeing me in cultural gallery is a pretty amazing feeling. 😊
But over time, I realised that excellence alone is not enough. It needs a purpose.
Pillar Two — Purpose ❤️
At Thoughtworks, I gradually realised that working without a purpose of giving something back to society would not take us very far. Being surrounded by thought leaders and people who were willing to share their knowledge made me think about what I could contribute beyond my immediate work.
I found my purpose in sharing what I learn. I started sharing my experiences, volunteering for mentorship, supporting the community, and speaking at more than 80 events as a guest lecturer, judge and mentor. I have had opportunities to work with students, universities and startups, and have written more than 190 articles on technology and life. Made thinkuldeep.com a place of learning, sharing, and caring.
Learn, Share with Care became my motto.
I collated the experiences and learnings of 30 Thoughtworkers through a book 📕 My Thoughtworkings. I published 📕Exploring the Metaverse when the world was trying to understand what the metaverse really meant, separating the possibilities from the myths. I continued to write and speak about ethical adoption of technology.
The biggest technology challenges cannot be solved by one organisation or one community alone. We need collective action across industry, academia, government and people to adopt technology responsibly and ethically.
Thoughtworks encouraged me to contribute beyond the organisation, live the purpose. I had the opportunity to represent India in ITU-T standards work, contributing to work around the “Right to Know the Identity” and standards for IoT-based monitoring systems for perishable goods. I also got opportunities to engage with India’s metaverse policy community and collaborate with NASSCOM, IIT Madras, IIT Delhi, other universities and goverment of india.
It has been an incredibly fulfilling part of my journey. But life has taught me that while excellence and purpose are important, but we need financial sustainability too.
That brings me to the third pillar.
Pillar Three — Sustainable Life 🌱
This pillar is perhaps the closest to my personal philosophy, something I have also explored in my book 📕Jagjeevan — Living Larger than Life. Life goes through its own ups and downs, and we need to learn how to navigate them.
An organisation is a living entity, just like a human life. Ups and downs are inevitable!
Over these eight years, Thoughtworks has also gone through different phases—times of growth, times of uncertainty, and times when we needed to put more focus on one pillar while balancing the others. I have personally experienced my own ups and downs like The ICU Time. These experiences have taught me that we need to keep learning, reflecting and reinventing ourselves. There is really no other way forward.
That lesson feels even more relevant today as we navigate the uncertainty and possibilities of the AI world. While pursuing engineering excellence, we have always had to ask ourselves what business value it creates. Experiment, fail fast, learn, reflect and move forward—that has been an important part of how I learn to approach engineering.
Some of the client stories I was fortunate to be part of, such as Lenovo’s ThinkReality and the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, became paths towards further business expansion. These experiences reinforced something I strongly believe in: good engineering should create good business, and sustainable business creates the foundation on which people and engineering can continue to thrive.
My book Jagjeevan is also a reflection of this philosophy, inspired by the life of my great-grandfather.
Change is only constant, and we need to keep learning, reflecting and sharing to embrace it and make the most of the life we have.
And perhaps this is what brings me to the end of this chapter at Thoughtworks and the beginning of another.
Before the Next Chapter 🚪
I have written about change many times in the past. Change is a continuous process happening across every dimension of our lives, whether we realise it or not. Sometimes we choose it, sometimes it chooses us, but it is always happening.
Looking back, these last eight years have been nothing less than fulfilling. Thoughtworks helped me realise who I am, taught me what true engineering means, and gave me opportunities to experiment, fail, learn, build, lead, share and reinvent. I will carry all of that with me into my next chapter.
I cannot thank Thoughtworks enough in words.
I mentioned 30 Thoughtworkers in 📕 My Thoughtworkings, but that is only a very small list. There are so many people who have influenced me, challenged me, supported me and made this journey smoother and richer. Many of them may not even realise the impact they have had on me.
🙏🙏 So, before I begin my next chapter, I want to thank Thoughtworks and every individual who has been part of this journey. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart. ❤️
Life is small enough that our paths will definitely cross again on some common road, and yet it is big enough for us to go out and live all our experiences fully.
I hope our paths cross again, perhaps in a different context, perhaps on a different journey.
Love you all!
Stay tuned for more updates 🚀
Read more about my Thoughtworks journey
- Two Thoughtful Years
- My thoughtworkings from five thoughtful years
- My impactful change stories
- TW Spotlight: Going with the Flow – My Journey
- 20 reflections of 20 years
- 2020 — The year of Change
- Embibe purpose and balance in life
- My books