Devesh Rajput - Research Fellow, Lucideus
Beginning
When I got in touch with Lucideus for a profile with the research team, I was asked to implement
a research paper in any language that I felt comfortable in. Taking my lack of knowledge in
research into consideration, the interviewer, who also happens to be my reporting manager,
helped me a lot in understanding the paper. He asked me to focus on the things that I’m
good at implementing. Who would have thought that a person who always tried to run away
from research papers and reading any literature would land in the research team of a
cybersecurity company! I was hired despite my lack of experience in research and
cybersecurity. Infact, the part about Lucideus that makes it different is that the
organization isn’t afraid to take risks! They hire people based on pure potential
and not just experience.
Work at Lucideus
Being in the research department of a cybersecurity firm has been a great pleasure and I
know it will remain the same. I have always been given the freedom to choose any
scalable framework/platform fully equipped to do the required job. In a more positive
sense than the negative, I exploited this freedom to learn so many different
technologies, frameworks and services such as Docker, AWS, Django, Spring
Frameworks, Vert.x and many others . Honestly, I have lost count! In just one year of
my working here at Lucideus, I have learnt so much from every single person I have
interacted with. As Saket Modi, our CEO says, “Everyone here is a rockstar in their
line of work and really puts forth all the time and effort essential to do their job
well before time effectively and efficiently”
It has been a great experience working with the research team that is full of supremely
talented people. I always believed that to finish an immense task at hand in a
relatively shorter period of time required a lot of people’s time and effort.
Clearly, I was wrong!
Being such a small team consisting of a couple of mathematicians, a couple of
economists and a couple of developers with a few interns, we are more than
capable to finish any task in a timely manner. I remember a task for which we had
to read in excess of 60 patents and more than 100 whitepapers in just two days.
We mustn’t forget that reading is one thing and understanding the contents and
preparing briefs that have all the information in the most concise form is
altogether a different story.
The most impressive team apart from research team that I have worked here with
is ECS(Enterprise Customer services). Having gained a fair share of knowledge on
cybersecurity domain in this past year, there have been times when the knowledge
sharing sessions were a little hard for me to digest and by this I am not implying
that the team isn’t good at sharing the knowledge, It’s just that the knowledge that
the team has gained here is immense!
Endearment of us
Lucideus is a perfect blend of vertical and horizontal structures of an organisation.
It motivates everyone to follow the culture of tapping into the creativity and
imagination which empowers us to do the job without micromanagement. The managers
are always keen to empower the employees by removing any barriers that may exist
between the executive level and staff level. Although some of the executive level officers
have to sit in a closed door space but they are as approachable as the next person
sitting beside you. All of us can and many of us do drop in a message to Saket Modi
even for the slightest problem for help and he encourages everyone to do the same
even after being flooded with the work and responsibilities.
Everywhere I look in the office I find a smarter and equally if not more capable
person which really depicts the vision of Saket for the company and the effort put in
by the recruiters. The combination of surrounding smart people and open door
policy helps in sharing thoughts, ideas, proposals, grievances, however small they may be.
Kick the Comfort zone out the window
Contrary to most beliefs where everybody likes to be in a comfort zone, I always try
to stay away from it because I feel that comfort zone puts a stop in self development
and growth. I’d be lying if I said that I was surprised to know that so many people working
in Lucideus have the same mindset about the comfort zone. It actually was one of the
reasons why I joined the company.
Even though I’m a developer in research team, I was asked by Vidit Baxi, Co-founder
of Lucideus, to go to Mumbai and help ECS in the source code review of a project
from a hacker’s perspective despite the fact that I wasn’t a hacker. I grabbed that
opportunity of doing something new. Luckily, I had just completed my grade 1 LCSP course
which is one of the very informative courses offered by the Training department. I’ll have to
say the source code review helped me more than the help I offered the ECS team. Although,
it may not be the best example of getting out of comfort zone but it sure was one amongst
the first of many such more opportunities to come.
My journey with Lucideus may just be one year short but the experiences with everyone
whether good or bad, during work or at parties feel like a lifetime of memories I’d like
to cherish.
Article Link: https://blog.lucideus.com/2019/05/the-progression-with-lucideus.html