How Deena rebooted her career after a burnout – Times of India

Deena Sawlani did BE in electronics from Mumbai University and went on to be a technologist with expertise in capital markets, working in the Indian arms of Lehman Brothers, JPMorgan, and Goldman Sachs. She developed products for these investment banks, including trading platforms. Her expertise was in utilising frameworks like Spring, Hibernate, and J2EE to create robust and scalable solutions.
In 2016, after 11 years of intense work, she felt burnt out.She quit her high-paying job, and started a fashion jewellery business. While she was running that business, she had a baby. The child became her priority, and she shut down the jewellery business. But that short startup experience had taught her to multitask, she learnt how the new economy worked, and how businesses look at money.
When her son turned 6 months, Deena began to feel the itch to get back to work. She started looking out for jobs at organisations that had programmes for women on a career break. The idea was to not be alone in rebooting her career. “When there are others in the same boat, there’s no stigma. Team members would be sensitised about our scenario. Processes are in place to train and ease people into a project,” Deena says.
Wells Fargo had such a programme, and it was right up her area of expertise. She applied and was selected. In the programme, she met other women returning from a break who would share their experiences and how they were coping. During the first month, Deena was asked to work only for 3 hours a day, which increased to 4 hours in the second month, and gradually to 8 hours.
“I wanted to test if my son could stay without me. The gradual increase in time at work helped me and my son. It gave me the confidence that I can manage work,” she says.
One of her former employers had also offered her a position, but since that would have meant a long commute to work, she declined the offer. Other companies she interviewed at were not willing to offer the flexibility that the Wells Fargo programme did. Most were also willing to offer only internships, which was a deal breaker for Deena.
At Wells Fargo, catching up on the technical side – developments she had missed during her break – wasn’t a big problem. “I work on Java. The only thing I need at any point in time is upskilling – like learning new Java frameworks and libraries, mastering technologies like microservices and cloud computing, improving proficiency in related languages and tools. I will never have a dearth of openings because Java will never be out of fashion. All I ask for is the opportunity to learn,” she says.
Deena got to know about the Wells Fargo programme through a former colleague. “It’s important to keep in touch with old colleagues, look up LinkedIn to understand what kind of programmes are available. And prepare a good resume,” she says.