1.5 Years at Media.net: My Journey, Challenges, and Growth
A reflection on my 1.5-year journey at Media.net—challenges, growth, and unforgettable experiences.
My 1.5-Year Journey at Media.net 🖥️🚀
Hi folks! 👋 29th November 2024 marked my last day as a Web Application Developer at Media.net. In this blog, I want to take you through my incredible journey—filled with ups, downs, and valuable experiences—over the past 1.5 years. 🚀✨
Joining Media.net with the 2k23 Batch 🚪
So here’s the story ⏳— back in 2023, I joined Media.net along with 34 other freshers in our batch. That’s right, 35 of us! 😄
Our first month was all about training. 📚 They gave us an overview of the core technologies and platforms widely used at Media.net. The best part? The people training us were not just mentors; they were developers themselves (the very same people we’d eventually work with!). They were super friendly, approachable, and ridiculously intelligent. 🧠💡
The First Team: Header Bidding 👩💻
After the training ended, I was assigned to the Header Bidding team, along with 8 freshers from our batch. Now, for those scratching their heads and wondering, what the heck is Header Bidding? 🤔 Let me break it down:
Header Bidding is a way of optimizing ad revenue. Essentially, all you need to do is add a small script in the <head> tag of your HTML and define ad slots where you want the ads to appear. After that? MAGIC! 🪄✨ The script handles client-side auctions with bidders bidding for ad slots. More info here.
My First Task: JWT Middleware 🔑
And then came my very first task! 💪 The task involved Golang—we had public endpoints exposed via a public IP, and the goal was to secure these routes using a middleware with JWT (JSON Web Token). Only requests with valid tokens could access the endpoints—I guess you could call it gatekeeping! 🛜🔐
Because it was my first task, we worked on it as pair programming, which was a massive learning opportunity. 🙌 It wasn’t just about coding either; at Media.net, we followed the complete development pipeline:
▶ Designing the Tech Doc 📄
▶ Writing the code 💻
▶ Dev testing 🔍
▶ Code reviews ✅
▶ QA handover 👨💻
▶ Deploying with Jenkins 🚀
▶ Monitoring feature with analytics tools 📊
This process taught me so much! I felt like my learning curve was on maximum++. 📈
Taking on Bigger Things 💼
After the completion of my first task, I was handed a bunch of larger, more complex tasks. 😯 This was where the real learning began. Since the Header Bidding team has tons of sub-projects, I got the chance to contribute to all of them. 🛠️ It was incredibly fulfilling and exciting as each task pushed my technical limits.
First Team Outing: Gokarna 🌅
After about four months in, our team planned a much-needed outing to Gokarna. 🏖️ Alongside loads of fun and relaxation, we also connected with our Bengaluru team members. Meeting everyone face-to-face gave us stronger personal and professional bonds. What a blast! 🎉
Here’s a sneak peek from the trip:
Breaking Production (Oops! 😅)
No journey is complete without a bit of drama, right? 💥 Let me share my not-so-glorious “breaking production” moment.
One fateful day, I broke our production code, which caused a 6-7 hour outage. 😱 Luckily, the impact was limited only to the analytics platform, so there were no revenue hits (phew!) 💨. Although messing up felt bad initially, I eventually bounced back stronger and quickly resolved the issue. 💪
Second (Major) Incident: Debugging at Scale 🔍🔥
Fast forward a few months, I rolled out a major upgrade, and this time the code broke at a greater scale. 😬 Multiple customers reported several issues. I was only given one week to analyze, debug, and fix them all. 😵💫 And guess what? I fixed them (almost all, except one tricky bug which was unsolvable due to some constraints), deployed it again, and thought my troubles were over.
But nope! 🙈 That same evening around 7 PM, the Product Manager came to inform me that the same bug had occurred. Instead of panicking, I decided not to revert the code and sat down to debug in production itself. 🛠️ It was a tough call, but eventually, I figured out the issue, resolved it, and this earned me appreciation from seniors and colleagues. 🏆
Second Team Outing: Igatpuri Villa 🏡✨
After months of hard work, another team outing was planned, this time in Igatpuri (Nashik). 🏞️ We booked a stunning private villa, spent quality time together, partied, and made lifelong memories. What a perfect way to rejuvenate! 😊
The Final Chapter: Resignation 💔
After 1.5 years at Media.net, I decided it was time to move on. Looking back, my journey has been nothing short of transformative:
- 100+ Merge Requests
- 10+ Projects
- 2 Major Incidents
- 2 Team Outings
- And countless memories made along the way 🌟
As I close this chapter, I can confidently say:
“1.5 saal kaam kiya… mazza aa gaya! 😄”
In Retrospect 🪞
Media.net has been an incredible chapter of my professional journey. I learned not just how to write better code but how to take ownership of projects, design scalable systems, and deal with challenges under pressure. More importantly, I got to work with some of the most talented and supportive colleagues. 👏✨
Thank you for reading—if you made it this far, you’re amazing! 🥳 Drop me a message if you have any questions or just want to chat about Header Bidding, GoLang, or life as a developer. 💬
Until next time, cheers! 🍻