Tech-017: Stepping into enterprise

When I first joined ESS (Education Software Solutions), they were already in the process of being acquired by ParentPay. At first, life felt much like any other mid-sized software house. But about six months in, the acquisition really started to bite — and that’s when the corporate machine began to reshape everything ...

Overnight, the scale changed. ESS wasn’t just ESS anymore; it was part of ParentPay Group (PPG) — a full-blown enterprise spanning multiple countries and product lines. Suddenly I wasn’t just working with one or two teams, but part of a structure that now consisted of 14 teams, each focused on their own product areas.

I set to work analysing the new Azure cloud infrastructure, reviewing CI/CD pipelines, and understanding the stack of tools that PPG’s growing teams relied upon.

In Pune, India, PPG had just established new offices. Mayura, the tech lead there, headed up a team of developers and DevOps engineers. For me, it was the first time experiencing a multicultural environment at true enterprise scale.

And here’s the lesson I didn’t expect:

to grow my career, I couldn’t just focus on learning the tech. I also had to learn the people.

That meant figuring out how to bridge cultural differences, manage timezone hurdles, and get the most out of worldwide remote meetings. Sometimes that meant early mornings; other times it meant late-night calls. But it always meant listening, adapting, and learning how people worked best.

Closing

It was a different kind of challenge — not about code, pipelines, or infrastructure, but about collaboration, empathy, and communication. In hindsight, those lessons were just as important to my growth as any technical skill. Learning people and culture became as essential to my DevOps journey.

Not purely technical, but deeply human. And mastering it would become just as important to my career as any line of code or pipeline I ever wrote.