TABLE OF CONTENTS
"Honestly, she just didn't feel like a new joiner. Most people take time to settle in, but Sujitha was already going through the codebase and asking questions from day one.
You give her something and you can just forget about it, it'll be done right. She thinks through every edge case, every structure, before she even starts writing code.
But what's really stood out lately is she's started thinking beyond just her own tasks, stepping outside the individual contributor mindset and looking at the bigger picture.
She's the kind of person the team depends on without even realising it."
- Atul Lal, Engineering Lead, GobbleCube
Atul said you went through the entire codebase on day one. Is that true?
(Laughs).. I mean, yes. But it wasn’t some power move. It was pure panic.
This was my first startup though. Before GobbleCube, I was at Sprinkler, and that was a very different pace. Here, Atul had my entire setup ready by the time I sat down. Access, codebase, everything. So I thought I’d spend the first day watching HR videos and figuring out where the coffee is.
By evening, I had the first task.
I wasn't prepared for that speed. So I just started reading everything I could, not because I was confident, but because I was terrified of being the person who slows everyone down.
What were those first few days actually like?
Honestly, the first week wasn't stressful-stressful. But there was this constant low hum of fear.
Everyone around me was moving so fast. And I'm basically a fresher, right? So my head was just full of: "What if they think I'm too slow? What if I can't keep up?"
Atul was my buddy from day one. I sat next to him and just asked question after question after question. I'm pretty sure I irritated him, but he never showed it. (He says he wasn't. I don't fully believe him.)
But what helped was that nobody treated me like a newbie. There was no hand-holding, but also no pressure: just this implicit trust that said, "here's the work, figure it out." And somehow, that made me want to figure it out even more.
You mentioned you came from electrical engineering, not computer science. How did you even end up in software?
So I'm from South India, and where I studied, coding just wasn't part of the school curriculum. At all. I walked into my B.Tech not knowing what a programming language looked like.
And then I see my classmates, mostly guys, and almost all of them already knew how to code. They'd been doing it since 11th, 12th. Some even earlier. First year, they're breezing through labs, and I'm sitting there thinking, "Why didn't anyone teach me this before?"
Out of around 110 people in electrical engineering, only about 20-30 were women. And most of us were starting from zero.
So what made you stick with it?
Honestly? Watching them.
I saw how quickly they picked things up, and something just clicked in me. More like, "If they can do it, there's no reason I can't."
It wasn't some grand passion moment. I didn't dream of being a software engineer as a kid. It was more stubbornness than anything. I just refused to accept that I couldn't learn this.
My mom tells me I've been like this since I was a child. Apparently, if I couldn't write a single alphabet properly, I'd throw a full tantrum. Not because I was upset, because I wasn't done trying. If something seems hard, something in me just locks in harder.
So I practised. A lot. Slowly, it stopped being scary and started being interesting. And by the time placements came around, I knew, this is what I'm going to do.
You mentioned that stubbornness. Did it show up at GobbleCube too - was there a moment where it really got tested?
Oh, yes. Pretty early on, actually.
A colleague named Palash was working on our cataloguing project and he left shortly after I joined. The work got handed to me - mid-flight. Code I didn't write. Context I didn't have. And there was a deadline. Four days.
Those four days were genuinely stressful. Not the fun kind. This was "I need to prove I belong here" stress.
But I crossed it. And something shifted after that.
It wasn't dramatic. I didn't have some big realisation. It was more like the fear just... got quieter. I stopped thinking "can I do this?" and started thinking "okay, what's next?"
Atul said something interesting, that you don't just jump into code. You think through every edge case before you start building. Is that how you've always been?
No, I actually learned that here. From Atul, specifically.
Early on, he showed me something that changed how I think about my job: as a frontend developer, nobody interacts with the product more than you do. You're staring at it every day, every minute. You're building it screen by screen.
So when someone hands you a task, you can't just treat it like a ticket to close. You have to ask - what's the user going to experience? What could go wrong? What did the person who wrote this spec maybe not think about?
I stopped building features. I started building experiences.
There was this one incident that really drilled it in. We'd built a sign-up and onboarding flow - users enter their brand details, get a 7-day free trial dashboard. Looked great on our screens.
Then we deployed it.
Complaints started flooding in within two days. Turns out, on smaller laptop screens, the terms and conditions checkbox was getting pushed below the fold. Completely hidden. And because users couldn't check the box, the sign-up button wouldn't enable. They were stuck on page one.
We scrambled - fixed the UI across every screen width as fast as we could. Manas jumped in too. It was all hands on deck.
And after that, I became the person who says, "Can we test this on local first? On every breakpoint?" Some people find it excessive. I just don't want to risk it.
As a woman in tech, what's one piece of advice you'd give to a young woman considering a career in STEM right now?
Don't be scared. Genuinely. That's it.
I know it sounds simple, but I lived that fear. I was the girl who didn't know what coding was when everyone around her already did. And the temptation is to tell yourself you're not cut out for it. That may be this isn't your space.
It is. You just need time and practice. That's literally all it takes.
And look, with AI changing how we write code, the real edge isn't syntax anymore. Anyone can write code now. What makes you irreplaceable is understanding why you're building what you're building.
Understand the product. Understand the business objective behind every feature. Don't just build something because someone told you to — understand what it does for the person using it.
Also, once you're in a team — just ask for help. Seriously. I was so scared of looking stupid in the beginning. But every single teammate, regardless of gender, will help you if you just ask. Don't sit with your doubts. Say them out loud.
Okay, enough work. When you clock out, who even are you?
I'm a TFI banisalu. That's Telugu for "Telugu Film Industry slave." My friends and I watch every movie that releases, doesn't matter if it's Telugu, Hindi, English, Malayalam, Tamil. If it's in a theatre, we're there.
We have full-blown debates about heroes and directors. If one of my friends has a favourite actor, we will drag that conversation for hours. It's very serious. (It's not serious at all.)
Other than that — I eat dessert almost every other day. Brownie is number one. Then cookies. Then ice cream. And if you ever get a chance to try Puran Poli — or as we call it in my house, Bobbatlu — please do. It's elite.
I'm also weirdly good at rummy. Like, actually good. Poker too, but rummy is my thing. And foosball at the office. And on weekends, my main plan is going to my friend's house and eating their food for free. That's the hobby. That's the whole hobby.
Oh, and my comfort show is Modern Family. But my recent obsession is Succession. I love Roman. And I hate Greg. He's funny, I'll give him that. But he plays both sides and I just can't with him.
Since this is part of our "SuperWomen of GobbleCube" series — who's the SuperWoman in your life?
My mother. Without even thinking.
I told you about the alphabet tantrums, right? Here's the part I didn't say — she never once told me to stop. She never said "it's fine, move on." She just sat with me. Every single time. And helped me get it right. Again and again and again.
That patience became my foundation. Not just for work — for everything. The reason I can sit with a codebase I don't understand and not panic? The reason I can take on something I've never done and just… figure it out? That comes from her.
She taught me that not knowing something isn't a reason to give up. It's just a reason to sit with it a little longer.
And honestly, that's the only career advice that has ever actually mattered.