Syed Tauseef Tanweer on the importance of people who inspire continuous learning

In the tech start-up world, longevity can be uncommon. Yet at Cohesity, Syed Tauseef Tanweer, a Staff Engineer based in Bangalore, India, has remained dedicated to his role and the company’s mission for the past six and a half years. In this Cohesity Career Story, Tauseef shares his personal and professional interests and what inspired his commitment to growing alongside Cohesity as a company.

What do you like to do outside of work?

I have been a professional table tennis player since childhood, so I usually attend my academy on weekends to play table tennis. And also, if possible, I find time to play football. My father was an amazing football player so I sort of inherited that from him.

Why did you join Cohesity?

After I graduated, I started at a company called Citigroup. After two years, I was feeling the need to learn and develop more. So, one of my mentors introduced me to the world of freelancing for small companies. I then found out about Cohesity and saw that they were looking for a full-stack engineer for the Bangalore office. But the reason I joined Cohesity was not really for the company itself, but for the people. When I looked at the people working at Cohesity, I instantly recognized that they would be the best mentors I could get in the industry. I felt like the people at Cohesity were the kind of people I want to work with and learn from.

What keeps you at Cohesity?

There are a few key things that matter to me. First is the kind of work that I’m doing. What I’ve realized about myself is that if I am not building something new or not learning something new, I am not satisfied. At Cohesity, I have the opportunity to learn every day. Second is the people that I work with. Here, I was able to find people I could get mentorship from, or at least learn something in bits and pieces. And third, I think most people don’t say this, but compensation is important. Good work, good people—all of that matters, and so does being rewarded fairly.

How has Cohesity changed over the past 6+ years?

The pace at Cohesity has changed over time. In the past, we were sort of just trying to get to the finish line first and with the most aggressive velocity. As the company and the team have grown, that pace has shifted. Today, we are more concerned with what we are giving to the customers and how good the product actually is. To me, this was a very important shift that we had to make.

Because of that growth over the years, we’ve had the ability to hire many different people with different capabilities and characteristics. From this, we have evolved as a team by learning how to work together and understanding each other’s different ways of working.

One thing that I’ve seen Cohesity not changing which is a very good thing is hiring brilliant people across all verticals. It’s very difficult to have good people working in a company for so long.

How has your career evolved at Cohesity?

I joined as a full stack engineer and started working on both the back end and front end. When I joined I only knew how to code things, I did not have the customer empathy. I did not know what product to make, what the UX should be like, or how to scale things. I never thought about cost when building a product six years ago. I’ve learned the art of thinking about what the customer might want which is crucial.

What about Cohesity’s future excites you the most?

There are two things that I am excited about. First is Cohesity’s increased role in data security along with Gaia, our AI-powered enterprise search assistant. The second thing is definitely our merger with Veritas. Veritas has a good amount of very loyal customers, who are not ready to go to another vendor. So I think it’s going to be challenging and interesting as to how we merge their platform into ours in terms of technology and customer base.

Can you share a favorite Cohesity memory?

When I joined Cohesity, I think it was our first year-end annual party and we had about 20 or 30 people in the Bangalore office. We were made into groups of five, and one person from each group had to dress up using newspapers. That for me was probably my favorite Cohesity memory. It was really fun! Some of my other favorite memories so far have been, football matches and table tennis tournaments. Those have been great!

Anything else you would like to share?

One important thing that I have learned in Cohesity has been to keep my head down and just keep learning. I think we often understate the “be humble and learn” mentality that we have. Most of the people that I have worked with, when I’ve gone to them with questions, they’ve taken time to help me understand, even if it’s a very silly question to them. What Cohesity has taught me is that you will always find people who are better than you or faster than you and you have to be very humble, modest, and just keep going. It’s something that I value a lot.