Security guard to Member of Technical Staff: Abdul Alim’s 12 years at Zoho

Abdul Alim has spent more than 12 years at Zoho Corporation, rising from a security guard role to Member of Technical Staff without ever holding a college degree, according to a LinkedIn post in which he shared his story.

Alim studied only until Class 10 before leaving home with Rs 1,000, nearly Rs 800 of which went toward a train ticket. After close to two months without steady work, he was hired as a security guard at Zoho’s Chennai office in 2013.

During his shifts, a senior employee named Shibu Alexis asked about his background and discovered he had learnt some basic HTML in school. Alexis began mentoring him in programming after his 12-hour security duties ended each day, a routine that continued for about eight months.

Alim eventually built a small application handling user input, which impressed Alexis enough to recommend him for a technical interview. Told that a degree was not required at Zoho and that skills mattered more, Alim cleared the interview and joined the company’s technical team as an Engineering Trainee in 2014, working his way up to his current role.