I Never Stopped Working: How I Built The Moms Desk While Raising Two Daughters

I want to be honest about something most career guides won’t say clearly: the hardest part isn’t the skills gap. It’s the fear that once you step back — even slightly — you won’t find your way forward again.

I knew that fear. I made a decision not to let it win.

This is the real story of how I built The Moms Desk. Not a template. Not generic advice. My actual path, in the order it actually happened.

Why I refused to stop

When my first daughter was young, I looked at the future and felt something specific: not burnout, not frustration with my employer — but a quiet dread about disappearing from my field.

I had worked hard to build something. A degree, real experience, technical skills that took years to develop. The idea of watching all of that fade while my children grew up — and then finding myself without a career once they no longer needed me the same way — stayed with me. Kids grow. They become independent. And if I had given up everything by then, what would I have left?

But there was something else driving me, something I think about often.

I wanted my daughters to see something specific when they looked at my life. I wanted them to know — not as advice, but as evidence — that you don’t have to choose. That career, home, children, and family can all be managed together. If I had walked away from my career and they asked me one day, “Why should I study hard when I’ll have to sacrifice my career anyway?” I wanted to be able to say: No. I didn’t. You don’t have to either. Here’s proof.

That’s a different motivation from ambition. It’s responsibility — to myself and to them.

Before freelancing: GlobalLogic, Honeywell, and the pregnancy that changed everything

I built my career the conventional way. I joined GlobalLogic in Noida after completing my education. Real company, real QA work, growing steadily in a structured environment.

Then I got married and relocated to Bangalore. I found a position at Honeywell — another step forward, better work, continued growth.

Then my pregnancy became complicated. Not in a “slow down a little” way. In a “you need to stop” way. That wasn’t a choice I made carefully after weighing pros and cons. It was a medical reality that left me with no other option.

I left my job at Honeywell.

But I want to be clear about what that meant to me: leaving a job is not the same as leaving a career. I had no intention of treating it that way. What I needed was a different path to the same destination.

The first dollar: uTest and 0.facebook.com

I found uTest.com — a crowdsourced testing platform where real testers work on real products and get paid in real money. The model appealed to me immediately. I didn’t need to be hired by a company. I just needed to find the work and do it well.

One of the first projects I tested was 0.facebook.com — Facebook’s lightweight version, built for low-bandwidth devices and emerging markets. I tested it across every free simulator and emulator I could find on the internet: different devices, different browsers, different network conditions. I researched tools, downloaded what I needed, and got to work from home.

When the payment arrived in dollars, I remember exactly how it felt. It wasn’t a large amount. But it confirmed something I had been quietly worried about: the skill was still there. It transferred. It was worth something internationally, delivered from my home, on my schedule.

That was the starting point.

oDesk — the platform that eventually became Upwork

From uTest I discovered oDesk, which is what Upwork was called in those early years. I created my profile, sat their skills examination, and achieved TOP 5% status on the platform. I also completed my ISTQB certification around this time — not only for the credential, but because working through it helped me articulate, clearly and professionally, exactly what I knew about software testing.

Then came the hard part: applying for work.

In those early days, oDesk had no email notifications for new messages. If a client replied to your proposal or sent a question, you only found out by logging into the platform yourself. I checked constantly — first thing in the morning, last thing at night, and at every opportunity in between. It sounds excessive. It was what the situation required.

For months, nothing significant came through.

I kept going. I studied the proposals that other testers were sending. I refined my own — moved away from generic lists of skills and toward writing directly about the client’s specific problem. The early applications were too formal, too safe. I learned that clients on oDesk weren’t reading CVs; they were asking: does this person understand what I actually need?

That took time to figure out. But I kept applying.

The first real contract: Elma, a Joomla application, and a review that meant everything

After many months — not a few, many — I received my first proper contract on oDesk. A client who needed a Joomla-based web application tested properly: functional testing, edge cases, structured reports delivered in a format a developer could act on.

I worked on that project for several months. I learned how to communicate across time zones entirely in writing. I learned what international clients expected from bug reports and test documentation. I delivered consistently, and the client continued the engagement.

When the contract ended, my first client — Elma, based in the US — left this review on my profile:

“Shalini is very easy to work with and very professional. She gives constructive advices to the project. I recommend her to future QA jobs.”

I read that review many times in the days that followed. Not from vanity — from relief. It confirmed that the approach was right, the quality was there, and this path was real.

The fraud client: a month of unpaid work and what it taught me

Not every engagement went that way. I should tell you about the one that didn’t.

One client contracted me for a full month of testing work. I delivered everything agreed. Then they stopped responding. The payment never came.

I lost that month’s income. I’m not going to minimise that. But in every contract that followed, I understood exactly how to protect myself — how Upwork’s payment protection works, the difference between hourly and fixed-price risk, how to use milestones for larger pieces of work. That client cost me a month. They also gave me years of protection without realising it.

It was a hard lesson. It was also a useful one.

From one contract to many

After Elma’s project, the work built gradually and then quickly. New clients. Referrals from clients who were happy with the work. Higher-complexity projects. A profile that was earning its own credibility.

Every contract made the next one a little easier. Every good review reduced the friction of the next proposal. The compounding effect of early, consistent, quality work is not something I understood when I started — but it became the single most important force in building the business.

By the time I had worked with clients across the US, UK, Australia, and Europe, I had more than 200 contracts behind me. The work had crossed SaaS platforms, mobile applications, payment systems, AI features, and entire product launches.

2019: The Moms Desk

In 2019, I made a deliberate decision.

I kept meeting women who were exactly where I had been at the beginning of this journey. Qualified, experienced, technically capable — and completely unsure how to convert any of that into consistent paid work while managing real life alongside it.

I started The Moms Desk because I had something useful to offer them: not advice from a book, but a path I had actually walked.

The name is intentional. The desk is the space you carve out in the middle of everything else — the early mornings, the quiet hours after the children are asleep, the focused windows in an otherwise full day. That’s where this career was built. That’s where others can build theirs.

I also want to acknowledge my husband here, because leaving him out would make this story dishonest. There were things I couldn’t manage alone — practically, logistically, and sometimes emotionally. He stepped in wherever I was lacking, without making it a negotiation. This journey was mine, but it wasn’t only mine.

What I’d say to someone standing where I was

The path from “I have to figure this out” to “I have a functioning freelance career” is not short. The first months on oDesk were genuinely difficult. I sent proposals that went nowhere. I refined my approach without any feedback. I made expensive mistakes and learned from them slowly.

But the core skills — the technical knowledge, the judgment built from years of real work, the ability to communicate clearly about what’s broken and why — none of that disappears because you’re not in an office. It’s there. It’s transferable. It’s worth real money internationally, delivered remotely, on terms that work for your actual life.

If you have that foundation and you’re trying to figure out how to get back to using it, the question isn’t whether you can. The question is only where to start.

If you want a realistic conversation about that — not coaching, just an honest exchange from someone who has done it — reach out.