Turning two

I have completed two years in the very much over-hyped IT industry today!!! I would be lying if I said that it was uneventful. When I look back in retrospect, it find that this industry has given me an opportunity to discover some things about myself that I never really knew! And it has paid me cash that at times I find is excessive! And of course it has given me ample opportunities to visit places!

To the outside world the IT industry is the most glamorous among all professional streams. But is it all that enthralling as it is made out to be. Maybe yes. You get paid quite a good amount. The work place is pretty luxurious. The facilities are appealing. All that needs to be done is sit in front of a computer and at times put your grey cells to some stress. Talk over the phone to foreigners, type emails, read forwards, have coffee, blame the food in the canteen, maybe play some games like TT or snooker and at the end of the day go home trying to beat the traffic. If you are smart enough then you will know how to talk to your managers, how to impress the right people, how to get work done, how to show that you are asset to the company, how to make yourself indisposible and soon land up in a promotion.

Stress is often said to be something that takes away the lives of professionals in the IT industry. But then I really do not agree to that. Stress and strain can be very much controlled by the individual and need not be left at the mercy of the company or for that matter, managers. Late working hours, back pain and the numerous ailments that have cropped up in the IT fraternity, imbalance in personal and work life and all the other stuff which have said to have taken away the lives of people in the IT industry . But then the industry alone is not to be blamed for all this. The individual has an equal responsibility.

Leaving aside all this, how do I feel after two years. Well I have learnt that I can do any job. Technical stuff is not something that I am really attracted to. Though people claim that I am supposed to be techincal proficient, I have always underplayed that aspect. I have been least bothered about coding and never thought of improving my domain knowledge. I have centered my work and activities purely around logic. And I have got good opportunities to put my problem solving and debugging skills to test. And I have also got good opportunities to understand if I have the capabilities to manage a project. I have been able to find out how an organisation works and how I would like to run it.

Maybe a couple of years more and then I guess it would be time to move on.......

pS : I really hope people following my footsteps, as claimed by a new reader (see comments section) have got enough motivation to join the industry!!! And getting comments on this and this post was really unexpected!!!