From Disillusion to Solution - Part one

From Disillusion to Solution - Part one (Aug 20)

I brainstormed a lot during last weekend. I was wondering about what needs to be done as far as my career is concerned. Do I want to do an MBA? Should I do an MBA? Do I want to blindly follow my heart and get into teaching? Do I want to continue the way my life is going? Do I believe that I am a fit for IT industry? Should I quit the industry? What should be my game plan for next few years? Should I take up teaching? Too many questions were there. But it feels cool to eventually come up with answers. So in this article I am going to talk about my career plan;

First thing first- Why I don’t think that I am very happy right now?

The work that I am doing right now does not have bright future. I am not specializing in anything. I am working on COLDFUSION and SQL as front end and back end technology respectively. Well this might seem a very normal case for any IT person. But catch is that the project is maintenance and the kind of work that I do doesn’t allow me to learn more than what is required for the project. It’s more of a bug fixing, converting front-end codes into PL-SQL format, migrating an application from COLDFUSION 5 to COLDFUSION 7 etc. Now the management is pushing me into ENDECA search engine. I think I will be stuck with it for some time now. The time that a fresher might take to even start liking any particular technology is pretty less. Amidst all this there are also certain configuration tasks and other project related tasks. I may be a great boon for people working in my team, but being jack of all and master of none is not going to take me too far.

Why Teaching?

Since last 4-5 years I have realized that I am quite creative. I believe it’s a boon that I have and there is no better way to use my creative skills than by using these skills to convey concepts to young children. The educational system that I have come through never prompted me to think. It was more like a spoon-feeding. Though engineering was different, school life was very simple. Now-a-days the pressure on young kids to perform is very high. Coaching classes have become massive businesses. Parents are prepared to grill their kids. There is hardly any time to play for kids. I don’t know how the next generation is going to be. I mean it will be sharper, smarter, and ready for competition but I am not sure if it will create any new things or make new inventions. It will still follow the same old paths. There is a huge desire in me to make some contribution.




Why I can’t teach at this point in time?

I realize that to even become a good teacher, I need to specialize in one particular thing. I don’t see any value addition to any one if I get into teaching. Neither do I have tremendous knowledge nor any massive skill set. When I feel that I am confident enough and when I feel that I have enough patience and when I feel that now I have enough knowledge, perhaps I can take that step. Perhaps being qualified (B.E), can give me that edge.