Steady state in Indian IT industry

I hear everybody talking about job switches, better salary and promotions. Today for my classmates at engineering, the buzzword is management. 'I've gotta grow. Its time I get to manage a few guys' is what they say. Though a few are confused and really don't know if they have to take up management now, they are pushed into that. They adapt!

Think about what is happening. Now with four years of engineering education (which in most of the cases did not give the required knowledge) and with approximately five years of industry experience, they want to get into management. Most of them just want to get in there without even a thought of what it takes to do justice to a management position. Once they get in there, they are sucked into a world of problems and they end up struggling with daily problems. How do you think they care about the future of their reporting employees? Poor guys, they can't even think of theirs. Now this is where it stands - they end up solving day-to-day problems and nothing more.

Thinking further, may be that is what is expected out of their role - just be a middle manager - manage what is present - don't mess it up. They are given a established setup where things work today. The job is to keep it working in the days to come. Growth is organic - add more folks to the working setup and sustain it.

When this process reaches a steady state, what happens? We have a lot of mere coders - engineers (by education) who write code to specifications - though thinking is not crime, nobody is motivated to think - the creative horses get interested in everything else but work etc. We have a lot of middle managers who can just keep things running so long as nothing changes drastically. This is the kind of ecosystem we are building today or is getting built today.

What if one of the variables leading to this steady state changes all of sudden? Do we have time to wake up? Do we have time to realize? Above all, do we have the people who can think and work differently?

Guys, wakeup. We need to build talent, we need to build entrepreneurs, we need to build people who can think and work in the changing world. We need engineers with experience who can solve engineering problems in the real world in the best possible way. We need engineers who can create a new design with all creative instincts. We need managers who stand on their feet firmly, manage their day and still have time to look into the future.

Maybe what appears to be reaching a steady state, should not.

The Ant and the Contact Lens

Long time since I posted something. When Cne forwarded this to me, I can't resist posting it. The best answer I've got to the question 'Why the hell do I have to do this?'. If you are one of them read on...

Brenda was a young woman who was invited to go rock climbing. Although she was very scared, she went with her group to a tremendous granite cliff. In spite of her fear, she put on the gear, took hold of the rope, and started up the face of that rock. Well, she got to a ledge where she could take a breather. As she was hanging on there, the safety rope snapped against Brenda's eye and knocked out her contact lens.

Well, here she is, on a rock ledge, with hundreds of feet below her and hundreds of feet above her. Of course, she looked and looked and looked, hoping it had landed on the ledge, but it just wasn't there.

Here she was, far from home, her sight now blurry. She was desperate and began to get upset, so she prayed to the Lord to help her to find it.
When she got to the top, a friend examined her eye and her clothing for the lens, but there was no contact lens to be found. She sat down, despondent, with the rest of the party, waiting for the rest of them to make it up the face of the cliff.

She looked out across range after range of mountains, thinking of that verse that says, "The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth." She thought, "Lord, You can see all these mountains. You know every stone and leaf, and You know exactly where my contact lens is. Please help me."

Finally, they walked down the trail to the bottom. At the bottom there was a new party of climbers just starting up the face of the cliff.
One of them shouted out, "Hey, you guys! Anybody lose a contact lens?"

Well, that would be startling enough, but you know why the climber saw it? An ant was moving slowly across the face of the rock, carrying it on it's back.

Brenda told me that her father is a cartoonist. When she told him the incredible story of the ant, the prayer, and the contact lens, he drew a picture of an ant lugging that contact lens with the words, "Lord, I don't know why You want me to carry this thing. I can't eat it, and it's awfully heavy. But if this is what You want me to do, I'll carry it for You."

Thanks Cne for passing this story on.