Thejesh GN » ask-thej

Technology or Management?

Thejesh GN — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 16:40:45 +0000

Engineering until IT came into India was completely *technical*. I have not seen any engineer of my fathers generation doing *only* managerial work. There used to be project managers then too, but they used be part time managers and full time technicians.

With IT boom in India, we got a new breed of managers. IT-Managers or so called PMs, SPMs etc. I am not going get into their job profile or their job description but all I want to say is they were different from previous managers we had seen in *technology* field.

In this setup, natural progression for every developer was to, turn into manager after x years. But there were anomalies in the system all the time. They were always confused..

Thejesh, Good morning, this is Sathya, I am a frequenter to your blog, well, i think i can pose you one question which has been boggling me from the past one year…of course don’t be particular about that one year. any way, my doubt is , while opting for a career, should we chose technology or domain.
hmm, let me make it clear, i have 4 + exp development related exp in Java platform, and basically i like technology, find pleasure in coding. But off late, i often hear people say, coding or technology can be laid hands by anyone, if u need to grow up , u need to learn the domain. And now i am confused, while opting for a job, should i focus on the domain or functional aspects of a job or the technology involved in it?
Hope u got my confusion…
awaiting ur reply
Sathya

Reading this message I went three years back in my life. I was exactly at the same position. I was not sure of what to do. But after few sleepless nights I decided to be an engineer of my father’s generation. I am not really sure from the career point of view if my decision was correct or wrong. But I am happy.

What makes it a successful career?
I equate success with happiness. Hence what makes you happy at work? Is it the money? growth? day today work? or the challenges you enjoy to face?
Just make sure you are clear on this. You might have to make compromises on some of them for your main objective. If you love technology then go for it but if you love people management then that’s the area for it. Where ever you are remember, happiness brings success. I was dead sure that my *day to day* work, means to me a lot than growth or money. So I choose my happiness – programming.

“technology can be laid hands by anyone”
That somebody is absolutely wrong here. Don’t listen to the view of the mob they are usually wrong. Programming just like any other skill can be practiced but to be the best, you need something more than practice. According to me programming is a mindset. How not everybody can become a musician? not every can become a programmer. So don’t worry about becoming irrelevant.

At the EOD choose the field were you will be happy on everyday basis. Success, money, growth, I am sure will follow it.

I guess this pretty much applies to any body in any area. What say?

Ask Thej: How do you manage your time ?

Thejesh GN — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 07:53:53 +0000

My time friend Hari has been asking this question since long time. Hence I chose his question as my first question in Ask Thej.
Hari Asks How is that you manage a big job at Infy and still make it to all adventure and tours abroad. Is there a secret behind this effectiveness and management of time. I would surely like to know.
Hari there are two parts to this question. 1. How do I manage my regular day. 2.How do I get leaves for the travel. My regular week roughly looks something like this.

As you can the amount time I spend in traffic is very less compared other city dwellers. As you can see we spend most of our time either sleeping or working. It becomes very important to enjoy both of these else 2/3 of your life is spent in misery.
This year I have decided to reduce my sleeping duration by one hour (i.e from 8hrs to 7hrs). Which gives extra seven hours per week or around 40 working days. I am thinking about investing this time in cooking. I would suggest you to plan your day very meticulously. At this age your body doesn’t need much rest ( other than regular sleep). If you need break in between the work change the work.

This plan doesn’t apply when I am traveling (usually alone) or on vacation (Family). It kind of works as both resting time and following your personal interest. Every time I come back from a vacation I start working towards the next.

Taking a decent enough break from work needs planning. I usually take a week off every quarter and more in December. When taking off I usually plan it in advance and inform (get it approved) my seniors in advance. Which makes it easy for them to include my vacation in their plans. Being first also helps you in getting upper hand when your and your team mates holidays collide. In India usually vacation is not taken seriously. It is also very important to display seriousness about your holidays. I usually resist changes and doesn’t like to get disturbed. It is very important to set this expectation with your seniors and colleagues.

When applying make sure that you choose the week which has more public holidays. Here again advance planning is very necessary.Planning in advance also helps in saving money specially since you are traveling during the busy season.

Another way of planning is to plan it during the off-season. When I am traveling alone I usually prefer off-season as I can explore the places at my own speed. It actually depends on the place you want to visit. Like I would like to go to Goa during Xmas but to Hampi during off season.

I hope I have answered your question. Let me know in the comments if you still want to know something.

Ask Thej – My New Blogging Experiment

Thejesh GN — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 09:29:57 +0000

Ask Thej is my new experiment where my blog readers can ask anything and I will try to answer their question (or will direct to somebody). You can ask any question from travel, technology, Java, GPS etc etc. I will try to answer them.I will pick up and answer them in a blog post tagged with Ask Thej. Of course your question and my answer are creative common licensed. Please leave your blog url so I can credit your question. Welcome to the new experiment. Happy asking :)

Go ahead be the first one to Ask Thej