Career Growth

I never gave a serious thought to this but very recently I bumped into an informal meeting in my office that made me put my thoughts down. There were these guys who were chatting up about what a career path would be for techincal writers. Well, I joined in give my perpective from software engineer point of view. A normal career path would be to go through the rungs of the proffesional ladder. Each rung has a designation to it. We would spend sometine on each of the rung before moving onto the next. Each step has a corresponding responsibility and compensation package. Some climb it faster others at their own pace. Is this what is known as career path? Well may be.

I choose a sligthly different definition for myself. All of us start as beginers, we slowly get to know the trade and then we begin to master it. Once we have mastered in terms of quality, we try to master it in terms of quantity and time.Now we are delivering at 1x, 100% of our capability at that level. Then what? It is then that we move on to the next significant role of a senior, a coach or a manager. Transfer your knowledge to another, bring him( or her) to a level where they can take care of the micro level things and you move to the stage of looking at the macros of an issue. This would also involve assigning, discussing, analyzing and checking what others are doing. The combinged productivity would be >1x. You being the brain behind the activities. The challenge is to maintain the same (if not better) quality of work. If there are 'n' number of people in your project then your cumulative output should be close to 'nx'. Ideally nx.And once you have mastered things at this level, you move onto take much larger issues or a larger chunck of the same task. This was my point of view.

One of the guys pointed out that there could be more creative or talented guys in the team. Are you limiting their ability to 'x'? Hmm.... may yes, may be no. Software is different from tech writing. Software though being creative, ironically requries a lot of discipline. Discipline in planning, designing and coding. Just being creative is not enough, ensuring that implementation is in line with the requirements is mandatory and this requires discipline. And definetly, working with more talented people gives you a better perpective, enabling you to up your original '1x'. The challenge is to continually grow internally, designations are an external validation. For some lucky few oppurtunites, to grow, comeby and they fill into it, others have to make their oppurtunities.
(The image is IP of the owner company that can be obtained by clicking the link)

I thought I was the only one...

We all think we are unique. Actually we are. But come think of it that in the multitude of people, there would definetely be someone like us. Someone who can really think like us. Some one who has the same ideals same views. Hard to believe ? But certainly there would be someone. Being a chess player I came across several individuals who would think in the same way I do. Agreed that chess has a limited set of rules and a limited set of options in a given scenario, but life ? Can anyone think about life in the same way ? Given the diversity of the background, the education, the environment ? quite unlikely? I dont know. I hear about teams working together as a group of friends towards a common target and experiencing a 'kick' together, may be they are similar. But still would they have similar ideals? May be they have similar goals but not ideals or views on life. But I have not seen or met any such team.

Today, I was pleasantly surprised to meet someone who actually did the things and holds some of the same views on life. Ashamed to admit that this person is far younger to me :). And that I had other priorites at that age !! All the more reason to be surprised becos I consider myself to be more of a heavily bottom line driven, closer to reality type conservative optimist :D with more emphasis towards the character ethic than personality ethic. Phew ! I never thought I could describe myself ;-)

I was reading a book that precisely decribes this and that character ethic in the long run would pay. Its the cake and the personality ethic is the iceing on top of it. Iceing is definetly sweet, but cake fills your belly and leaves you contended. Well, those are words. I did realize the importance of them but did not believe in them completely, but then having this "someone" also in the same line of thought and as a succesfull live example, is definetely making me recollect those lines and more so giving me courage to think differently, be what I am and to think that I am not alone in thinking so ! There are other "heavily bottom line driven, closer to reality type conservative optimists" in this world. Anyone else out there ?

Just as an anti climax, cant refuse this last tidbit
Heard that genetically speaking Chimps are 99.5% close to humans and there is asingle chromosome that sperates them from us :D