sure
Posted by mansoor on 26 May 2007 | Tagged as: lifes anomaly's
When i was little, i was sure of what i would become. A computer programming guru. From the first moment i got a commodore 64 in my hands i knew my destiny was to be linked with it.
My life choices for the next decade was to reflect this surity. I got the unofficial title of ‘computer genious’ within the family and the community. In addition, I became the troubleshooter of choice to go to whenever someone had any troubles with their PC. This was even before i reached intermediate.
Then came the choice for university degree. Everyone around me entered in Computer Science because it was the ‘in thing’. For me, it was a natural continuation of my passion. I wanted to know what made a computer tick, and how could i make it dance to my tunes. So naturally, where many had to strive, to strugge and toil, i breezed through. Knowing a computer system was like knowing the back of my hand. It didn’t matter what language i was dealing with, whether it be Java, C or C++ it was just a different beat. I had the music down pat.
As i came closer to graduation however, that was when the unsurity crept in. For the first time in my life, i was unsure if being a programming guru was really what i wanted. I had seen greener pastures within the software industry. Suddenly, programming wasn’t the only thing which made a software development firm tick. It needed management! I started learning of all the computer projects which had failed over the years, massive ones, millions of dollars down the drain, all because they weren’t managed correctly. It occurred to me that it didn’t matter how good a programmer you were, eventually you would hit a ceiling if you didn’t have management skills. Till now, thats how the industry had functioned, they picked people from among the ranks, raised them up to titles of Team Lead or Project Manager and they assumed that these people had delivered enough projects to know how to manage. In time, you would gather enough knowledge to break the barrier into an architect or a consultant, into an area where knowledge was king and work involved passing the knowledge over. But this took almost 5 to 10 years!
I couldn’t wait that long, i wouldn’t wait that long. Why follow the trail left behind by others? In a seminar at the university i heard someone say, if you want to succeed in life, you had to make your own trail. I always wondered how one did that and i kept on wondering till i met the person who would change my life, once again.
He came in the form of a teacher, giving lessons in the art of Software Quality Assurance. From the first class i attended, i there was something about him, that he would give me the break i needed into making my career. Six months later, the break came. I went to him for a job and he hired me, as a process improvement consultant!
That day, i was sure i had started out on my destiny. I would be performing consulting work within the sphere of software process improvement. Today, i once again stand at an unsurity. Going further away from what i had intended, taking a step into a field which hasn’t even begun to take roots in the country.
Thats what life is, being un-sure at each and every instant, scrambling to bring it under control.
