There was a time when we were fed, clothed and carried by our parents. We did not know what to do unless we were told to. Yes, we were infants, the innocent little monsters who would one day shape our country. The time then moved really fast and we reached a stage where we needed to be told what is right and what is wrong. We needed to be guided to choose what we wanted to study and that would eventually decide our career paths. Once we started working we felt like we were independent yet fully dependent on our inner circle.
After making all the life choices (or should I say, being guided to make the choices) I graduated in Information Science Engineering. And now I had 2 job offers to choose from. One was a development profile and other one was a testing profile. The choice would have been pretty obvious for anyone - development profile. But when I looked at the offer letters, the company with testing profile paid substantially more than the other company (also this company had no dress code and had the option to work from home). So I ended up as a tester. I observed that the developers in my company were focusing on a small component of the product where as as a tester I saw the big picture, had more things to work on and a lot to learn. I focused on improving myself technically and giving my best to my job, whereas most of my college batch mates were busy preparing for higher studies.
Peer pressure is common and I too would have been swayed into quitting my job and ending up in a grad school on the other side of the planet but my family circumstances did not give me that choice. But I had made up my mind to study more and the only way to do that was to do a work integrated course. So for 2 years, I slogged during the week and studied (sort off) during the weekend. I finally graduated with a MS degree in Software Engineering. By this time, the friends who did not end up in US were now changing jobs. They were bored of their job or were not satisfied with their pay. Either way everyone was preparing themselves again, this time for a new job.
Peer pressure is common (yes, I repeat) and I too started looking out. This time it was a more focused decision. With my job choice after engineering, I had already limited my domain to storage (SAN, NAS, Virtualization and all those buzz words) and had very little options in the job market. I have seen the worse of the corporate life with office politics and
layoffs, which seemed to be the case in all MNC's when I discussed with
my friends. So in the limited choices, finding a good start-up was going to be a challenge. But call it luck or fate, I got an interview call from a company that was a storage start-up based out of Canada and they were interested to have me as one of their first employees in the newly established Bangalore office. It was a company that was yet to make its presence felt in the industry and I had a choice to join them in this effort. Its been almost 10months since I made my choice and I couldn't have been more happier. I have all the space to learn and at the same time make a customer visible contribution.
I have reached a stage where I need to consider settling down. And when I mean settling down - owning a place of my own (you must have thought my marriage but yeah, that is on the top of my mom's list). I have not given it a thought yet but with this boom of eCommerce it must not be difficult to choose a dream home.
On a concluding note, I would say that life gives you a lot of choices. It is like the blue pill red pill selection in the movie Matrix. I am sure at least a few of you will be able to relate to my life story above and even if you cannot relate I think you would agree that the choices you make end up giving a new direction to your life. So for every choice you make you #StartANewLife
This post was originally written as part of a campaign for the website - housing.com
:)
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