Being a Techie in India..

I have often thought why it is difficult to remain a Techie in India? Everytime the answers seem to be the regular/obvious. The most common one is only managers have a growth path. The second most favourite is the power that comes with being a manager is stimulating (definitely boosts the ego to say I have 200 people reporting to me).

When I ask the counter question, why it is easier to be a Techie in the US, the answers have been similar. In US nobody cares who you are so there is no peer pressure. There is no need to prove to your relatives how powerful you are.

But this time around I find another issue which I think is kind of fundamental to the whole problem, the fact that techies want to do cool stuff. And that is what seems to be the biggest problem. I am in the US right now and I hate being a techie here too. I ratioanlize this is because of lack of supporting Techies. There has to be a suitable Pyramid around which you can grow and learn. If you are only interacting with folks who have not much to give then it gets frustrating. If your line of thought is on optimizing the code for reducing the code in the critical sections and the folks around you have to be taught why they should avoid using globals then it gets frustrating.

That seems to be the essence of the situation in India. As you grow older you realize that as a technical contributor all you are doing is teaching people how to write code...over and over again. There is no support structure that you can bank on to do the small little things. Its like being in a startup, where you did not choose the project or the team members, having to do everything except that you are in a big company with zillions of stakeholders. It is a vicious cycle.

But I guess these are part of the growing up pains. We are a young industry and things would improve as we go on and the onus lies on us to go make that happen. Else we are sure to be doomed.