In my experience there is a pattern emerging in the Indian techie’s thought process around career planning. I promise you will understand the meaning of this unusual title by the end of this article.

For most part, I find career planning is not on the top of the typical techie’s mind. A deluge of choices from which to pick has replaced it. It is almost like choosing the best deal rather than finding the one that moves them more or less along the career path. While this is a very good situation for the professionals in India from an economic and title perspective, it is having a detrimental effect on the growth and maturity of the average techie. I don’t expect a junior techie to have all of his or her plans figured out early in their career. However one has to understand what interests they have and what industry or technology they want to focus on at a high level. More importantly, at some point in the first few years in their career, there is need for in-depth understanding of a couple of areas upon which you can build your career. There are many angles to this, but let me address a couple of target groups that represent the largest segment of the
technical professionals.

Stick with it: The first thought that comes to mind is how does an early-career Indian techie really develop expertise in any area, when the average resume shows he or she is looking for their third or fourth job in five years? In my experience, when you finish a single six month project using a particular technology, you have barely just begun understanding the nuances and the scope of it. I believe it takes 3 years before you can even claim fundamental knowledge of such a technology. Then there is the issue of meeting market needs, customer support response, and course-corrections to the strategies made over these years, all of which keep adding to the learning over the next few years. My advice to you is to take roles with increasing responsibility every few years, but within a single domain or market which will make you more valuable to a business.

Broaden your horizon: For the average mid-career Indian techie, the choices are much harder. There are many right paths to take, and it becomes much more individual dependent. For instance, those with a technical mindset can continue to become architects and scientists whereas those who are excited by people dynamics, or project logistics can go on to pursue a management career path. The focus on market becomes much more important. My advice is to choose a path that allows you to add value to the business from multiple angles as it pertains to the same technology and market. A very technical person can try a customer-facing or a business strategy role and vice versa. Your domain expertise will give you an added advantage to excel in your roles with immense learning ability.

In short, the Indian techie’s mindset needs to focus on building expertise in one area before broadening their roles to help the overall business. You need to persist amidst pressure from friends and family to change jobs every 3-5 years. When you come to senior roles, you will find it difficult to convince a CEO regarding your expertise with an average job span of less than 8-10 years. This may not be true today in a thriving job market. It takes a lot of experience to understand how a company grows, faces challenges, learns from mistakes, and builds new strategies. Make very deliberate career moves!