At the age of five, I wanted to be an engine driver,” muses Shankar Kodumudi, Technical Director–Quality Assurance, America Online (AOL)–India. Chugging forward his engine has taken him to being a successful software professional but he believes he has not reached his destination as yet. Many more cyber miles to go before sleep.

Kodumudi is in charge of the 140-strong Quality Assurance (QA) group at the Bangalore Development Centre of AOL. He joined AOL in April 2004 and there was no team and he had to build it from scratch. His team basically oversees the QA needs of projects happening in any of AOL’s development centers around the globe. AOL is headquartered in Dallas and Kodumudi does QA work for projects emanating from there along with ones from Mountain View, CA and Seattle, WA.

His career started with Wipro in 1986 where he was a developer. At that time Wipro was making software to support its hardware. Kodumudi wanted to move onto hardcore software development. Hence after two years at Wipro he moved to Tata Consultancy Services where database was his focus at the development shop.

TCS was his grooming school and he learnt all he could. The learning curve was good as he had a lot of forthcoming mentors at TCS. “You need not worry if you don’t get mentors!” professes Kodumudi.

“The Internet can be your mentor–through research and interacting with e-groups can solve your problems.” Basically you need to put that extra bit of effort to go across to Yahoo! or MSN groups to find IT agony aunts or uncles.

“Don’t just do your assigned task and go home if you aspire for a satisfying career full of growth both monetary or otherwise,” advises Kodumudi.Today people are not curious to find out if there is anything else that can be done beyond the assigned task.

If you are curious then nobody can hold you back from progressing, he says. “You need to be a good sponge to absorb the good and the bad from each day and help others too, as what goes around comes back,” adds Kodumudi on blockades to growth in the form of office politics which he believes are just opinions. Kodumudi says the one thing that he looks in resumes is honesty.

“Your resume should reflect the work that you have done and not what your project has done.” From TCS Kodumudi moved to Network Associates and then to AOL. He candidly admits that he didn’t make the right moves. “If I had stayed back in TCS my career would have been much better. But in hindsight it’s just a postmortem,” he reflects.

One should not worry about the inerasable past but just learn and move on. Difficulties happen for the better.

And better things happen when you work better. The IT industry is one such place where hard work and innovation are rewarded very fast. Hard work is the shortcut to success. Kodumudi says people like Sabeer Bhatia and K.B.Chandrashekar put their heart and soul to their work without knowing when they will be rewarded. But then results come at the most uncanny of times taking you by surprise.

As the Bhagvad Gita, puts it–“Do your work without expecting the fruits of action.”