Saturday, April 15, 2006

Dilemma...

I have been thinking about my future for the past few weeks and where I would see myself in the next 10 years. Almost every turn I took(in my imaginary future) seemed to end as a coder...system architect at most...

Its the choices we make that governs our life. If I would have been selected in MS, I would have ,without any doubt or pretension, sunk into an instant comfort zone and disappeared as yet another MS slave. The same holds for any other company.

If I do not take that path and choose to be an academician, do a PhD, then all I'll be is a bald Dr Iyer, trying 10 years to prove an arcane point and screw my life. Einstein may be intelligent, but he was not rich nor had a good family life, I want both.

So I have 3 paths to take:

1)Work for a company that pays me shit load of money and work on technologies I don't like and feign happiness for the rest of life, get married and just get sucked up in family chores. It will be a slow poison I might enjoy after sometime, but a part of me will always militate against it. Being rich but unhappy, not my definition of successful.

2)Work on system software, probably get a PhD and get into a research lab and the world will only know me through a few references in scientific papers. and when I get married and have kids.... there will be perennial complains about me not spending enough time with them. I will be blinded by all the technology that would surround me and play a deaf ear to them. Being respected and admired, probably rich but still unhappy.... again not successful.

3)Take the path of Bill Gates, Larry Page, Sabeer Bhatia.... etc. The success rate is infinitesimally small. The end is glorious but the risk factor is too high. A scary path for a guy with no experience like me. This path excites me the most though.

The fourth point, which most of the people believe in, is destiny, give the best to the present and hope for a better future... I am not one of them, I am in charge of life, I am solely responsible for my failures and successes.

Its the choice I have to make between these three paths.

The Oracle(Matrix Rev): You and I may not be able to see beyond our own choices

Maybe there is a path and maybe in due time I am able to see the bigger picture and this cloud clears. Till then I have two points and I need to choose one path amongst three.... the easy path is not necessarily the right path (Prof Dumbledore, HP)



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3 comments:

  1. Did you realize that more than money, it was actually fame which was luring you to make a decision.

    Most, including me, do think on this line.

    My piece of advice would be, know your motivations and inclinations better. Understand what you value more than others. Quite obviously, its not money, Larry Page, Bill Gates, Sabeer Bhatia...with these people is it their succcess which invites you to take a similar path or their technically expertise or their cleverness ?

    I am not saying that I would want to innovate and sell/build an empire. All I am saying is know the motivation right. For me the mere pleasure of innovation excites me. Not the money or the fame.

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  2. Innovation excites me too... but what good is an ill-publicised innovation??
    Publicizing innovation leads to fame... so fame is inevitable if you want your innovation to be recogonised. Money is secondary. But having a publicised innovation under your belt does make you rich. So Innovation,fame and money go hand in hand.

    Without propoganda, someone else's suboptimal product gets the attention and the world is forced to use the worse product. Take BSD for instance, a more elegant kernel than linux and most secure of all the *nix but still Windoze, Linux and Mac has the attention of the media and the user. Similar was the case with VHS/VCR technology.

    I agree with you though, I need to know my motivations and inclinations better.

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  3. Do you realize that the fame you're seeking
    is transient. Gates, Bhatia and their ilk might be famous, but who'll remember them after a 100 years. The real risk is doing an Einstein/Newton/Archimedes, these guys will be remembered after 1000's of years

    Vinayak

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