I don’t know how many nerves I’m going to tickle with this blog post. But, heck who cares it’s a free world. I got a right to voice my opinion.

Here’s the Life of a typical Indian Software Engineer.

• Take up an ECE/CSE/IT degree. (nowadays even a Bio Tech Engineer is welcome :-))
• Get placed via Campus in Company I, T, C, A or W (I’m not taking names here :-))
• Undergo Training (Engineering students don’t learn more than C and Java, CSE/IT included)
• Once they’re done with their training, send them into a Project which they have no familiarity with, wait, I‘m not complaining here, how’s a Software Engineer one, if he’s not Technology agnostic?
• He/she works on .net, J2EE, Mainframes, ya that’s all that exists for them.
• Has no clue how the code works as he/she’s supposed to modify code written by someone else, who, well has no clue, just like the one trying to do so
• Wait till they get sick of the Job, switch…. And this cycle continues. From what I can see from this pattern, I find that no one, likes what they are doing. Of course, they aren’t going to like it, as they didn’t go there out of choice, but only because that’s the job that paid more

How many software Engineer’s do you guys know, who you could call upon to fix your computer? They themselves need one. Creating software is a Job, not a Passion. Out of 100 people I can find only a handful, who actually know what they are doing, and enjoy it. Almost everyone does what they are doing as its their source of income, and nothing more.

I had complaints about the Education System here, and hoped to find the Corporate Sector free of such quirks. But, no, it might be better than the Education System. But, its got its own set of problems.

Programming is something that you got to be passionate about. When your bored and have nothing more to do, and you end up opening some old code of yours, find it to be junk and then sit back, wonder how bad your code was, spend time in refactoring it to perform better. You got passion. You find a skilled artist who’s in love with his job, constantly looking at bettering himself. Programming is an art.

Software is something that helps you make your day to day tasks easier to perform. Every piece of software written which has truly survived, was written with a purpose to better the standard of living for a human. And was not intended at being a money making tool. The money will come. But the idea is what matters.

You don’t need 100 people to do 10 people’s job. You don’t make 100 disoriented people work on something to make a mess and then get 10 good people to just clean up the mess. It would be better to motivate all the 100 instead. Make programmers out of them, not Coders.

Programming is a passion. Don’t make it a JOB.

I hate to see people who just hate their Job. Lets try to drive in some passion. Not everyone needs to born with a passion. If you don’t have it, try nurturing it. Help your fellow people. People say that your born with a talent and that is what you eventually pursue as your career. People talk about having interest in a particular field. If you ask me, God made Humans and gave them a forest to eat from. His only career would’ve been farming! Everything else is man made. It’s the path we have taken in our lives, the thoughts put into us by people that drives an interest in our career. We can all excel in whatever we are doing, if we just begin to like what we do. Make your job your passion!