Episode 353 : Crossroad

At the beginning of this century, I was asked by interviewers where I saw myself ten years later. It was a question that every interviewer felt the need to ask. Maybe it was a way for them and me to settle down before getting into tougher territory. Or maybe they felt it was necessary to ask me to know how ambitious I was.

As an architect, I would invariably reply.

Today I am a step away from working as an architect. But, I am not sure if that is what I want to do.

After collaborating with architects at the workplace, I have gotten an idea of what it is that they do. And I have come to realise that while I like what I do now and also a little of what architects do, it is not what I want to do.

I do not like the idea of spending half my day in meetings to thrash out a solution- I would rather design or implement the solution.

I find myself wanting to understand new technologies, investigate what it can do in the current scheme of things, and make prototypes. I find I am happiest when I write code, when I make prototypes and when I develop those prototypes into working models.

I believe it is the closest to what is supposed to be research and development, except that in the field of software development research-and-development has come to mean something else.

After a long time I find myself at a crossroad, unable to decide what to do. I could grow into the role of a project manager- which my manager would love to see. Or I could continue doing what I am doing now and handle panicking customers when things go awry.

Or just try my hand at something new.

As someone once said, we are alive when we take risks. And it is probably time that I injected some life into my daily workplace existence.