11/10/2024
या देवी सर्व भुतेषू सिद्धि दात्री रूपेण संस्थिता
नमः स्त्स्येही नमः स्त्स्येही नमः स्त्स्येही नमो नमः |
सिद्धिदात्री देवी ही सर्व सिद्धींची अधिष्ठात्री देवी म्हणून देवीच्या या स्वरुपाला सिद्धिदात्री असे संबोधले जाते. सिद्धिदात्री देवी कमळावर विराजमान आहे. चतुर्भुज असलेल्या सिद्धिदात्री देवीच्या हातांमध्ये कमळ, शंख, गदा, सुदर्शन चक्र आहे. सिद्धिदात्री देवी सरस्वती देवीचेही एक रुप मानले जाते. सिद्धिदात्री देवीच्या पूजनाने महाविद्या आणि अष्टसिद्धी प्राप्त होते.
शास्त्रात सिद्धिदात्री देवीला सिद्धी आणि मोक्षाची देवी मानण्यात आली आहे. सिद्धिदात्रीच्या ८ सिद्धी आहेत - अणिमा, महिमा, प्राप्ती, प्राकाम्या, गरिमा, लघिमा, इशित्व आणि वशित्व.
देवी प्रसन्न झाल्यावर प्राप्त झालेल्या या सिदधींचा गर्व न करिता परम तत्वाकडे कसे जावे याचेही ज्ञान देवी देते.
आतापर्यंतच्या आपल्या सर्व लेखांमध्ये करिअर शिफ्ट आपण पाहिला पण आज चा आपला लेख अतिशय विस्तृत आणि करिअरची सेकंड इनिंगचा उहापोह करणारा आहे अभ्यास संपवून नोकरीचा अनुभव घेऊन परत शिक्षण क्षेत्रात शिरणं हे काही सोपं नाही पण आजच्या आपल्या लेखात अमित गोडबोले सर.
आतापर्यंतच्या आपल्या सर्व लेखांमध्ये करिअर शिफ्ट आपण पाहिला पण आज चा आपला लेख अतिशय विस्तृत आणि करिअरची सेकंड इनिंगचा उहापोह करणारा आहे अभ्यास संपवून नोकरीचा अनुभव घेऊन परत शिक्षण क्षेत्रात शिरणं हे काही सोपं नाही....त्यासाठी सगळी तयारी कशी करावी हे आजच्या आपल्या लेखात अमित गोडबोले सर सांगत आहेत.....
Most of us follow a very standard life pattern, tightly linked to our age. A typical life cycle is, about 10-12 years of childhood, 10 years of high-school-college education, about 40-45 years in one or multiple jobs or business and after hanging our boots, we live a retired life. Most don’t think much about career choices, they choose to love or end up liking what they get and live a mixed life, enjoying each day as it dawns and dusks. A handful of thoughtful people choose the correct path, right at each juncture and with some good-luck, they enjoy almost all days of their career in the field they love. Both these categories remain steadfast in their career without having to face big upheavals. There exists a third category of people, who start thinking, typically at age 30/35, about who am I, how I spend my day, what does my current path lead to and what I want to do? For multiple reasons, some answers might not be satisfactory enough. A big majority of this third category chooses to continue their life as it happens. In many cases their quest, the turbulence dies down of their own doing. Sometimes family situations prevail and they keep telling themselves that they are earning good enough, their children’s future is getting secured. What more does a person need and they continue to walk their track. Today, life expectancy of Indians has crossed 70 years. Indian psyche is such that it keeps parenting and supporting the next generation even when s/he is a capable adult of 20-25, rather many a times well into their thirties. That makes the walk a pretty long one and sometimes painful too. Of course, I am not passing any judgements here. Life unfolds and we all are a spec in it, each playing our tiny part, towards self, family and society. As long as we play it sincerely, do our duties, it is perfectly alright; each one is correct in one’s own way.
This write up is about a minority of this third category who keep asking themselves tough questions and reposition themselves. This can happen in a few ways. One can keep working in the same or similar field. For example, moving to a totally new function like quality control or HR in IT/manufacturing, after spending 12-15 years in production department. Change of job to a smaller or a very different type of company. Migrating to a new state, or a new country that offers a challenging environment that suits one’s personality and ambitions. All these involve less to moderate risks as one’s core field is not changing. Formal established structures like training courses are in place; capable senior colleagues are around us to advice and help. Most importantly, the assurance of earning the daily dinner is still intact.
But what if your calling is pulling you to totally new horizons? What to do? How to handle it? Will it just lure you but you end up in a worse situation? There are no easy answers, no readymade solutions. I hope that sharing my own experience and some of my friends’ experience and my musings on it will help the readers in some way to plan and execute any medium to big career change that might be coming to their mind.
The Moderate Shift
By education I am a mechanical engineering graduate with an MBA in marketing from Mumbai university. After three years in industrial storage, warehousing systems marketing, before I fully realized, I was part of the famous Indian IT industry. There was some internal planning and thinking, but the trigger was external. Y2K threat was looming on the horizon of year 2000. The industry itself and especially Indian organizations were on a steep growth curve. While fresh BE computer graduates were being mass produced, the companies didn’t have enough project managers to lead the burgeoning team sizes and new project teams. Tech Mahindra Ltd (those days it was MBT - Mahindra British Telecom) found a solution in recruiting non-IT graduates with 3 to 5 years of other industry experience. We were given a 6 months crash course in software development and testing.
This is an example of the ‘moderate risk’ career change that I mentioned above. I was still in an engineering industry. Though I never had a lot of liking for IT and programming, I was confident that soon I will be moving from this new role of a software engineer to a managerial role and I will be able to do it using the knowledge acquired during earlier combination of engineering experience and BE-MBA degree. MBT had designed this career-shift path and a few of us jumped in. The fact that, the earlier year I had gotten married and my wife was in IT industry also played some role. I remember thinking about what job can I get in USA, if my wife, has to travel to USA for her software job. The attraction and possibility of international travel that the words ‘British Telecom’ brought, was also there. All in all, this was quite a career shift due to a combination of internal and external factors. I was 29 year old when I switched to IT. I and other 20 or so with me, we all adapted well and soon moved in project manager – programme manager roles. It was a win-win situation for all the stakeholders. The risk was moderate. Leaning new technology is easier at earlier age.
The Big Shift That Did Not Happen
The landscape of IT, software development companies changed at great pace during 2000 to 2010. Longer working hours, customer demands, rapidly evolving technology, multi-located huge project teams, lopsided expectations to cut costs (that is not to ask for good S/W engineers and still deliver quality software!). All middle level IT managers faced rapidly increasing pressure from all sides. People at all levels were burning out. This happens in all businesses, but in the labour intensive and human intelligence dependent world of software development it was more pronounced.
This was the time when I started asking the questions to myself. Does good management mean, growing at huge pace at any cost? Squeezing out more work, longer hours from a sincere and capable person, overloading him/her, because his colleague is just a head count and a third person was an unavailable additional cost; was not my idea of good leader-manager. While all this was happening, my teams, other teams and overall IT industry was doing good. We all were growing. But I was not really loving my work and the overall environment. In that state of mind, I even turned down a quick second promotion that I had got! In retrospect, a most foolish decision, but life happens!!
IT had a positive side too. There were ample number of good days, success stories, overseas travel, many new and varied opportunities to learn from. So, though I was asking myself many questions, though the answer was clear that I wanted to do something totally different, though I was liking but not loving my work; though the success was not truly fulfilling, I did not do any big career change. I changed my job but remained in the same field, same role. The new organization was a bit different but similar to a good extent. Finally, people must follow rules of the ecosystem they are in. I was aware of all this. I was a family man with children. I avoided taking risk at that point in my life; I just stayed put and kept working hard.
The Big Jump That I took
I gathered similar, good and bad experience in the new organization. After a few more years, the questions had become more pointed. Many other things were calling me. I had realized that at heart, I was not a technology person, I was not a corporate-profit oriented money loving person. I was an engineer and manager by education, but pure science was at my heart. This was not at all an excuse to leave my job and run away from hard work. I knew my answers well. I knew that moving out of IT industry will be a financial hit. Moving to another kind of role, some moderate type shift was not impossible but difficult at age 45. Grass is always greener on the other side. The cost-quality-profit reports are at the heart of any business function and I was convinced that I don’t want to do that anymore.
By now, my children were in high-school and college and I was 45. I was scanning through my son’s 11th and 12th standard physics textbook; one by Professor Dr. H.C. Verma, a venerated and expert physics teacher in India. The book is so lucid and so great that a deep pang of learning physics all over, hit me. During my musings, I had also day-dreamed of working in the field of interior design, travel and things like sports, portraits, poems and reading allured me. While I had remained in touch with some of these, I had missed out on a lot of things.
A career shift at 30 is a bit easier; at 45 it is riskier, more difficult and I had avoided it. Now, I knew my calling and I decided to take a big jump towards it. I followed my heart and resigned from the job. Some of my friends had already done it. A friend of mine had started writing and a business in astrology. A couple of friends had started consultancy work, developed their own software products.
Following heart is good but decisions need to be taken with cool, level head. I deliberated on it for about 15 months. Some of my friends had a clear idea of what new business / work they were going to do. I had many non-earning ideas in my mind. I wanted to learn physics and if possible teach too. Remuneration was not my objective. So I assumed that my earnings will drop to close to zero. I took a stock of my savings, expenses, assets and liabilities. There is a famous ‘excel sheet’ in our friends’ group. I filled it and got it vetted from a finance and investments expert. Discussion and support from wife was most crucial. The family must be able to sustain and children’s graduation and post-graduation should not be at any risk. The picture was not super safe and but definitely safe enough to take a wise, informed decision. My wife has also been working. In my calculations, I assumed that she too resigns by choice or due to some reason and prepared my sheet accordingly. Things looked good.
I was happily ready for an early retirement at 48. As the saying goes, an empty mind is devil’s workshop. With some planning and some luck, I avoided that. For past 8 years I am teaching physics to students aspiring to write the JEE examination for IIT. I am blessed to work with best in the class maths and science teachers in Pune. M. Prakash sir, who founded the academy, has taught and created many gold medallist students in the International Maths Olympiad. He has guided and moulded thousands of students and a team of teachers and I am now a part of that team. Teaching the talented students in Pune, has been truly rewarding and fulfilling.
Financial planning is one thing. Along with that, I had enough confidence that I can learn and teach physics. It has been my love from school days. It has been my natural forte. When I opened the books, I realized that the syllabus has become vast, wider and deeper in last 25 years. Soon my plan of an early retirement, learning physics and giving more time to sports and fun, changed into a full-fledged new career. I put in a lot of efforts, much more than the college days. For many months, my days were longer than my IT job days. There is no success like working in the field that you love, and that is exactly what I am doing. Today, interacting with students having zest and hunger for knowledge and satisfaction on their faces, makes my day, every day.
To sum up, the world is full of opportunities. To grab the right one at right time, so as to make a successful career shift, one must think about a few things:
- Time and stage of your life
- Assess own abilities, level of courage and confidence
- Evaluate the pros and cons of existing and new opportunities
- ‘Worst possible scenario’ – financial planning for next 40-60 years
- Risk mitigation; back up plans
- Willingness to learn new skills and ability to adapt to different environment
There is no fit for all formula. One needs to do introspection about one’s personal traits, strengths and weaknesses, technology fit-misfit, domain knowledge, passion, health, family’s needs, financial state and objectives, target job description and risk assessment. Quantify all the factors and see which box one fits in. A good safety net can be checking out whether some stop-gap pilot phase is possible before pressing the commit button. There is no readymade guidance available, but discuss your own matrix with family and capable friends and then take the final decision.
