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Stock markets are at high, keeps breaching previous highs every now and then. Economy should be doing well and life should become easy right. I was surprised to see that instead of life becoming good, experiences all around are either stagnant or deteriorating.

Some of the recent experiences I have reflect the new trend. I went to a speciality restaurant for a good dining experience. This was an upscale restaurant chain which gave fantastic dining experiences before for our family. When we went in, we noticed that the restaurant has split into two distinct cuisines (Chinese and Bengali) within the same space with just some seating demarcation. The special food is going to be cooked in the kitchen by the same set of cooks. The ambience had a worn down look with paints peeling and seats torn. When we received the menu, we immediately noticed that the prices have increased by 25-30% and the portion sizes have come down 25-30%. The waiter had no idea on what the menu is about, had no suggestions on how to go about a multi-course meal. In the end, the experience on dining big was just on the bill amount, nothing else. It would have been a better experience having the food from a cheap takeaway and eating it while watching TV at home.

Similar heart burning experiences everywhere. Cabs are not assigned to you during peak hours unless you pay a hefty premium for the same cab. Mobile apps are misusing the notifications feature to deliver ads. OTT subscriptions downgrading you in the middle of the subscription plan to serve more ads. Grocery delivery is sending bad quality produce for regular delivery and introducing a premium feature for fresh produce. The list goes on.

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The push from success to excess is evident even in non consumer space. I noticed a recent trend, many executives are asking for a template/runbook based execution so that they can do a lot with very little or no training to the people doing that job. In short they want jobs to be in black & white and easily doable by gig workers who can be onboarded and off-boarded at will just like food delivery. This kind of thinking harms in many ways, one – it starts to increase the need of people who are good at parroting not an original thinker, the other is infusion of a blandness and mediocrity in everything; check for thermometer in amazon for proof. It is not just limited to every day items, even cars start to look the same across brands.

Executives think that they are special and can bring in insane profits by making people do exactly what they say, which may be true in the short run. History says that the best advancements came from grounds up not from top down. The cognitive load that it causes on the executives who do not want their workforce to think because it hampers their execution is huge, it will cause a flameout, momentarily burning bright before failing. Resilience and collective wisdom is poorly understood because it has a very long learning horizon. Being resilient will even come across as inefficient in the short run, but will prevent uncle points.

The more from less mindset that happens through grabby nature instead of advancements and innovations is hard to curtail now, it may be a cycle in the economy. We may have to weather it out before it improves again.

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In the early days of my career I have observed professional managers hired to lead the projects in software development, who go by numbers, processes, tasks and objectives, the more and more I observed them, I started to dislike their leadership style as it was very disjoint from what the team was doing. To add more to the dislike, low performers were termed ‘Manager material’ and an option was given them to train on professional management, giving a bad example for leadership aspirants. Not just me, a lot of individual contributors like App developers, QA, Infra developers started to lose the respect for managers as the only leverage these managers had was coercive powers like say on appraisals, leaves, working hours, weekend work etc.

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For many years this thought made me stick to being an individual contributor until I was no longer able to push what I can achieve through my work. Work got super boring and monotonous, also started feeling helpless many a times. Long working works, weekend work as a result of poor planning became the norm. At the same time, I read two books – Fish! and Who moved my cheese. These two books just drilled the following points in my head.

  • Work does not have to be a boring, repetitive, stressful affair
  • Create a work environment that people along with you enjoy being there and doing it
  • Change is inevitable, which means I should not resist growing up to managing people, just see how to grow into that role
  • Comfort zone will make you rot eventually

This made me ready to ditch the individual contributor tag and take up the lead role. To my surprise, my tech skills did not vanish, instead I was able to get better at abstractions and multiple tech stacks. I was able to influence task breakdown, planning, onboarding and knowledge management which in turn created an easy environment for people to work. Better work environment led to less stress and I observed that the team was always in a mood to help each other out instead of hammering away at their task lists. As a result we were able to deliver what was thought to be an aggressive 4-5 month plan in just 2.5 months without breaking a sweat.

It was a great start for me to become a multiplier and shun the fears of becoming a manager. Techies fit the best to lead other techies. Management does not mean pure management, people can manage while still retaining their tech exposure on a day to day basis.

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I complete 20 years as a working professional this month, this is a rear view look. Times change and what applied to me may no longer be applicable now but felt it as a good exercise to look back and pen down the themes. 20s is the age that you feel you are invincible and have a seemingly long future outlook, that gives us a feeling that the 20s will last forever. This makes us subconsciously go for things that only cater to the present but create a harder one for the future self.To give an idea about how times change, let us see cost of living – gold was 10 times cheaper 20 years ago, which means buying a 100cc bike like Hero Splendour was an achievement, it retailed at 48,000 rupees. A salary of 4,000 was adequate for me to start my career.

Luck is a factor on how big we can make it. I ended with a good job only because I went to meet a friend whom I hadn’t met for a long time and he had arrived at my town for an interview, I went along with him. Walk in interviews had 1,000+ people waiting outside the gate at 7 AM to be let in for a 9 AM interview. That is how bad the outlook was for the first job if not placed through campus placements, it was extremely hard. The interviewers do not have the time to sift through so many profiles and find us, irrespective how well prepared we are or how skilled we are. How to increase the luck? The only way to increase is through serendipity – showing up more at places, connecting with a lot of people, have varied interests. Once our foot is in the door, only then the skills get applicable. Throughout the career, this keeps repeating for me.

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Once I got the job, I felt that going all out on tech skills will be my forte. I used to take pride that people see me as a wizard who gets a lot of things done. Within a few years I had hit a plateau of what I can accomplish individually. I was putting in more and more effort without moving the needle on the performance indicators. I fell sick often in the pursuit and it caused more setbacks. It is when one of my mentors pointed out on how to become a multiplier instead of being a standalone maker. I had to rewire my ways of working and learn what puts me up in the next level. One of them was communication skills which was a bottomless pit to get skilled on – presentation, interpersonal, spoken and written english, non verbal, feedback on and on. The rule was simple, if I am on a team, the entire team’s productivity should go up.

The invincible 20s mindset, makes us feel that we can go at break neck speed, consume anything, don’t rest and yet still manage to survive. All the years of neglect suddenly manifests one day as a bolt from the truth. A major problem I had is that I did not eat and sleep well in my early days of career. After a point it was a constant repeat of medicines, physiotherapy and poor health until I figured out nutrition and exercise. A sound body creates a sound mind.

The more later you learn skills like driving, language, music, cooking the more difficult it becomes due to the time commitment needed get to a basic level. As we move up the life ladder and start a family, time flies and hard to set aside any time for learning new things that require commitment. Cross discipline learning is very important along with life skills, learning never stops but it becomes easy when you start early. Often times you will hit a plateau in the career, it requires a change in the way in which we work and learn that needs extra effort. Example moving from an individual contributor to lead, a lead to an expert, an expert to an org leader etc. Before making the jump enjoy the plateau for a while but don’t settle there.

When speaking about time, the best investments I have made are the ones that help me save time. Fully automatic washing machine/dryer combo, electric cookware where you can program and set timers are to name a few. I made the mistake of buying status symbols first before coming to terms to reality. The amount of time that gets saved by delegating away is huge.

About savings, I was poor like everyone else with savings. I thought property is the biggest savings and went all in as one stop investment. What it made me was to be afraid to try new things so that I won’t lose the steady stream of income. Living paycheck to paycheck is a very difficult situation and makes you put up with toxic workplaces or makes you risk averse. I did not try my hand on starting a business on my own because of the huge loan bills I had to pay every month. Best form of savings/investments are something that you can pause or redeem when needed, not locked up in real estate through a loan. Car and bikes are a spend not an investment.

Recap – Luck plays a major role in what we are today; being a team player matters; communications skills can never be enough; body and mind keeps score, take good care of it; invest on things that saves time; learn as much as possible early in the career including life skills; understand financial resilience and actively pursue it.

Don’t regret anything, just fix the future