Every engineer, IT and non-IT, and even non-engineer, is making his or her way into the Information Technology industry. What was once a job for the elite is now the common man’s and woman’s bread-winner. It is the new bank job of the 1980s.
But nowadays, the charm and the sheen are gone. No more do eyebrows go up when someone says, ‘IT’. The sector is now in its later stages of the-next-big-thing cycle, and has recently crossed the stage in which people replied to your statement “I made it to so-and-so IT solutions” with a smirk that says: “You too, buddy. Welcome to the world of IT.” And soon it could be: “Come on, you could’ve done better.”
Though most of the IT-ans find the need to switch from a Tier-3 company to Tier-2 or a Tier-2 company to Tier-1, at the least for a heavier salary packet, they are unaware that IT will soon be one of the lowest-paying industries, and not really one that will provide infinitesimal career and financial growth. And given that one will realise this sooner or later, there is little that he or she can do to get out of the whirlpool.
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Consider this. A decade or so ago, a web search for “script+import+table+from+not-so-awesome database+to awesome spreadsheet” would not have worked. So in the IT world there was something about discovering, creating, innovating and drafting the best practices. Now one does the same only to find that there are already a million people who have used the script, thousands who have written a new script, hundreds who have perfected an existing one, or a company that has already uploaded a software for free to accomplish the same job with the click of a button. So the simple conclusion is that IT has run out of unexplored caves. People go on picnics there.
One of my friends joked that a majority of the IT crowd is being recruited for a pair of eyes, 10 fingers and a pair of ears. To make a copy of a copy of a copy of the stale ol’ codes. With dreams of urban comfort and easy money, swarms of semi-educated masses move to the metros. And what happens to these immigrants in the concrete zoos? Exposure to animosity. They are stripped of the one thing that is godly in this ghastly world — freedom. The so-called rules laid down by the masqueraded elite of the urban land erode freedom from the immigrant. These rules are no more than phonetic fences laid around the insecure urbaner to protect himself and herself from the ever-growing number of immigrants. At this rate of self-restriction, the urban-land will turn out to behostile habitat for human existence.
So with no potential progress or horizon towards which an IT career can proceed and with the IT-ans’ environment growing more hostile by the day, I regretfully say to all fellow-IT-ans: it has been an honour to have toiled in the industry with you, and it will be a privilege to go down with you.
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Care to derive something out of the prelude? Simple conclusion: break the convention of joining the IT industry and immigrating, and rule the world from your fort, from the land that owns you, the land where fellow-beings know you, where you find people who love you and respect you. Why allow deranged nitwits to conquer your ring? What does the urban sapien do, to make him or her happy? He/she makes his/her world more and more complex. He/she becomes devoid of any decision-making capability. His/her voice is not heard among the yelling masses, all trying to voice their opinion. Consensus has lost its context. And do these small-lifers even know the meaning of these?
Draft a solution for your existence in your homeland. There is still an unanswered question, or simply the unanswerable question, of fiscal supremacy over the urbaner. Does the IT industry, the automobile industry, or the stock markets make life? When my teacher asked me “what are the basic needs of a human being?” I didn’t reply “IT, foreign investment, stocks and banks”. My reply was, “food, shelter and clothing.” And you don’t need high-rises to keep livelihood. We need farms, we need agriculture, and we need our national professional — the farmer.
Won’t it be an honour to take up a profession as an agriculturist? Make farming scientific, build good storage facilities. Make it a business. If investing and generating profit is business, agriculture in all senses of the term is a great business proposition. And perhaps the noblest too. Toss in a few innovations and ideas to generate the best out of it. Register it as an enterprise, go public. Market agriculture. Let it be the inception. Let’s deurbanise. Let’s unITfy.
arunbc.pillai@gmail.com