My Next Designation??

[Anjana Ravindran]

I am a software engineer having 2 yrs experience in J2EE. Right now, i am working in Oracle too for past 5 months. As far the feedbacks i got reg me, i am good in analysis skills, technically sound. I am just pondering myself how can i see myself after some yrs. What could be my next job designation? How to set my career path? As i dont have enough known ppl in software industry, i am bit confused to set my career path. Pls let me know ur ideas.
[ January 03, 2006: Message edited by: Anjana Ravindran ]

[ab parashar]

Originally posted by Anjana Ravindran:
I am a software engineer having 2 yrs experience in J2EE. Right now, i am working in Oracle too for past 5 months. As far the feedbacks i got reg me, i am good in analysis skills, technically sound. I am just pondering myself how can i see myself after some yrs. What could be my next job designation? How to set my career path? As i dont have enough known ppl in software industry, i am bit confused to set my career path. Pls let me know ur ideas.

[ January 03, 2006: Message edited by: Anjana Ravindran ]

Depends on:

1. Do you want to stay in technical area or move on to management.
2. Do you want to manage products or software projects or plain people management.
3. Do you have the communication and people skills required or are you willing to develop them (mind you they need specific skills other than coding skills).
4. What your educational background and interests are.Are you willing to invest the time and resources for getting an MBA from a good school.
5. Do you want to work in India or you want to work in some other country (because then the rules completly change).

The reason why I am asking you these questions is that I know people who are working in Bangalore as a business analyst, doing an MBA(in India) but have long term goals of settling in US.....

I feel that if you know something, just one thing and are the top dog at it...be it Java,C, SAP or QA then you are halfway there.

[Anjana Ravindran]

First i thank ur time for such a great reply. Here goes the answers

1. This is a question mark. But i like both. Need to find out which skills suits me for this. Reg mgt, i am bit weak in commn skills and i dont like bossing over the ppl (its not that mgr shd boss. just a word). So, donno whether i will be able to take up mgt role. But i think i can do some lead roles. I have been a lead for a small team of 2 for 5-6 months. I feel i did well.
2. people management will be better
3. Yes, i really willing to develop my communication skills as i am little weak in that.
4. I am B.E Computer Science graduate. Not much willing to go for an MBA
5. I prefer to be in US for some 5 yrs and go back India

I think you may be bit clear now. Any idea now?

[ab parashar]

Originally posted by Anjana Ravindran:
First i thank ur time for such a great reply. Here goes the answers

1. This is a question mark. But i like both. Need to find out which skills suits me for this. Reg mgt, i am bit weak in commn skills and i dont like bossing over the ppl (its not that mgr shd boss. just a word). So, donno whether i will be able to take up mgt role. But i think i can do some lead roles. I have been a lead for a small team of 2 for 5-6 months. I feel i did well.
2. people management will be better
3. Yes, i really willing to develop my communication skills as i am little weak in that.
4. I am B.E Computer Science graduate. Not much willing to go for an MBA
5. I prefer to be in US for some 5 yrs and go back India

I think you may be bit clear now. Any idea now?

The reason to ask those questions was to see if you have a long term goal and from (1) it seems you have not firmed it up....no worries you are still at the beginning of your career and have plenty of time.You need to really see clearly where you want to be in the long run....It helps to then aim at short term goals that will go towards your long term ones.

If you want to aim purely on the technical ladder then there are positions like Dev lead upto Technical architect.Services based companies in India also have Technical positions now.You can also aim for project management in companies like TCS etc but they dont require much technical knowledge.

Question number 5 is very important because in the US you will come across people having decades of very good experience on cutting edge technologies and they may still be working at a designation of software engineer....nothing wrong with that but that is unlike most of the Indian companies where you have lot of levels like Software Engineer,Sr Software Engineer,Tech lead,Project lead and what not....You will make more money in the US but forget about vertical growth....you can only grow that much in the US. Even American techies find it hard to break into Sr.management so do think about that.Moving to the US and back may not cause any designation change for you ( I know lots of folks who have spent 10+ years in the US) whereas that is quite fast in India nowadays. You will have a bigger bank balance but will have to tradeoff growth.

So do think exactly what you want and get it coz frankly you cannot get everything....

...just my 2p
[ January 04, 2006: Message edited by: ab parashar ]

[Anjana Ravindran]

It gives me a good insight now. Planning to go with dev lead to tech arch line. Your answers are really helpful.
Will work towards it. Thank u very much.

[Ramesh Choudhary]

One more question Mr.Parashar, is it feasible to stick to technical domain
in India. I see lot of people moving to management (PL/PM) after 5 to 6 years. Looking at the quality of work in my company(One of mass-hiring big three), I don't think people with technical bent of mind have any rosier prospects(Mind you my experience is quite limited).

[s jain]

Hi..
Mr parashar,I dont have much exp(1.5 yrs) but I am interested towards requirement analysis & thinking of making career in this.What are the options for growth in this?

[ab parashar]

Ramesh,
At Indian services companies people do switch to PL kind of roles that involves a mix of management and technology work.The reason being that for Indian services based companies revenues are earned on a "per resource" basis so higher number of people mean more revenues.There is nothing wrong with this approach but in this case the value of the work done by a single person is quite less. Say a company charges $25/hr for a resource and for 200 hours of work in a month, they make $5000 on that resource less the salary.So the amount of revenues made from a tech resource can only be that much.Clients in general do not pay high rates for offshore resources since that negates the very reason for offshoring - cost.

The scenario in product companies like Oracle,Microsoft in India is different. Say a resource is working on MSN now the revenues that the single person will bring in to the company will be much more than in a services based company.That is the reason why they are able to pay more and there is more growth in such companies for technical people.

I have seen some companies like Infosys provide a parallel ladder for people who want to stay in the technical side of things like Technical manager,Tech Architect...so there is good scope there as well, but you need to make sure that your company values people with tech skills more otherwise you are at the wrong place at the right time.

S Jain,
As fas as I have seen, requirements analysis or BA kind of roles are done by people having domain expertise in that area, so for a financial project the BA would generally be a person who has spent 5+ years actually working on Wall Street/Bombay stock exchange or someone who has excellent idea of the functional side of the project,who has the background to see the bigger pricture,interact with end users,know what they want and come up with the requirements. You can move into it,but do identify what domain you want to be in and then get "real" knowledge in that.

[Anjana Ravindran]

S Jain,

I second parashar ideas for you. It will be good if you choose SAP and finance domain because this domain gives more importance to your business analysis and it is the right choice for functional ppl. Donno what area you are currently working but if ur interest is RA, then this goes good.

[Pradeep bhatt]

If you want to aim purely on the technical ladder then there are positions like Dev lead upto Technical architect.Services based companies in India also have Technical positions now.

Which companies have technical positions in india ?

[Kj Reddy]

Originally posted by Pradip Bhat:


Which companies have technical positions in india ?

Now days many companies taking steps towards that angle. Few companies I know are:

iNautix, Chennai
Fidility
GS
Lucent Technologies
Oracle

[Arjunkumar Shastry]

Originally posted by Pradip Bhat:


Which companies have technical positions in india ?

Many companies.But they are not finding enough qualified clever people.There are many opportunities in Telecom sector as its growing at exponential rate.Bharti Telecom in Delhi/Blr was looking for Network security architects for months.Reliance Infocomm was looking for Telecom design engineers for many months.From the 2/3 magazines which I read,general conclusion is there are not enough qualified people.
Approximately not more than 150 to 200 Computer Science PHDs are created in India.In other sciences too situation is not much different.

[Pradeep bhatt]

Originally posted by KJ Reddy:


Now days many companies taking steps towards that angle. Few companies I know are:

iNautix, Chennai
Fidility
GS
Lucent Technologies
Oracle

Is there any servcies company ?

[Rohit Singh]

These days almost all major service companies of India has Technical architect positions. Companies including Infosys, Wipro and Iflex all has architecting roles and designation. Apparently, any company engaged in product developement requires Architect. Also, Every other company has COE (centre of excellence) or ATG (advanced technology group) which are engaged in domain specific product development.