The biggest lesson that I have learnt is that no branch is good and no branch is

bad. The wearer knows where the shoe pinches. For those who feel that
Computer Science is the ultimate nirvana, let me highlight a couple of things. In
this field, there are no transportation costs or manufacturing costs, which
basically means that one company in the Silicon valley can make a product, which
the entire world can use. Because of the internet, there is no notion of distance.
Even though this makes the life of the consumer great, the sad part is that for
almost every product there will only be one or two vendors. You will have one or
two search engines, one or two operating systems, one or two word processors,
so and so forth. This automatically implies that there will be a small set of
engineers who will do the core work, and the rest will be delegated to bug fixing
and support-oriented roles.

This is referred to as the “pyramid effect”. Right after college, students will find
good roles in multinational companies. Gradually opportunities will shrink, and
they need to move closer and closer to the center of gravity, which may be
somewhere in the US or in east Asia such as Taiwan or South Korea. There is a
pyramid effect in time also. If 10 employees report to a manager, 10 managers
report to a senior manager, so on and so forth, then everybody cannot expect to
be promoted. This means that people will either switch companies or gradually
get displaced by younger and more hard-working colleagues. In India, people
quite vociferously demand increments, which leads to unsustainably high salaries;
this hastens the process of falling off the pyramid.

The sum total is that in so-called sunrise sectors like my branch, CS, or Electronics
Engineering, falling off the pyramid is common. In fact, finding someone above
40 in top companies in India is a rare sight (going by my experience). A lot of my
colleagues and co-travelers in my professional journey are unemployed as of
today because of this phenomenon. In fact, I would argue that this is a serious
problem, which sadly the media does not talk about and many in the “Bharat part
of India” are simply not aware of. We cannot deny the fact that to lead a good life
in today’s India with malls and multiplexes, a continuous source of income is
needed. Moreover, employment is also needed to give life a sense of purpose.

The question that begs for an answer now is what one can do to not fall off the
pyramid or alternatively make a soft landing and quickly climb up another
pyramid. We come to my second learning, which is that to be employed till 80,
one needs to ignore short-term gains and focus on long-term benefits. Unless
one is thoroughly interested in what she is doing, she will not find the motivation
to work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week and at least 50 weeks a year from the age of
22 till let’s say 70 or 75. This basically means that regardless of the branch, people
have to focus on developing strong fundamentals and really enjoying the subject.
They should focus on advanced degrees and create deep skills.

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Let’s now come to the third learning, which is developing the personal aspect.
Life has its ups and downs and regardless of the industry – software to cement –
downturns will happen. There will be bouts of unemployment. This is where the
depth of character, interest in music, films and books, and strong interpersonal
relationships with friends and family prove to be a life saver.

Unless we invest in all of these softer aspects of life, it will be hard to navigate the
downs of life, and we are bound to overreact to situations, which will be “penny
wise and pound foolish” decisions. To summarise, India of 2023 is not the same
as India of 2000; we are richer and far more secure. I thus don’t see any reason
for the current generation to repeat the same kind of mistakes that people of my
generation including me did.