Pursuing dreams

Crossed the 30-age mark. Well settled in my job, been working with same firm for more than 6 years now. Bought a house and cars. Living the life in my own self-created bubble. Too cosy to come out of it. A bit too common, isn't it? This happens to everyone at a stage in your life.

Around last year, this same bubble of getting too comfortable started creating problems. Problems like when you've nothing to do on a weekend, when all you've left on your plate are parties, groceries and vacation trips. Seems good to be true, but after a while you get bored of it too. Then i decided to take a step out of this comfort bubble. Ummmmmmm - MBA or switch jobs or take a new position in same company? Let's go with the first.

Got all the deadlines and school rankings sorted. Gave the GMAT exam after 6 months and applied to couple of schools. Finally gave in-person interviews after visiting campuses and finally started another phase of life this august: MBA from Carnegie Mellon. August went hard. When you're no more in the zone of studying for past 5 years and all of a sudden, you've 4 pending assignments and case studies to do every weekend; you know life is going to get harder. Next two and a half years are going to be busy with an MBA and on-going job. Juggling with all the work travels, studies, spending time at home, parties. 

But just like any other phase of life, this too shall pass..

Work in vain

Working in the software industry has taught me one thing very clearly: Nothing remains same. The code or the product on which you're working so diligently might be obsolete next month. All your linked software apps would go obsolete with it. All the third party vendors serving your software product would also lose their contract.

In some other part of the world, there'll be celebration events held to celebrate the success of a new deal. Some people will be celebrating the success of promotions or attractive bonuses, while some would be staring hard at the lines of the obsolete code figuring out what went wrong. But this is the cycle of Software product. All your past years of working on this product, your pending fixes, your upcoming meetings and newer release versions; everything would go down one day.

So then why waste your present on a product which has no future? Why waste your nights and weekends on a product, which may not see the light of next day?

When i joined my company almost six years ago, i thought this product would stay here for decades to come. Nothing will change, this business will run as it is running now for years to come. After all i had seen people retiring in my team working on this product for last 35-40 years. My idea wasn't wrong, but my approach was. The product will stay in market for how so ever long you want it to be, only if..

Only if it keeps transforming itself with the demands of new world. Everyday you've to work your way up, a step ahead of your competitors. Everyday you've to unlearn thousand old lines of code and learn a new thousand lines; and again unlearn these newly learned lines by next year. This is the only way the product might survive in this ever-changing market. 

Nomads

Last friday, when i got bored of working continuously for past three hours, i decided to take a short break to have a walk to the parking lot of library (from where i work most of the time). Two bicycles were parked by the library's entrance. The handles were hinged to the main door of library, and a couple, in their early 30's, were sitting under the shaded area by the entrance to avoid the direct sun. It was an unusually hot day for a typical February day in Florida. While i was looking at the unshaved beard of the guy and the girl, who was eating a bowl of half-cooked rice in a transparent bowl filled partially with water, a small dog came waging his tail around the parked bicycles. The couple had attached a small cabin to tow with their bicycles for their pet.

I approached the guy who was still looking lost staring at his dirt-filled nails under sun. He signaled me to tell that they both were deaf, so couldn't understand a word spoken by me. I, somehow moving my hands randomly, asked them from where were they riding the bikes, He told they'd been riding their bikes from Georgia and South Carolina's border and were planning to go till St Pete's beach (roughly 70 miles south from their current location). Upon asking further, he told that they were basically from New York and drove down in car to Georgia. They sold their car in Georgia and from the money collected, bought a pair of bicycles and other stuff to sleep at night. They had tied a tent and few clothes at the back end of one bicycle and the dog's cabin was tied to another. They had a box full of rice in the tied cabin and i assumed they were munching those uncooked rice from the bowl half filled with water. They were talking to each other using hands. I asked how do you manage to eat and sleep while riding bikes for days. They understood what i was asking after attempting repeatedly to convey. They were eating the rice from the box and were sleeping in tent in parking lots at night. No wonder looking at their faces and clothes, one could assume they hadn't had shower for over a month.

I offered them to pay for their lunch, though not in a forthright manner to make sure not to offend them with my offer. After thanking me couple of time for the offer, they graciously accepted it. I took my car from the parking lot and went to the nearby subway store. It was still around 2 in the noon, so there were few in the queue at the store. I packed two separate subs, asking them to put everything they had in store. When i came back to library after fifteen minutes, they were still sitting on cemented floor outside the entrance. The girl was playing with her dog, while the guy went to the restroom to wash his face. They thanked me a couple more times. They told me they're planning to stay at St Pete's beach for a month and then would head back to NY on the bikes. Since it would be summer by the time they'll start riding up north, the weather wouldn't pose much difficulty for them. While still surprised with their decision to ride all the way up from NY, I came back into the library slowing walking towards my desk. I was happy i could help them (though in smallest possible manner) with one-time's meal for a day on this arduous journey of theirs.