Just a Tech Degree won’t work! Here is what will.

In a family gathering in India, everything seems bland as long as the following scenario doesn’t take place.

“Oh! Our son is pursuing a Computer Science Degree!” My parents smiled with pride as they told my anticipating relatives (Who I had no clue existed till that moment!) who looked in awe at me, it was clear that they had no idea what a Computer Science Degree even meant, but were definitely fascinated. It’s not an uncommon sighting in India, for your relatives to start to look at you with respect the moment you tell them that your life has anything related to technology! They look at you as if the Universe had suddenly bestowed the responsibility of taking the generation forward on your shoulders and they were beholding the beginning of the next “Sundar Pichai” or “Satya Nadella”. (Spoiler alert: They most probably aren’t.)

The two aforementioned names have been immortalized in an average aspiring Indian household, as well as in the mind of every student who is looking for her or his seat in a prestigious Technology institute in India (Spoiler alert: Only 15000 get in out of a million!).

Coding and Tech Degrees in India are seen as a sure-shot way to make huge sums of money, for basically everyone. If you have hands to type and eyes to look at a computer screen, you will at least once get a suggestion from your relatives after you finish school to join either a coding class or a technology institute. Even better, some would start telling you as early as 7th grade (Correct me if your experience was even earlier than that!), rephrasing the old saying about there being a lot of scope in that sector.

And why not? Coding jobs do pay more handsomely than any other type of Job available to a majority of Indians.

The Flocking to College

The proposition of getting into a technology Institute in India (Be it just any other institute) and then getting Sureshot placement in an IT Company, like Infosys or TCS (Those two are the biggest names in placements you will see.), even though you probably have no passion or interest in the field at all, is a real and attractive deal for Indians, primarily Indian parents.

There are a few root causes for this :

• Most of the Indian families have seen a lot of struggle in their lives, primarily the generation that comprises the population over 50 in 2020 (The age group most of the Indian parents belong to.) and hence they want them and their children to have stability in their lives, something that an IT job in a big company certainly does provide.
• The concepts of ‘Work the way you want’, ‘Be your own boss’ and ‘Loving your work’ don’t exist in India on a large scale yet. They are often brought into conversations of people who have worked a considerable number of years in the industry. Otherwise, it’s considered a luxury in India to have a job you love. And just like most other luxuries, most people don’t strive to achieve it.
• Working in Tech is considered ‘hip’ in India, it’s trendy, it’s marketable and most importantly, it’s great for boasting to other people, primarily relatives.

The whole problem links its roots back to the eighties and nineties when an Engineering Degree was all the rage in the youth. Since then, the landscape has changed a lot. Engineering is synonymous with Unemployment and an IT Degree is synonymous with 25-year-olds working 9 to 5 in mini-cubicles, assigned to them by Mass Recruiting Companies. At least in India.

The problem with Tech College enrollments

Don’t get me wrong, let me put a disclaimer right here, I am a Computer Science Student myself (I guess you already knew this considering the second paragraph.), but I am pursuing this only because of one reason: I am solely passionate about this field. This is something I want to, and can do for the rest of my life (Still too young to say that)! If there was no such thing as money and people could do whatever they wanted to, I would still code day in, day out, as I already do.

It was only after I came into College that I realized what a huge scam it is! (More on that in another article if you guys are interested.) But it’s not uncommon for someone in my college to come in on a weekday and do two things for sure :

• Curse the college the moment they enter, with a face that reads “What am I even doing with my life?!”
• Talk to one of their friends about how they are planning to grab the highest placements in the upcoming year’s college placements.

In my college you will see only two types of people:

• Those who don't give a damn about anything happening in College. These students are there just because their parents didn’t approve of their passions they would have done great at! (If you snapped away the students that fall under this classification, my College’s enrollment would reduce 60%. It would be Thanos’ snap, just a little disproportionate!)
• Those who have been pushed in by their parents and other peers or friends to pursue an IT degree because it promises hell loads of scope (Say this word in front of Indian parents and they go crazy!), or had to come here because they didn’t get an admission into an Engineering college, so they opted for the next viable option, for as a backup the degree does work great. In all, an IT degree is considered to be a handy fallback if the student doesn’t really do well in other fields of life.

Wait?! Aren’t there also supposed to be people who like what they are doing? Isn’t the population supposed to be split into the ones who like something and ones who don’t? Well. Not really.

This is the staggering situation I have always wanted to bring to the consideration of the world. The world is collectively not doing what it wants to do. There are 200 students in my batch, out of which 3–4 would be interested in what they are pursuing (DO NOT READ AS “STUDYING”!).

You wouldn’t really count these people in, just the way you wouldn’t count two or three canes as yield crop in an otherwise barren field.

So, enough ranting about our system. Because, in all honesty, I am a part of the system. And I too want to make millions doing what I love. So does everyone else in my College. The spoiler to that is: The Degree won’t make you rich! Or guarantee stability or success!

Why won’t this approach work?

I don’t intend you to take my word for this. Because I haven’t done anything big in my life in the first place either. These are just my viewpoints that I feel will help me later, and I hope will help you too.

I always have the following points to provide to my fellow students whoever joins College and bumps into me for asking for some advice after they have seen me coding on my Laptop for 2 hours straight :

• There is a thing called Natural Inclination (I.E: What your mind or heart is naturally attracted towards doing.), the whole point of life is to do what you like to, what you are talented in, even though it may not necessarily be what you are passionate about. I code because I have an innate talent in it, it just clicks with me.
• Not everyone is supposed to be good at something, that is why we have specialization in the first place, surgeons make anywhere between twice to ten times as much as Programmers, but not everyone can be a surgeon. Why? Because of specialization.
• The most important point: Coding is different from Computer Science. The two are often used interchangeably. But they couldn’t be any more different. Computer Science is what companies pay 7-figure annual or monthly incomes for. It deals with solving problems that have a real impact, a good difference between a coder and a Computer Scientist would be a person who can create a Todo-List app and nothing more versus a person who can help a company save Lakhs by making their database more efficient, or API calls more streamlined and quick.

Most people in the industry, are just coders. It is not uncommon to see Computer Science students focusing only on Coding skills, while what they really should be focusing on is using that Travelling Salesman Problem to solve a problem many people truly face, and I don’t blame them. They have been accustomed to the notion that Coders earn more, hence what is actually important is for them to code, in and out, day and night. Which is not necessarily bad, but most people don’t even do that.

What will work then?

Prof. Scott Galloway (NYU Stern) in his famous book The Four and his viral video The Algebra of Happiness (He also has a published book with the same name) highlights some life-changing views. A few of them in the abstract with an elaboration from me are:

• Do what you are talented in, not what you are passionate about: A person who does what she/he is talented in is the one who comes out on top in the end.
• Boring industries are the ones that provide the highest amount of professional satisfaction: The finance and retail industries might look like the most boring industry in the world, but they have created the most number of billionaires and otherwise rich people, in history! We will slowly see technology take its place, but come on. Yet again, if you don’t like finance or retail, don’t head into it!
• Know where you fit in the Alphabet of Corporate Chain. I.E: If you like working at Start-ups, do it, if you like working in an established company with a higher amount of Job Security, do it!
• Invest in Equities: A good way to become rich might not be directly through a job in the first place, it’s to spend less than what you earn and invest the rest. You will be sitting on a huge pile of wealth by the end, thanks to Compound Interest. This is especially helpful for people who are already working.
• Be Remarkable. Be the person who knows which songs to play at a party and also which spreadsheets to mark the next day.
• Be Certified: A certification goes a long way asserting the fact that you have done something different from the other 7.7 Billion People on Earth.

These were a few points I loved in the book. I would now shamelessly put forward my own points, even though I have no right to since I am nowhere as nearly successful or respected as Prof. Galloway. Heck, I might have even lost my respect among my fellows if they were one of the people reading this article and fell into self-realization.

• Don’t follow the herd blindly, if you like what the herd is doing, then do it. Otherwise, choose an industry that suits your needs and fits your interests.
• Find an opportunity and exploit it if you can! What if I told you? Most of the tech millionaires and billionaires aren’t what they are today because they coded well. It is just because they saw an opportunity to solve a problem that a lot of people had and exploited the chance to be the one to solve them. I am damn sure Sundar Pichai doesn’t even code anymore, instead, he instructs the ones who code, market and develop. Why does Jeff Bezos have the privilege he has today? Because he saw an industry ripe for disruption, and coded the hell out of the first Amazon webpage, building it bigger as it went along. Does he code anymore? No.
• Be open to change: Nothing kills success more than complacency, be open to changing your industry, or job if opportunities arise, or if you are just not happy with the options you have. Even if you are a coding freak, and you love it, always go for the most in-demand or the most well-established skill if you like it, that just gives you an edge over the competitors. For example, it is not uncommon to see colleges teaching Web Technologies, which is a good thing but there is a whole world apart from HTML, CSS and JS in that field which is constantly in demand is fun and most importantly, more relevant today. Be sure to discover what suits you and be the best at it.
• It’s good to be a jack of all trades: If you have a diversified skillset, I.E: If you know stuff that is outside your domain, it gives you a bigger pool of information and opportunities to choose from. For example, I read up on astrophysics from time to time, I am open to working as an Investor or Investment Banker since I have hell loads of knowledge in the Financial world, and I also code. This is not bragging, this is just asserting the fact that I might have more opportunities down the line due to my varying interests and knowledge. In fact, I already have, due to my knowledge in Finance, I was able to get a part-time job as a Financial Tools Builder at an Investment Firm, which used both my Finance knowledge and my Coding expertise.
• But specialization pays off too! Being a jack of all trades is great, but you can also be a person specializing in one thing. A person who has practised 2000 moves once is much less dangerous than a person who has practised one move 2000 times! Build up your expertise and you can charge top dollar for your skills!

Final Views and Conclusions

The world is a funny place, as put in simple words:

"We are all lost."

But it doesn’t have to be. The fact that a very small change in our views today can lead to huge changes and payoffs tomorrow is literally magical. This article might have seemed like a rant, it is. It is a rant to a world that focuses on sole maximization of wealth, rewards those who succeed and punish those who do not, leading to the problems stated in the previous sections.

Life isn’t supposed to be complicated. It’s supposed to be simple. And the advice that I gave is common knowledge, yet a very few people follow it. Because obviously, sitting along with the masses is easier than sitting against the masses. We don’t have to be extraordinary, but we don’t have to stay in an industry that makes us underperform either.

Look for places where you get opportunities for growth and happiness. And your sole purpose should never be to maximise your earnings through a job, if that’s the case, you are better off owning a business with steady growth.

As Mark Cuban put it :

If you discover something that you want to do, even if it isn’t making you a lot of money, and you want to continue doing it, you have found your calling.

And that’s my two cents.