Monday, January 16, 2017

2017 Is the year of Backbenchers ... & Shall I say generalists

Today I read this inspiring article from the Shradha Sharma Founder and Chief Editor of YourStory. And it was titled 2017 is the year of Back benchers. Personally I should call myself a backbencher who became a middle bencher then came to the front and then in last years has faded to the back. Yes I talk a lot, I question a lot, I have an air about myself and also slog a lot to learn what ever is there around in tech industry that excites me. But I also feel I am lost and hence when I heard the word Generalist I liked it. Because I am one of them. I am sure many of us are. If we observe closely much of the enterprise in India always calls for specialists. But in truth when they get recruited they do the work so unrelated that end of the day their specialization is diluted. They sometimes publish a generalist role but in our Industry we always want a Specialist. Take for an example of a call today. They wanted some one who knows Jquery, Java, Angular, Big Data, Ruby, Python, Jenkin, Docker, Devops and God knows what and yet the final question they asked me you know it all and are you comfortable to switch back to Java. My though was here the question again comes back they need a specialist not a generalist. Let me explain who is a Generalist for the ignorant. A person who is jack of all trades and master of none is not a generalist. Rather generalist is a jack of all trades and master of some and who has a passion to learn/master any new skill as the situation demands. As given in the article like back benchers even generalists toil hard to gain skills and even hard for them to unlearn it if required but they are never appreciated, they are overlooked and people with fancy titles are sought. 

Yes you may say I am sulking but the truth is its the case with many who have multiple skills but can never utilize it. One reason can be that they are never given a chance to showcase it or their bosses think that what they are currently doing that is safe for them for who will replace them. That is one reason also why in our country innovation is stunted. We are doing the cheap work which world does not want to do. And when I speak about Entrepreneurship and putting the effort in creating value for ourselves many defend the necessity for job citing the fear of risk and the comfort zone that they have created around themselves. What I rather feel is that be it this year or any year for India to truly grow and pose a significant sustainable financial power the generalists has to come out and contribute to add value as Entrepreneurs and break the vicious cycles of stereotypes and dogmas that plague our businesses and enterprise.

At the end I can only say we should learn from the informal economy which this government is so hell bent to destroy. This is the economy of  Entrepreneurs, a shared economy who work hard to bring value to us middle class and support our food, transport and labor demands. They and generalists like us should come ahead and add value to the growth of our motherland.

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