Concomitantly, the crisp business suits felt like an overkill. In global conference calls, someone senior demonstrated my work. Instead of solving life-changing problems, I was tightening the loose bolts of a bigger product, even after the first few months of the learning phase. But now, like the rest of the fresh Indian graduates, I could live independently for the first time.īut I was too young for a happy ever after. (In India, youngsters don’t pick up part-time work to pay their way through college). I hail from a small Indian town, and though I had been studying away from my parents in Kota, Delhi, and Mumbai for the past seven years, I depended on them financially. My excitement for work was coupled with the oncoming financial independence, cosmopolitan lifestyle, and social freedom. At the time I joined IIT, the institute selected 4000 applicants out of 348k - a 1.1 percent selection rate. I would always be solving important engineering problems putting a dent in the world.Īs a Computer Science graduate from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IIT), I couldn’t expect anything less - we are told we are the cream of the growing world-superpower India 1. I had imagined myself scuttling away on high heels in a crisp black trouser and a maroon shirt from one meeting to another in glass-faceted skyscrapers. As the taxi cruised through the traffic, I looked out of the rain-soaked windows and wondered if the city would backdrop my life the way I had dreamed about it - like a deep blue sky sprawling vast for the young iris to spread her wings. I remember the taxi ride from the Bengaluru airport to the apartment my would-be roommate and old friend had rented in a residential complex. I hadn’t thought about doing something I loveduntil I was 22 and on my first software engineering job in Bengaluru, the Silicon Valley of India. If you are looking for a career change in 30s, I would recommend you read this piece for I have given an honest account of my own journey from coding to writing. In this essay I talk about my six-year-long journey of thinking of a career change, why and how I quit my job, and finally went through a career change at 30. Why I Quit My Job, Shelved My IIT Computer Science Degree, and Started WritingĪ software engineer by education, I was once a coder and an investment banker, but now I write full-time.
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