A bonfire of vanities

My State-topper roommate has forced me to come up with a post on a Monday night, which surprises my own self. I’d probably be better off watching stars in the night sky, but let’s not digress.

The issue of what is glamour (I mean, glamour in the job market) has been in my mind for a long time now. If you’ve even been remotely associated with B-schools, have you ever noticed a slight condescension towards IT jobs? It’s not really very pronounced, but you notice it nonetheless. I’ve long wondered what has caused the lost fascination towards this field, and the only answer I could come up with is: because IT jobs are available in plenty.

So, does plenty mean that it’s ‘mass’ commodity?

The way I look at it now: even you perform decently well, you can actually have a flying career. ‘Flying’ is deliberate. I see a lot of people with 2+ years of work experience meeting CxOs in organizations worth millions, or perhaps, billions of dollars. You don’t just get to meet them. You sell your service. You market yourself, and your company, country and everything in between. The margin isn’t in hundreds; not even in thousands. And when the deal is done, you mostly end up sipping fine coffee or, perhaps, cognac in a beach corner in California. Or maybe even in South Korean. When the dawn comes, you commute to office and settle down to work in a chilled environment and meet only, repeat only, highly educated people.

Not at all a bad deal I guess.

I may be over-exaggerating, or may be not, and I know I’ve left off the bad stuff, but my point is not really to glorify the whole thing. It’s just that I don’t understand why such a thing has to be viewed with a smirk in the face. Guess it’s one of the multitude of phenomena that you are never supposed to understand.

By the way, if you want a more aggressive version of the topic, you’d do good visiting Chandoo’s space.