My Journey…

For a long time I had wanted to read ‘The Fountainhead’(FH), having heard of it to be a thought provoking, life changing piece of literature. Before reading FH I had read up on objectivism, which is a philosophy put forward in FH. At that time I did not think of it much. Did not thing much of it as, I thought it was a lot of philosophical mumbo-jumbo with no real relevance to real life. But it so has and not in a positive way.

I started reading FH, the language was lucid interspersed with very many quotable statement. Mid-way into the book I could not continue reading on… but i did. I hated the ideal man in this book. What use is an ideology that destroys more than it creates?

Ayn Rand states ‘My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.’

Deconstructing this statement above when we see ‘own happiness as the moral purpose’ clause we realize what a hollow argument it is. A hero is supposed to be unselfish; I think it is present in the unstated definition of a hero. Moving on with our selfish hero who does everything for his own happiness, doesn’t it sound more like a villain? Productive achievement and reason which when looked at through the tainted glass of one’s ‘own happiness’ are subjective and are nothing more that means to an end. So it simply means that for your own happiness do what you want, no matter what the consequences. Man is a social animal, and I think as such must give consideration also to the feelings and well being of his brethren.

In FH, Roark borders on being a zealot and though I think that Roark did not cause any great harm to mankind, but other so called selfish\talented\self-righteous\ego-centric heroes (or should I more correct say individuals, as some can be thought of villains by society) that may come out of the exaltation of Roark and the philosophy FH tries to not so subtly to proliferate, can cause much more harm.

I am not an idealist and as such, idealists identify with objectivism more than pragmatists (which I am) do and so my view can be a bit biased. But as a pragmatist I am better suited to judge objectivism that an idealist is.

Well let me just come straight come out and say it I hate ‘The Foundation head’. I would love to be an idealist but never an objectivist.

I had missed the 8:15 am bus to office and had to go by the 9:30 am bus to office, now the bus that i had boarded was quite crowded. As i sat sweating in the crowded bus with my peers, some listening to music others chatting on there mobile, a thought came to mind that scared me a bit.

In the 1970’s a large scale recruitment wave was on, due to the boom of the banking industry following the nationalization drive of banks. Now the people getting employed in these banks had qualifications that ranged from HSC to BCOM. People with MCOM were snatched by the foreign banks, which were a rarity at that time. Let’s call these folks bank boomers

In the recent years another wave of large-scale recruitment is going on, this is to satisfy the voracious appetite of IT companies (I will not count BPO industry; it is a topic for another flight of thought). There are computer engineers in most case and in some cases mechanical, civil or electronics engineer working now in software development. There qualification would be B.E. or B.Tech. Let’s call these people IT boomers.

Now, I find a lot of similarity between both these events. The rarity of BCOM graduates in 1970s would be the same as the rarity of engineers in the 2000’s. By rarity I mean the ratio of jobs that require to be filled to the qualified talent pool available. On a lighter note a lot of love marriages took place among bank boomers and similar is the case today with IT boomers.

There are some obvious differences in between the two instances like the Salary of these individual vis-a-vis the salary of other employed folk. The salary of an IT boomer in 2000 diverges more from the median than did the salary of bank boomer in the 1970s.

Now lets look at what has happened today of the bank boomers. As in any industry bank boomers has also seen a split between career oriented folk and the others. These bank boomers are the part of the middle class today. Well I mean to say upper middle class, but the matrices for this distinction evade me. But they (most if not all) have not achieved anything out of the ordinary. They have had a full life though, with ample loan opportunities and sufficient remuneration. The bank boomers have had the privilege of working in a cushioned environment of the bank which operated more like a government office than a financial organization seeking business. A life with job security, fixed work location, less work pressure, ample public holidays at work and with very lenient supervisory control. So work was not hectic, pay was ok (good it seemed earlier in the 1970s) and family life was good. They are near retirement today and life seems to have worked out good for them. But the thing that strikes me is what they have done to made a significant contribution that has left an indelible mark on the industry they were a part off. I am sure some of they have made an impact but most have followed the crowd.

Now I just wonder what the IT boomers will be 25 years for now. Most of the IT boomers are working in ITES companies doing the maintenance of software, testing and low-end technology work. 25 years from now this kind of low-end IT service will still constitute a major part of the business we get in India. If IT boomers fail to expand out of his out-sourcing service based approach to developing enterprises which will produce patented products and holistic services, they might end up in a soup. India needs an explosion of entrepreneurs, an in pouring of VC capital. Failing this the IT boomers will end up as a sorry version of bank boomers. A sorry version I say because, the bank boomers had the advantages that I stated above while the IT boomers need to travel as per the project requirements, the work is quite stress full and no pension, yes we had forgotten about the pension part, didn’t we. 25 years down the line, there will be negligible difference between bank boomers of 2000s and the IT boomers of 2025, provided this proceeds the way it is now. The salary which looks good today will not look so attractive decades from now as inflation rise and the decrease in the rate of increase of salary (due to abundant talent pool available).

This is disturbing as many IT boomers were top of there class, they wanted to rise to the top of a company; they wanted exclusivity, a differentiating factor that would separate them from the masses. Maybe this is a reason most IT boomers want to do management and come out of the dominion of IT, to separate themselves from the crowd.

I have been harsh in the above text; I have demonized some to bring across a point. I am an IT boomer and I hope that I and my peers do not end up as mediocre working masses of 2025.