#1: Career Options

At the peak of the career, there are three options:

  • Senior executive – Someone who has knowledge of strategy, operations, people to create customer value and profitability
  • Consultant – Someone who has deep knowledge on a specific area
  • Entrepreneur – Someone who creates a unique product or service that provides customer value and profitability
The above options are available in any industry.

#2: Building a career

  • If you are a person who loves the details, you need to build yourself as a consultant or knowledge expert or simply an industry / organization expert.
  • If you are a person who loves to work with people, operations (process), strategy, you need to build a career as executive
  • If you are a person who loves to create something new, you have to develop the other skills to become an entrepreneur.

#3: Software applications

People working in software applications are unique as they are technology people working with established industries. Here are common usages of software applications:

  • Software applications can be created as part of IT department in any industry. Usually, the IT department processes information or create business workflows from other support functions like marketing, sales, procurement, HR, legal, finance.
  • Software applications can be built around the internet to create new business workflows, social networking, mobile applications etc.
  • Software applications can be built around devices to provide new usability or convenience features.

#4: IT industry

Apart from working within established industries, speciality IT companies are of two types:

  • Software product companies that build software for the rest of the IT industry
  • Software service companies that provide solutions and software services for other industries

#5: General tips on career building:

  • You need to be an expert in all areas related to something. For eg, if you are an executive, you have to be an expert with people, operations / process, strategy. If you are an asp.net consultant, you need to be an expert with asp.net, mvc, jquery, wcf, linq, silverlight.
  • Knowing a lot in un-related areas does not have market potential. Exception for one, the rest of the knowledge is hobbies.
  • Doing something where you have the passion to do and learn is better than doing something where you can get more money. Eg. Become a data warehousing professional, because there is more money there.
  • Moving from one industry to another is a risky thing. Lot of learning is required to understand the customs of the new industry.
  • Everyone has a chance to work / contribute to the society for 35-40 years. Building a career is a slow process than a fast / opportunistic process.
  • If you are (like me) in the beginning of your mid-level career, and you have a passion for unrelated areas, like asp.net consulting, project management, product startups, you need to give up all but one of your passions, and re-focus again.